But For a Greeting
FOTP News in Review for … Sunday, December 16
Stephen Miller won’t acknowledge the obvious.
I’m going to assume you have read (and have had enough) about Rudy Giuliani and his, in every sense of the word, incredible performances on Fox and This Week to make you long for the days when he was simply trading in wives, trademarking “9/11,” and pimping Life Lock Security. The only thing I’ll add to the stinking pyre that is now Giuliani’s integrity is the sycophantic heights to which he climbed on Sunday. He is now doing for Donald Trump’s innocence what cocaine did for Tom Sizemore’s acting career. Further, Giuliani seems to believe that he — unlike every other person who ever so much as passed Donald Trump in a hallway built by contractors that DJT stiffed — is somehow different, smarter, and more valued to the president, those doing (or about to do) time in the hoosegow for believing the same thing about themselves notwithstanding. Even Chris Christie, in turning down the chance to be Trump’s chief of staff, saw the writing on the wall and the coming indictment. If Giuliani were not such a bully, such an unprepared, duplicitous, and soulless Trumpian carnival barker (and, from what I can gather, a shitty lawyer to boot), it would almost be possible to feel sorry for him.
Consider this: Michael Cohen is a more sympathetic figure at the moment.
Today, though, I want to discuss Stephen Miller, senior adviser to President Trump, and his gig on Face the Nation. If you want to hear him bastardize the history, effectiveness, and inefficiencies of the Affordable Care Act, access the link there, but I want to talk something else.
The salutation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Good morning and welcome to FACE THE NATION. We begin today with White House Senior Adviser Stephen Miller. He is the President’s point person on policy. Good to have you here in studio.
STEPHEN MILLER (Senior Adviser to President Trump): It’s great to be here. Thank you. Merry Christmas.
You miserable bastard.
Brennan didn’t wish you a ‘Merry Christmas.’ You decided to play that card. You decided to flash your cred just then, didn’t you, to let the Trumpsters know you’re with them, one of them — no member of this White House, not even a Jew, is going to so much as even acknowledge Hanukah because that would mean inclusion and a shared national warmth, and we can’t have that, can we? Even though the holiday just ended this past Monday, even though we are still very much in the “season,” you couldn’t bring yourself to throw your people a seasonal, rhetorical bone, could you? You know Jews exist, whether you practice or not, whether you converted or not. You grew up in a Jewish home— yet you won’t even acknowledge the holiday, a holiday that pre-dates Christians by about 165 years, so afraid are you that people like your old buddy Richard Spencer would think less of you.
Spencer told the magazine that Miller “is not alt-right or a white nationalist or an identitarian.” But he added: “Could Miller and Trump do good things for white Americans? The answer is yes.”
It may seem like a small point, but remember: This is an administration that finds the good in everyone, including Nazis, but can’t muster a tear for a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl who died of dehydration while in its care. Miller’s own great-grandfather, a Jew, was refused admission to the United States, and Miller now advocates policies today that would have kept his own flesh and blood out of the country. Miller has used the word “infestation” to talk about immigration. If the term sounds familiar, it is because it was what Nazis used against Jews — his ancestors, his family.
He wouldn’t acknowledge a holiday about freedom, rededication, and faith.
Miller is a man who sees only one color on the American flag: White.
It’s a Christian white, too.
In High School, he wrote the following letter to his local newspaper.
“That is why we do nothing for American holidays but everything for Mexican holidays,” he wrote. “That is why history teachers denounce the U.S. as wickedly imperialistic, some supplementing standard history texts with something comfortably more liberal.
“That is why teachers insult and demean the president. That is why we invited a Muslim leader to the school to explain the splendor of Islam, but no such proclamation was ever made about America.”
Yes, Christianity has always had a problem in America getting its message out.
All this is old news, I know, and there are more things important, many more things, than rehashing the bigotry and xenophobia of those in the White House, generally, and the thin poison that oozes out of Miller, specifically.
It was just a greeting.
It was just Merry Christmas.
No, it wasn’t.
