Eerie and scary, but he knows the Trump script
On all the Sunday morning talk shows, Stephen Miller was politely described as Donald Trump’s senior political analyst.
In truth, this lugubrious guy who looks like he sold out Caesar is really The Donald’s Minister of Propaganda.
On Sunday morning, as I watched Miller spout his boss’s ragtime, I had the distinctly eerie impression that I was listening to what passes for The Donald’s brain.
It wasn’t simply the way Miller’s eyes appeared frozen, or how he robotically maintained Trump’s supremacy over federal judges and just about everyone else. No, it was what he said, and how he said it:
“The end result is this,” Miller declared on “Face The Nation.” “Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”
“… and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions … ”
The last time I heard such words spoken, President George W. Bush was standing on a rubble pile at Ground Zero in Manhattan, a couple of days after the Twin Towers went down.
It was a response to the worst direct attack against this country since Pearl Harbor and a pledge that the 2,996 lives lost at the World Trade Center would indeed be answered.
What Donald Trump’s mouthpiece was talking about was a trio of federal judges who had the independence, not to mention the audacity granted them by the Constitution, to reject an imperious executive order they decided failed to meet the requirements of the law.
Miller, who stood in the press briefing room at the White House, appeared at times to be reading from a teleprompter. His eyes never seemed to move. This pocket-sized version of Steve Bannon had the general demeanor of a Washington droid.
“George, it is a fact and you will not try to deny it,” Miller proclaimed to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “that there are massive numbers of noncitizens who are registered to vote.”
When Stephanopoulos flatly rejected Miller’s claim, saying he offered no proof of the so-called busloads of illegals trucked up to New Hampshire to vote, Miller’s obsequious response was “go to the New Hampshire and talk to anyone …”
No one, including the former Republican senator from New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte, or the woman who beat her, former Gov. Maggie Hassan, believes that busloads of illegals were trucked up to New Hampshire.
Like me, many people appeared to hear the ominous echo of other demagogues from the past and the shills they employed to convince the masses that their megalomaniac bosses were infallible.
Sunday morning marked Stephen Miller’s first solo turn in the spotlight as Trump’s mouthpiece. It was a performance worthy of “The Walking Dead.”