White House adviser Miller is the real ‘divider-in-chief’

SAN DIEGO — Let’s get right to it. I asked author Jean Guerrero whether she thinks President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller is racist toward Mexicans.

The San Diego area-based journalist — who has just written an important book about the most controversial adviser in the Trump White House — initially tried to dodge the question by falling back on her training.

“One of the reasons that we as journalists refrain from using terms like ‘racist’ is that we don’t know what’s in people’s hearts or in people’s heads,” Guerrero said. “But I believe that racism can be about actions. It can be about words that you communicate. If you’re talking about racism in that sense, then you can call Stephen Miller a racist. Because he has throughout his life expressed racist beliefs and acted in a racist way.”

The book is provocatively titled “Hate Monger:

Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda.”

Guerrero is 32 years old, but she’s an old-school journo. So much so that my friend says she started research for the Miller book with an open mind about the thorny question I just put to her.

The Mexican American journalist has spent several years covering the U.S.-Mexico border and reporting on the immigration issue. Yet she started out skeptical of the idea that Miller — who is only a couple of years older than Guerrero and grew up two hours away from her in Southern California — hates Mexicans.

Guerrero did her homework, and that of her classmates. Based on an exhaustive amount of research that included conducting more than 150 interviews and leafing through hundreds of pages of documents, the book helps readers understand one of the most consequential figures in Washington.

Miller’s official job title is senior adviser for policy to the president. The 34-year-old essentially runs immigration policy for the White House and, by extension, the entire administration. The former congressional aide and communications director for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is now the de facto secretary of homeland security. He seems to have more sway over parts of that gargantuan Cabinet department than the revolving door of individuals who have actually held the title in the past four years.

Besides Miller’s other duties, the graduate of Duke University is also the White House’s unofficial Master of Distraction. Trump has the uncanny ability to create just enough chaos to change the subject or cast the laser pointer away from something he doesn’t want the media to focus on. That’s mostly Miller.

The firebrand also moonlights as the Minister of Division. Americans are at each other’s throats over everything from tearing down statues to wearing masks. And it’s fair to say that much of that is Trump’s handiwork — which is to say, Miller’s mischief making.

But Mr. Sinister isn’t likely to stop there. If Trump is reelected, Miller could one day run the West Wing as chief of staff. Don’t bet against it.

Perhaps Miller’s most important role — and the gig that keeps him from joining so many other former Trump White House officials and former Cabinet members on the unemployment line — is that he’s the real Trump Whisperer.

That phrase is often used to describe reporters who can explain Trump to people. Never mind that. Miller does something even more valuable: He explains people to Trump.

He has his ear to the ground with MAGA voters. I sometimes think that every time a White person anywhere in America complains about anything, a light goes off in Miller’s office. The White Avenger is constantly reintroducing the president to his base. It’s essential work. For all his populist rhetoric, Trump is still a billionaire whose reality is colored by solid-gold bathroom fixtures, Fifth Avenue penthouses and private jets. Everyman, the president is not.

Guerrero tried repeatedly to interview Miller, or get someone in the White House to comment on her findings. No such luck.

I asked the author why, in the book’s title, she decided to use a loaded word such as “hate.”

“Hate is rooted in a sense of superiority, and a sense of entitlement,” Guerrero said. “Hate makes you want to harm. And when you look at the performatively cruel policies that Trump has been responsible for, you realize that he needs to rally that hatred for people to cheer him — policies like separating children from their parents and turning away the world’s most desperate and vulnerable people who come as refugees.”

Guerrero’s book is required reading for anyone who wants to better understand how our “one nation, indivisible,” became so divided. After all, that’s the first step in gluing back together what Stephen Miller — and the occupant of the Oval Office — helped shatter.