But of course he’s been here all along.
You may not remember but there was a moment of clarity at the beginning of Trump 1.0. Dr. David Glosser, Stephen Miller’s uncle, wrote a takedown of his nephew in the pages of Politico, followed by interviews and blog posts all over the Internet. He had plenty to work with, going way back with Stephen, at least to his bar mitzvah, probably to his circumcision.
He said that Stephen was a mess from the start, a pugnacious contrarian who repudiated his community, associating with right-wing broadcasters, activists, and ideologues. It felt like an act of atonement from an unhappy family which had inadvertently inflicted Stephen on the rest of us.
It also somehow relieved my ethnocentric shame. I was stricken by the fact that Miller was so bad, and that he was a Jewish man about the age of our son. How could someone reared in our tradition be so violently animated by a hatred for immigrants? How could he serve someone like Donald Trump, some terrible combination of Pharaoh and Haman?
Of course, I know the answer to that question. I’m living in the age of Weinstein and Epstein, of the Kushner Family, and Howard Lutnick. Half have already gone to prison. The others will go down in the investigations-to-come. Every one of them will get their comeuppance and it couldn’t happen a moment too soon.
But Stephen Miller is a thing apart: a snarling beast with the smooth face of an adolescent, eyes deadened by inhumanity, and murder in his heart. His fingerprints are on every indefensible policy that has marked the far edges of Trump’s malevolent program: separation of families, the lawlessness of ICE officers, a ban on Muslim travelers, the attack on universities. He’s a one-man Gestapo who represents the worst instincts of MAGA to create an ethno-nationalist state with annihilationist antagonisms. He seems not to realize that the people he comes from were once fatally targeted by just such an enemy.
And yet here he is: Miller 2.0, suddenly elevated to the throne next to Pharaoh’s, validated and empowered as never before. While Trump yammers on about the quality of marble in The Ballroom, transfixed by meaningless totems and monuments, Miller will make full use of his power. Trump has other things to occupy him, and his natural instinct is to double down. His hints at moderation are entirely untrustworthy. As many have noted, he is a primitive creature who is wholly animated by the experience of the fight.
Meanwhile, he has put his signet ring on Miller’s finger with the directive that he go out and have his “fun.” That’s what Trump said to RFK, Jr. For surviving psychophants in this lame duck interval, that will now be the rule of the administration.
All of this to say that our work is just beginning. Nothing could compromise the joy of this moment, the sense that a long national nightmare is over. But as the regime rushes to accomplish what it can, we are required to be vigilant and forceful in combating Steven Miller. The machine of opposition has already switched on with your in-box, like mine, bursting with alerts.
It should begin with what has never worked before: insistent reminders to Republican Senators that they suffered terrible losses in an electoral drubbing which they will suffer again in 2028, especially if they don’t topple Stephen Miller. Remember that It was a famous cadre of Republican Senators who removed Richard Nixon in 1974. We should urge their successors to rise to the occasion, reminding their president that they could do it again.