February 12, 2017
A TASTE OF TRUE BELIEVER:
This Is What Undiluted Trumpism Tastes Like (Rob Garver, February 12, 2017, The Fiscal Times)
Until now, Trump's defenders have been cutting the administration's policy demands with the slick avoidance techniques of presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, or Vice President Mike Pence's patented "more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger" rebuttals to awkward questions. But Sunday, the administration sent White House Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller, the 31-year-old former aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, to appear on four of the five major shows. (CNN is still in the doghouse, apparently.)For those used to other Trump surrogates, Miller can't have gone down easily.Miller's default setting appears to be barely suppressed rage coupled with a deep sense of indignation that public reaction to the Trump administration's policies is anything other than immediate and unquestioning acceptance. And in a week where a troubled White House is facing an unusually large number of scandals and embarrassments, he mounted a full-throated defense of virtually everything that came out of the West Wing over the past seven days.What did he think of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's insistence that the decision by the Nordstrom department store chain to stop carrying the president's daughter's line of clothes and accessories was a "direct attack" on Trump himself?"I do want to say that Sean Spicer, as always, is 100 percent correct and that what he said is true and important," Miller said. "And I agree with it."How about Trump's completely unsubstantiated claim that he lost the state of New Hampshire in the presidential election because of massive and organized voter fraud that involved busing out-of-state voters into the Granite State?On the question of Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud, he said, "I'm prepared to go on any show, anywhere, anytime, and repeat it and say the President of the United States is correct 100 percent." On New Hampshire in particular, Miller went even further, claiming that "the issue of busing voters into New Hampshire is widely known by anyone who's worked in New Hampshire politics. It's very real. It's very serious."The claim left ABC host George Stephanopoulos practically agog in surprise, but he still managed to point out several times that Miller refused, when asked, to offer even a shred of hard evidence that the claim was true.Miller seemed particularly angry about the decision by a panel of federal judges in California to uphold an order blocking enforcement of the president's executive order banning refugees and the citizens of seven majority Muslim countries from entering the US. He accused the judges, much as Trump had a few days earlier, of usurping presidential power. (And, in the process, accused them of believing the US should have no border controls at all.)"The president's powers here are beyond question," he insisted on Fox News.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 12, 2017 6:15 PM
