NEW YORK — As if President Trump didn’t have enough adversity to deal with already, Stephen Miller has added to his tzuris.
Miller, the president’s speechwriter and antagonistic immigration policies maven, the guy the chief executive has referred to as “my Roy Cohn” and even as the reincarnation of himself as a young man, has been outed as a devotee and dispenser of white nationalist literature.
The result has been cries to oust him from the Trump inner circle.
Confronted by newspaper reporters and TV correspondents on the issue, Trump has responded differently on different occasions, short days, or even hours, apart.
“I hardly know the kid,” was an early presidential effort. “It was just the boy’s way of promoting the concept of making American great again” was another, later, defense.
He added” “If Barack Obama and crooked Hilary had done the same thing, you in the fake media wouldn’t have written or said a word.”
Trump dodged questions about Miller’s role in the administration’s policy of separating families and the so-called anti-Muslim ban. In any event, the chief executive declared he was solidly behind Miller. “I’m a great judge of character,” he declared, “The greatest. Just look at the staff I’ve appointed. Losers don’t last very long in my administration.”
The Miller controversy surfaced about the same time as the 80th anniversary of the failed attempt of the ship St. Louis, with hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe to gain entry, first in Cuba, and then the United States. After the ship’s forced return to Europe, many of the passengers perished in the Holocaust.
Asked to comment, the president said that it was “smart of them to name the ship after a U.S. city, but it didn’t work.” He emphasized that it was Democrats who denied landing in the USA, “but nobody in the fake media said a word.”
Noting that “I wasn’t even born yet,” Trump wouldn’t comment on whether the incident was in keeping with his own strict immigration policy. But he did say, “The St. Louis may have had okay people aboard, but most places that send out immigrants, don’t send you the best people, they send crooks and murderers and drug dealers. Anyway, it’s not up to us to save the world. We’ve been doing more than our share in everything for much too long.”
Trump said discussing the St. Louis brought the subject back to Steve Miller and the “phony” reports that in 2015 and 2016, he promoted materials with supposedly racist, specifically white-nationalist, content.
“The hoaxers and the ‘Never Trumpers,’ shifty Schiff and nutty Nancy, would love me to fire Stave, but nobody tells the president what to do. I’ve got his back, and he knows it, and so should all the witch-hunters.”
He added: “It’s a good bet that all the criticism of him is rooted in anti-Semitism. And they say he’s the one who’s biased.”
Trump said he considered Miller “a true patriot, maybe a little over-enthusiastic, but committed to returning America to its greatness. And extreme patriotism is no crime. No collusion, no quid pro quo.”
That thought, he said, reminded him of his major undertaking to provide security on the United States’ southern border — what he called “the latest, most economical and effective wall in history.
“I won’t lie to you. We need a lot of patriotic Americans to give up their land along the border. If they don’t do it voluntarily, we have what’s called ‘Imminent Lo Mein,” the right of the government to take land it needs.
“No matter how we get that land, security along our southern border will be remarkable — it will be known as the Wall of Fame forever.
“And I don’t mind telling you,even though I’ too modest to say so, I’m sure to go down in history as one of a kind.”
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Readers unfamiliar with Joel H. Cohen’s Just Kidding columns are assured they are satire and nothing therein should be taken seriously.