Reports from numerous news sources indicate it is Stephen Miller, senior adviser at the White House, who talked President Trump into firing the entire leadership of the Department of Homeland Security this week.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has been speaking out, calling Miller a “white nationalist.” Omar and many others are saying that Miller has successfully gotten Trump to push for an immigration policy even harsher and crueler than the child separation he was carrying out last year.
As bad as Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was, she was apparently not bad enough for Trump. Even her decision to use tear gas against women and children on the other side of the border was apparently not cruel enough for Trump who has been carrying out a policy that reminds many of what went on in the ancient Roman forums. Throwing people to the lions and watching people fight to the death provided enjoyment for those who thrived off of blood lust. Likewise, Trump is engaging in public cruelty to please his base in the immigration battle.
Omar is out in the open with her criticisms of both Miller and his boss Trump.
“Stephen Miller is a white nationalist,” Omar tweeted on Monday night. “The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.”
Some have had a hard time trying to figure out why Trump would fire so many people, leaving permanent positions unfilled. In addition to the mass firings, he withdrew the nomination of Ronald Vitiello to run the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. He is leaving almost countless positions, including Cabinet slots, filled with “acting” rather than permanent directors. Acting directors don’t have to be confirmed by the Senate and are much more directly under the president’s control than full directors. Trump is filling the government with people whose only concern then is pleasing him. He creates what amounts to a dictatorship filled with individuals answerable to him, individuals he hopes will carry out any order he issues, regardless of its legality or constitutionality.
When he withdrew the Vitiello nomination Trump said he wanted to move ICE in a “tougher” direction. Tear-gassing of children and throwing of kids into cages is apparently not tough enough for the unhinged president. He has no explanation for those who ask why a president who claims we have a crisis on the border is removing from office every official responsible for major parts of the work at that border. He has no explanation because what he wants down there is people who will do whatever he wants, regardless of law or consequences.
Omar’s tweet linked to a story that called Miller, who has a reputation as a fascistic anti-immigrant person, the “mastermind” behind the firings.
According to multiple reports, Miller is the one who convinced Trump to remove top officials at the Department of Homeland Security who stood in the way of implementing real fascistic type immigration policies, including reinstituting family separations.
Miller, when he first joined the administration, was the mastermind behind the travel ban aimed at people from majority-Muslim countries. He has bragged about his role in designing the child separation policy that Trump began last year. The cruel policy was supposed to discourage asylum seekers from crossing the border, something that U.S. and international law guarantee them the right to do.
At an event Friday in Calexico, Calif., to push for construction of his hated wall Trump delivered what may well have been one of his most frighteningly un-American messages thus far. Speaking to asylum seekers he said: “Our country is full. Can’t take you anymore, I’m sorry. Can’t happen. So turn around, that’s the way it is.”
Yahoo News reported that Omar’s tweet drew the ire of Donald Trump Jr., who took a swipe at the Muslim Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota.
“I see that the head of the Farrakhan Fan Club, @IlhanMN, took a short break from spewing her usual anti-semitic bigotry today to accuse a Jewish man of being a ‘white nationalist’ because she apparently has no shame,” Trump Jr. tweeted.
A day after a man who threatened to kill her was arrested in New York the president attacked Omar in a speech to Jewish Republicans over the weekend.
“Special thanks to Rep. Omar of Minnesota,” the President said. “Oh, she doesn’t like Israel, I forgot. I’m so sorry!”
In the same speech, Trump referred to Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu as “your prime minister.” (The audience consisted of U.S., not Israeli citizens.)
The President gets scarier by the day.
CONTRIBUTOR
Comments