Some Very Bad News for Stephen Miller
TBR Sunday Read
Fun fact: Stephen Miller likes Mexican food.
You’d think that an unhinged xenophobe like Stevie would want to prevent burritos and tacos from taking jobs away from hamburgers and hot dogs. But apparently that’s not the case.
On June 17, 2018, Miller, a tireless cheerleader for wrenching migrant children from their parents, was dining at Espita Mezcaleria, a Mexican restaurant in Washington. Recognizing him from his sweaty performances at the White House podium, a fellow diner called out, “Hey look guys, whoever thought we’d be in a restaurant with a real-life fascist begging [for] money for new cages?”
Surprisingly, Miller didn’t take this opportunity to defend his beloved policy of family separation. According to a witness, he scurried away.
But it’s hard to imagine he took offense at being called a fascist. In the years since the incident at Espita Mezcaleria, he’s only burnished his neo-Nazi cred.
His performance last October at the now-legendary Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, for example, called to mind Molly Ivins’s famous joke about Pat Buchanan’s hate-filled screed at the 1992 Republican Convention: “It probably sounded better in the original German.”
In Miller’s case, Molly’s crack was literally true: His declaration at MSG—“America is for Americans and Americans only”—was a close translation of the slogan “Germany for the Germans—foreigners out” favored by Adolf Hitler.
Miller’s repurposing of Nazi IP shows a keen awareness of his patron’s literary preferences. According to his late wife Ivana, the only book Donald J. Trump owned was a collection of Hitler’s speeches, which—perhaps because he considered it perfect bedtime reading—he kept on his nightstand.
I won’t attempt to explain why Miller, a Jew whose ancestors fled Russian pogroms, has become such a fanboy of history’s most famous antisemite. I’m not a licensed psychotherapist like George Santos.
But thanks to performances like his MSG tirade—which have earned Miller the exceedingly apt sobriquet “Peewee German”—he has landed not one but two jobs in the Fourth Reich: Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Policy and United States homeland security advisor.
With everything seemingly going his way, it might seem petty of me to rain on his parade. But I have some very bad news for Stephen Miller.