Steven Miller (And Trump) Want To Sell You A Bridge... While Status Quo Joe Biden Says He Wants To Build One

Adam Schiff was on CNN yesterday, questioning questioning congressional Republicans' devotion to Congress as an institution (and the U.S. Constitution) in light of Trump's fake national emergency. "It will not be a separation of powers any more," he said, "just a separation of parties. So this is going to be a moment of truth for my GOP colleagues." When Republicans go on TV to discuss arguments they can't win-- like Trump's blatant lies about this or that or the other and all of the above-- they gravitate to their safe space: Trump TV. However, Steven Miller, one of the least sympathetic characters in current politics-- even without the shoe-polish on his head-- just may have been somewhat surprised by what happened to him yesterday on Chris Wallace's show.

Watch it above. Wallace hammered Trump's in-house Nazi when he tried vomiting out memorized press department talking points instead of answering the questions. Rachel Maddow would have be kinder and gentler. Miller could almost have been on with Lawrence O'Donnell. I wrote "almost" because O'Donnell wouldn't have let him get away with this bullshit for the sake of comity and politeness:

WALLACE: 'I didn’t need to do this.' How does that justify a national emergency?

MILLER: Well as you know Chris, we already have 4,000 troops on the border in light of a national emergency, a decision that was made almost a year ago, as we see an increasing number of people crossing the border as well as increasing violence in Mexico. What the president was saying is that like past presidents, he could choose to ignore this crisis, choose to ignore this emergency as others have; that’s not what he’s going to do.

Wallace should have called him out for asserting that because of Trump's election stunt of sending some troops to the border ("a decision that was made almost a year ago," as if that was relevant) there is a national emergency. There isn't. And Miller is insisting that the troops-- which don't need to be there, except in his mind-- must be protected with a wall. He also falsely claimed that "we see an increasing number of people crossing the border." There are fewer illegal crossings than in decades. He also stuck in-- pure fear-mongering-- that we see "increasing violence in Mexico." Not true, not relevant. Wallace didn't let it all go by without pushback though:

"The president talks about an invasion," he said, "used that word multiple times on Friday-- an invasion on the Southern border. But let’s look at the facts, I want to put them up on the screen; 1.6 million people were stopped crossing the border illegally back in 2000, less than a quarter that many were caught last year. The government’s own numbers show, for all the president is talking about drugs streaming over the border, 80 to 90 percent of the cocaine, heroin and fentanyl seized at the border is seized at ports of entry, not along unfenced areas.bAnd in 2017 twice as many of the new people in the country illegally were from visa overstays, as were from crossing the border. Again, where’s the emergency-- the national emergency to build a wall?"

Miller's response was to attack George W. Bush and accuse him of "an astonishing betrayal of the American people" for allowing illegal immigration to double from 6 to 12 million. Bringing in "cheap labor" has, of course been the agenda of the big industrial and agricultural backers of the GOP for far longer than a century. Miller isn't from that wing of the party, though. He's a proud and insistent Know Nothing Republican and he's dragged his mentally-impaired boss down that rabbit hole with him.

Wall Street Journal reporter Jess Bravin had some bad news for the Know Nothings this weekend. First of all, he wrote that within hours of Trumpanzee's Rose Garden speech, "the advocacy group Public Citizen filed suit in the Washington, D.C., federal district court to block implementation of the emergency declaration. The plaintiffs-- three Texas landowners who were notified by the government that their property could be taken to build the wall; and the Frontera Audubon Society, which operates a nature preserve in the Rio Grande Valley-- contend that no national emergency exists, and that even if one did, Mr. Trump exceeded the authority Congress gave the president to respond to military contingencies. 'The facts make clear that the premise of the president's declaration that the absence of a wall in the areas where construction is planned is an emergency is legally untenable and an impermissible basis for seeking to obligate funds that Congress has refused to appropriate for a border wall,' said Allison Zieve, a Public Citizen lawyer representing the plaintiffs."

Bevin also wrote, separately, that Democratic-led states and border communities said they were readying lawsuits to halt construction that Congress had not authorized. In Texas, El Paso County, which Señor Trumpanzee "visited Monday to make his case for a border emergency, said it would join with nonprofit groups to challenge the president’s action. 'President Trump has already made many negative and false statements about our community in the attempt to justify his border wall,' Ricardo Sanmaniego, the county judge, or chief executive, said in a release. The 'emergency declaration will further damage El Paso County’s reputation and economy, and we are determined to stop this from happening.'"

A few words about El Paso County, the 6th most populous in Texas. Beto represented most of it in Congress and now that seat is held by a long-time ally of his, Veronica Escobar. The county is blue. Kerry beat Bush 56-43% there in 2004. Obama won it-- both times-- by even greater margins. Hillary win in 2016 was a landslide-- 145,509 (69.6%) to 54,567 (25.9%). El Paso County is not Trump-friendly. Even in the 2016 GOP primary, Trump came in 3rd, after Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Not a great place for his racist policy agenda to face a jury.