Do You Ever Imagine How Hard You Would Fight Against A Fascist Take Over?

Lambchop by Nancy Ohanian

I don't think the theme of Suzanne Gamboa's report for NBC News yesterday-- 'White supremacy' was behind child separations-- and Trump officials went along-- would surprise many people. Like someone missed the fact that Trump's top domestic advisor, Stephen Miller is a deranged neo-Nazi, even if the media doesn't like using those words? Gamboa put it more politely just referring to Miller, as Señor Trumpanzee’s "senior adviser and immigration policy architect [as he] called for a show of hands among senior officials on separating children from parents [now looked at as] 'a damning display of white supremacy' and a repeat of crimes against humanity seen through history. In a meeting of 11 senior advisers, Miller warned that not enforcing the administration’s 'zero tolerance' immigration policy 'is the end of our country as we know it' and that opposing it would be un-American, according to two officials who were there." The Trump Cabinet, damning itself for eternity, voted with Miller who "saw the separation of families not as an unfortunate byproduct but as a tool to deter more immigration. According to three former officials, he had devised plans that would have separated even more children. No one who attended the meeting argued on the children’s behalf or on the humanity or morality of separating the largely Central American families."

Have you watched A French Village (subtitles) on Prime? It's really an excellent-- if horrifying-- depiction of life in this fictional village occupied by the Nazis during World War II, especially for Jews and other minorities. And there are plenty of French characters like Stephen Miller. Would you take your life into your hands to resist or would you collaborate-- and how much?





Two years ago NBC ran a precursor by Noah Berlatsky: The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism He wrote that a new study "suggests that the main threat to our democracy may not be the hardening of political ideology, but rather the hardening of one particular political ideology. Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy."

White people who say they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race are more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results. MAGA!!

Trump's bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined. When Trump calls Mexicans "rapists," and when he praises authoritarian leaders, he is appealing to the same voters.

If You Support by Chip Proser

Miller and Davis' paper quotes alt right, neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who in a 2013 speech declared: "We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again’… We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy." Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially requires totalitarianism. That's the logic of fascism.

Trump's rise is often presented as a major break with the past, and as a repudiation of American values and democratic commitments. But in an email, Miller pointed out that white intolerance has long served as an excuse for, and a spark for, authoritarian measures.

"People are fond of the Framers’ grand vision of liberty and equality for all," Miller says, "but the beauty of the Federalist papers can’t paper over the real measures of exclusion that were baked into their understanding of a limited franchise."

Black people, Asians, Native Americans and women were prevented from voting for significant stretches of American history. America's tradition of democracy (for some) exists alongside a tradition of authoritarianism (for some). The survey data doesn't show people rejecting American traditions, then, Miller says, so much as it shows "a preference for the sort of white-ethnocentrism that imbued much of the functional form of democracy for the better part of two centuries."

The Founders supported democracy as long as it was restricted to white male property holders. Today, our understanding of democracy is more expansive-- at least in theory.





In practice, the GOP has increasingly been embracing a politics of white resentment tied to disenfranchisement. "Since Richard Nixon's ‘Southern Strategy,’ the GOP has pigeon-holed itself as, in large part, an aggrieved white people's party," Miller told me.

Trump's nativist language made the GOP's sympathies more explicit, leading to further erosion of support among non-white voters. George W. Bush won 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; Trump won only 28 percent. His showing with Asian-American voters was only 27 percent-- worse than any winning presidential candidate on record.

White people continue to decrease as a percentage of the U.S. population; at some point, it's going to be impossible to win a national, democratic American election with a platform that alienates people of color. The GOP, seeing their coming demographic apocalypse, has pushed voter ID laws and other barriers to voting to try to prevent black and other minority voters from getting to the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican Governor Scott Walker even attempted to delay elections for state seats that he believed Democrats would win.

"The GOP has dug itself into such a hole on this that the most practical effort to stave off these impending losses is to disenfranchise the votes of the same ethnic/racial outgroups against whom GOP messaging has been stoking animosity," Miller tells me. A party built on demonizing and attacking marginalized people is a party that will have to disenfranchise those same people if it is to survive.

Blaming authoritarianism on partisanship suggests that both sides are equally to blame for the erosion of democratic norms. But greater commitment to abortion rights and free healthcare in the Democratic party isn't a threat to the foundations of democracy. The growing concentration of intolerant white voters in the GOP, on the other hand, has created a party which appears less and less committed to the democratic project. When faced with a choice between bigotry and democracy, too many Americans are embracing the first while abandoning the second.

You can imagine that self-selected groups Americans reacted differently to the nationwide protests over the extrajudicial murder (lynching) of George Floyd. A new PRRI survey found that Republicans didn't change their opinions at all, while normal people were profoundly impacted:

The CEO of PRRI, Robert Jones, wrote that "In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a police officer, the attitudes of Democrats and religiously unaffiliated Americans have shifted significantly, but there has been no movement among Republicans and white evangelical Protestants. For example, approximately eight in ten Republicans and seven in ten white evangelical Protestants continue to say that the recent killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents, rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans-- views that are unchanged since PRRI began asking this question in 2015.”

The survey found that "a majority (56%) of Americans believe that recent killings of unarmed Black men are part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans, compared to 42% who say these are isolated incidents. These views are consistent with views in 2018 but the inverse of views from 2015, when a majority (53%) believed these events were isolated incidents. Republicans are about as likely today as they were in 2015 to say the killing of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans (78% vs. 82%), Democrats are about half as likely as they were in 2015 to agree with this sentiment (17% vs. 32%). Among white Democrats, this shift is even bigger (19% vs. 43%)." White evangelicals are nearly as racist as Republicans in general, their attitudes having remained unmoved over the last five years, with 72% in both 2020 and 2015 agreeing that the killing of Black men by police are isolated incidents."

Now There's A Book Out About The Jewish Nazi In The White House-- The Ugly, Ugly Story Of Trump's Uriah Heep: Stephen Miller

Yesterday, Carlos Lozada reviewed Jean Guerrero's new book, Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda for the Washington Post, How Stephen Miller Went From Teen Troll To Trump Whisperer. He begins with an incorrect assertion: "The list of supposed Trump puppeteers is long." But there really have only been Steve Bannon, John Kelly, Jared/Ivanka and Miller. Bannon and Kelly are long gone. I always get the idea that Jared/Ivanka try to tamp down the self-destructive racism that is never far from Trump's surface, while Miller does far more than stoke it. Guerrero's confirms what I've known from the beginning on the Regime-- Miller personifies the bigotry, racism and fascism that have turned Trump into the most despised president in American history.

Lozada explains that Guerrero sees Miller as a character who wields influence over a policy arena that Señor Trumpanzee "considers vital to his legacy. He is the 'architect' of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies, and his 'mind meld' with the president has produced executive orders and rhetoric heavy on exclusion, cruelty and 'prejudicial white patriotism.'"

Guerrero spends much of her book plumbing Miller’s early years for the origins of his animus against immigrants, with intriguing but inconclusive results. She makes far clearer how right-wing and nationalistic media personalities provided Miller the platform and tactics to hone his political vision-- and theirs-- and continued shaping his views during his time as a Senate aide and as a Trump adviser. Yes, Miller is a force over Trump, articulating and sharpening his message on immigration, but that makes his own influences all the more relevant.

Sometimes, if you look closely, you’ll see that a puppeteer has strings tugging at him, too.

Guerrero dwells on Miller’s years in Santa Monica, California, where he grew up crossing the Mexican border for family vacations, eating meals cooked by Latin American housekeepers and attending school with Mexican American children. His confrontations started early. “As a boy, Miller waged an ideological war on his dark-skinned classmates,” Guerrero writes.

In the summer after middle school, he informed a classmate that they could no longer be friends because of the boy’s Latino heritage. At his liberal high school, Miller admonished Mexican American students to “speak only English.” He worried that a Chicano student group wanted to reclaim California. “Racism does not exist,” he told school district committee on equality. “It’s in your imagination.” He fought against bilingual education, Spanish-language school announcements and Cinco de Mayo celebrations. In his most infamous early moment, he argued at an assembly that students should not have to pick up after themselves “when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us.”

Miller was, in essence, a troll, triggering the libs long before anyone called it that. “He was born with an ability to bring out anger from people,” a former counselor at the high school tells Guerrero, “and he rejoiced in that, it made him powerful.” When his classmates saw him on the national stage years later-- speaking at Trump rallies or influencing the anti-Muslim travel ban, family separation policies and restrictions on asylum seekers-- they felt a throb of recognition. One former student tells Guerrero that he could “hear Miller’s voice in AP government when Trump talks about ‘America First’ and ‘Make America Great Again.’”

Guerrero drops tantalizing suggestions about Miller’s motivations. For instance, he complained to a childhood friend that one of his Latina housekeepers was “kind of emotionally abusive,” and he fretted about being dropped off at school in a housekeeper’s “junky” car, which made him “look poor.” Guerrero even speculates that a legal dispute between Miller’s father and uncle involving the family real estate company somehow fostered Miller’s “contrarian stance toward the world” (even if the author admits she has no idea how aware a youthful Miller was of the turmoil). Guerrero is more persuasive when she notes that Miller’s childhood was a time of right-wing, anti-immigrant ferment in California.

When Miller was in elementary school, Proposition 187 passed, prohibiting undocumented immigrants from accessing non-emergency state services, including public school. (It was later declared unconstitutional.) A teenage Miller, a fan of Rush Limbaugh’s 1992 book, The Way Things Ought to Be, started making radio appearances on the conservative Larry Elder Show, complaining about his high school. There he caught the attention of right-wing activist David Horowitz, an ex-Marxist seeking to subvert the old lefty counterculture by teaching its tools to young right-wingers: how to attract media attention, stage controversial events and shame administrators who refused to “increase the scope of intellectual diversity” with conservative perspectives.

“In the 1970s, students started a political revolution on campus,” Miller wrote in an essay on Horowitz’s website, while still in high school. “Now is the time for a counter-revolution-- one characterized by a devotion to this nation and its ideals.” He would become a Horowitz protege, and years later, Guerrero writes, the provocateur “would play a significant role in Trump’s campaign, with Miller as his vehicle.”

As an undergraduate at Duke University, Miller invited Horowitz to speak on campus, and he organized an immigration debate featuring Peter Brimelow, author of Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster. The event was a “life-changing” experience for Miller, Guerrero writes, making him think more broadly about immigration, creating a framework for his initial instincts. In the 1995 book, Brimelow argued that the Statue of Liberty is not a symbol of immigration because the Emma Lazarus poem was only added to the pedestal years later; Miller would make the same argument in the White House press room in 2017.

After Miller graduated from Duke, Horowitz helped him get a job as press aide for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and later Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), whose restrictive views on immigration dovetailed with Miller’s. On Capitol Hill, Miller gained a reputation as “vindictive” and a “street fighter,” but he also immersed himself in the details of immigration policy, absorbing statistics from prominent restrictionist think tanks. It was through Sessions that Miller met Bannon, and the three discussed the possibilities of a populist nationalist movement built on White voters-- the opposite of the lesson the GOP establishment had drawn from Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential defeat.

Horowitz lurked behind the scenes, encouraging Sessions and Miller to counter the Democrats’ emotional social-justice appeals with “an equally emotional campaign that puts the aggressors on the defensive; that attacks them in the same moral language.” Fear, he argued, beats hope. Then Trump appeared, spouting crude versions of Miller’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Fear was in the air, and soon, thanks to Bannon’s intercession, Miller was in the Trump campaign.

Miller’s backstory has been well reported (Guerrero often cites McKay Coppins’s 2018 Atlantic profile), as has his role in developing Trump’s immigration policies (the 2019 book Border Wars by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear details his efforts to exert total control over immigration policy by intimidating career Homeland Security officials). Guerrero’s contribution centers on how Miller’s early patrons retained their sway over him. In May 2016, Miller emailed Horowitz, asking, “What are some ways the government and the oligarchs who rely on the government have ‘rigged’ the system against poor young blacks and hispanics?” Horowitz replied with multiple links, explaining that “the inner cities are war zones... BLM [Black Lives Matter] makes criminals into martyrs.” The ideas soon appeared in a Trump campaign speech: “You can go to war zones in countries that we are fighting and it is safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats,” the candidate declared.

Later, Miller asked for help again: “The boss is doing a speech on radical Islam. What would you say about Sharia Law?” Horowitz responded that Islamic law is incompatible with the Constitution, adding that “referring to it as ‘Radical Islam’-- though inaccurate-- is a good and necessary idea.” When Trump gave a speech attacking Hillary Clinton for not criticizing “radical Islamic terrorism,” Horowitz noticed. “Great fucking ground-breaking speech,” he emailed Miller. “I spent the last twenty years waiting for this.”

At times, even his mentors worried that Miller and Trump were overdoing things. Horowitz suggested that accusing Barack Obama of founding the Islamic State was a distraction to the campaign. And Elder, who encouraged his old radio guest to emphasize the national security risks of immigration-- “we lack the ability to vet Muslim immigrants,” he wrote Miller during the campaign-- argued that Trump’s attack on the loyalties of an American judge of Mexican descent went too far. (Both Horowitz and Elder shared these email exchanges with Guerrero.)

In the White House, Miller has gravitated toward his own preferred messages, usually revolving around brutal, fearmongering imagery of dangerous, criminal immigrants. That “gut-punching emotion,” Guerrero writes, “spiraling up from the underbelly of conservative media and a shared obsession with violent fantasies,” is a signature element of Trump and Miller’s worldview.

The mutual reinforcement between Trump World and conservative media is a constant refrain in coverage of this presidency. In Hatemonger, Guerrero makes such connections plain. And so does Miller. After Horowitz congratulated him on Trump’s “ground-breaking” campaign speech, Miller responded: “Thanks! Keep sending ideas.”

Also yesterday, Vanity Fair ran exceprts from Guerrero's book-- He Always Had An Axe To Grind: Howe Stephen Miller Molded The GOP To His Anti-Immigration Agenda. Chillingly, Miller seems to have been right in his belief that "through the force of his own will, he can just change reality." He emulated his favorite movie Mafia figures and has always fancied himself a gangster; no wonder he and Trump have bonded so strongly. But before there was a Trump, there was another racist pig Miller worked for, Jeff Sessions, the KKK senator from Alabama.

Former Senate aides spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation. Two describe him as “vindictive.” One says he was like “an aggressive, nasty street fighter.” “He wants to project that he will do whatever he needs to do-- and that anyone who crosses him will regret it.” Miller showed little interest in working with Democrats or moderate Republicans. “He was a lone wolf.” He told another aide: “You’re not a real Republican.” (Miller did not respond to repeated requests to be interviewed for the book from which this excerpt is adapted.)

Sotomayor was Obama’s first nominee to the court, and the first of Latin American heritage. Miller went to work trying to derail her nomination. Years earlier, Sotomayor had said, “I would hope that a wise Latina with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Sessions grilled her about the comment. “Aren’t you saying you expect your heritage and background to influence your decision-making?” he asked. “You have evidenced a philosophy of the law that suggests that a judge’s background and experiences can and should…impact their decision, which I think goes against the American ideal and oath that a judge takes to be fair to every party.”

Reporter John Stanton was covering Capitol Hill for Roll Call. He recalls getting calls from Miller, pitching him stories about why he thought Sotomayor was not qualified, calling her a “lesbian” or claiming “her position as a Latina woman created conflicts of interest because she would rule with a racial bias.” Stanton thought it was crazy. He says Miller’s comments about Sotomayor were nastier than those he made about men he disparaged. “He always had an axe to grind, particularly against Latina women but Latinos in general,” Stanton says.

Through lengthy press releases and emails, Miller also focused on attacking legislation that sought to assist the marginalized, such as federal spending on food stamps for the poor in 2012. Perhaps he remembered the words in one of his favorite books, The Way Things Ought to Be. “The poor in this country are the biggest piglets at the mother pig and her nipples,” Rush Limbaugh wrote. “The poor feed off of the largesse of this government and they give nothing back. Nothing. They’re the ones who get all the benefits in this country. They’re the ones that are always pandered to.”

Battling programs for the poor, Miller cast Sessions as a champion of the poor. Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler wrote a piece fact-checking a Sessions chart on welfare spending in 2013. The chart claimed the government spends the equivalent of $168 in cash every day for each household in poverty. Kessler concluded that it was “misleading.” He gave Sessions three Pinocchios. Miller contacted Kessler and insisted that he publish a four-paragraph response: “Who watches The Post’s watchman? Your piece is disappointingly anti-intellectual... Unlike your post, our analysis is honest, accurate and, most importantly, a constructive step towards helping those in need.”

Miller knew how to twist arms and wear people down, pressing buttons when they wouldn’t budge. Miller told Stanton, “You have to write a story that favors me because you did a story that helps out those guys.” And he was willing to play dirty if he didn’t get his way, according to Stanton, calling Stanton’s boss to complain about him. “[Miller] has this idea that through the force of his own will, he can just change reality. I hate to say it, but sometimes he has.”

Miller gave his peers headaches as he pushed negative stories about their hard-earned initiatives. One former aide says Miller pitched negative stories to Breitbart about her boss, a senior Republican senator who sought a compromise on immigration. Breitbart accidentally forwarded to her a memo critical of her boss that Miller had leaked. “It was pretty dirty,” she says. “I recall saying this to him once: ‘If illegal immigration is such a big problem, why don’t we do something to solve it?‘” She wondered if he wanted the problem to persist to have it as a wedge issue with which to divide Americans. While she gave presentations at conference meetings, “he’d sit there in the back lurking-- and I just knew he was gonna take whatever I said and go send it to Breitbart.”

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, the Gang of Eight, was fighting to create a comprehensive immigration bill. The coalition included Republican senators Marco Rubio, John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Lindsey Graham, as well as Democratic senators Michael Bennet, Dick Durbin, Robert Menendez, and Chuck Schumer. After the loss of Mitt Romney in 2012, the Republican Party had concluded that it needed to become more inclusive and address the concerns of non-white Americans.

Miller launched a smear campaign against the historic compromise, with Breitbart as his battle tank. He twisted the details to make it sound like a death sentence to America, a mass amnesty that would “decimate” the country and cost trillions in welfare. Miller spread the myth that people who support legalization for migrants belonged to “the donor class.” The Gang of Eight were depicted as corporate agents looking for cheap labor. The narrative ignored and obscured a fundamental fact about legalization: that it legitimizes the workforce, which would require a fairer wage. Sessions said of the bill: “The longer it lays in the sun, the more it smells, as they say about the mackerel.”

Miller became chummy with Ann Coulter as she was working on the draft of her book ¡Adios, America!: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole. They bounced ideas off each other. With Coulter’s help and other combative right-wing personalities, Miller fueled nationwide contempt for migrants and the leaders who sought to compromise on them.

An influx of unaccompanied minors from Central America began to arrive at the border, fleeing gang violence and extreme poverty after decades of U.S. intervention in their countries. On June 5, 2014, Breitbart published photos of Border Patrol facilities overcrowded with the children, feeding the new climate of hostility that Miller had helped create. “This invasion is happening because Obama and his administration sent these ‘foreign invaders’ an open invitation and now Obama expects American citizens to take care of them,” wrote one commenter on the Breitbart website. “They are locusts consuming every thing in their path,” wrote another. “Shove them back over the border, where they belong.”

Miller’s lobbying paid off. The Gang of Eight bill died in the House that summer. The Republican Party, which had been seeking to change course and appeal to more diverse Americans, was forced to adopt Miller’s position.

Trump's Original Suggestions For His Garden Of American Heroes

-by Noah

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the oval office! Fortunately, we at DWT have use of alien tech which enables us to eavesdrop. Imagine our surprise when we went over our recordings and found this oval office dialog. We're proud to publish it as an exclusive. We've identified all of the participants by matching voice prints with known, public statements. Here's a portion. Enjoy!

Kellyanne Conway: Stephen Miller's on the phone for you Mr. President! (Grunt heard) Shall I take that burger tray away?

Traitor Don: Stephen! How was that late night rally you organized in Alabama this weekend? How'd it go?

Stephen Miller: Great attendance, Mr. President. Big numbers and none of that social distancing crap. Although, ha ha, everyone wore a mask, er, hood!

Traitor Don: Heh. Heh. Now that's great to hear. I've got some names for that Garden of American Heroes thing. Tell me what you think. Here goes. Me first. Biggest statue. Lots of hair. Then, I've got George Wallace, Limbaugh, Carlson, James Earl Ray... Vlad wants to be included so he's on. He's almost an American anyway and he's my hero! He has a nice idea for a monument to our partnership. He suggested the Rosenbergs so I've got them too. Not sure who they are but friends of Vlad are friends of mine! I've got Robert E. Lee, and Bull Connor, all four of those Minneapolis cops, real heroes those guys... We should invite them to the convention. They could do reenactments! Wow, wouldn't that be a great idea for a statue? And I see a statue of Wallace standing in a doorway. Conner has a firehose on full! It could be a fountain! With orangey lights! James Earl Ray taking aim! Maybe we could have a kind of booth at my garden where my fans get to shoot at a stand up of MLK on a balcony. My voters would love it. We could even sell red rifles and red bullets with MAGA on them! I've, this'll make you happy too, Stephen, Nathan Bedford Forest. My father told me all about him. He was dad's idol. Maybe we should put my dad on the list. There's no me without him! Lindsey Graham wants to be on the list but I don't know. You know...

Stephen Miller: Yeah, we'll never get the LGBTQ community vote anyway. Who else?

Traitor Don: J. Edgar!

Stephen Miller: No. Uh, a, same as...

Traitor Don: (Sputters) Really? You mean?

Kellyanne Conway: (Laughs) No way!

Traitor Don: But the FBI building is named after him! Damn, maybe that's why... Hey, how 'bout Timothy McVeigh? Now there's a great man who knew how to make a statement. Great ratings!

Stephen Miller: Could be. Something wrong about that place. Is Joe McCarthy on the list?

Traitor Don: Good one, Stephen. That's why I keep you around.

Stephen Miller: Strom Thurmond?

Traitor Don: Wasn't he a Democrat? No Democrats! None!

Stephen Miller: He was but he switched to our side when the Dems went soft on racism in the 60s. Don't worry he was always one of us. You need to add Hiram Wesley Evans, special favorite of mine! We could sell copies of The Rising Storm at the gift shop. And don't forget Q.

Traitor Don: Oh, OK. What about Wernher Von Braun. He was one of Adolf's boys... Space Force! Space Force! Space Force! Yay, Space Force! (Door heard opening and closing) Mikey! Just in time. Space Force! I'm on the phone here with Stephen. We're putting a list of great names for my American Heroes garden. Wernher Von Braun is on it.

Mike Pence: Who?

Traitor Don: Wernher Von Braun. The rocket guy!

Mike Pence: Oooh, I love rocket guys!

Stephen Miller: Get that idiot queer out of your office. He gives me the creeps.

Kellyanne Conway: We could have a Tomb Of The Unknown Anti-Semite.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I don't know about you but I wasn't invited to the wedding of Trump's Directer of Neo-Nazi Outreach Stephen Miller and Mike Pence's Secretary of Bullshit Spinning Katie Waldman. The event was held this past weekend at some dubiously-financed hotel Trump owns. I wonder if the band will ever get paid. Actually, no, i don't wonder at all. Same for whatever suckers catered the food, and, hopefully that wasn't just hamberders and cold fries.

Alas, we have no dirty dancing photos of Trump and his daughter Ivanka, nor can we tell you if Miller had any spray painted hair since he kept his hood on the whole time. However, we at DownWithTyranny are proud to show you this "Official White House Photo" of the wedding. You'll just have to imagine the rest. One thing's for sure, I can't wait until the guest list goes public. I bet it was a Who's Who of Grand Wizards, FOX "News" ass kissers, porn stars, child torturers, Chinese spies and Russian diplomats. I think I heard that Robert Kraft was there but left early to get a hand job in the adjacent massage room. He had to wait. There was a line of Trump donors and republican $enators that extended out the door, down the street and around the corner.

The Trumpist Regime Is Falling Apart. Of Course, It Has Been Since Its First Day

David Nakamura's piece on White House neo-Nazi Stephen Miller, No Consequences For White-Supremicist Ties, in the Washington Post over the Thanksgiving holiday, was a far cry from the OpEd penned by former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer. "In case there were any doubts over his White House standing," wrote Nakamura, "Stephen Miller offered his critics the ultimate power move Tuesday as he boarded Air Force One to accompany President Trump to a campaign rally in South Florida. Miller’s reserved seat was another sign that the White House senior adviser has suffered no internal consequences in the two weeks since a social justice website published a trove of his old emails that showed him promoting political material and talking points linked to white-supremacist groups."

The disclosures in the exposé from the Southern Poverty Law Center have prompted scores of Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups to publicly demand his resignation over what they view as smoking-gun evidence that the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies are rooted in white nationalist ideologies.

But the White House has vigorously defended Miller, one of Trump’s longest-serving and most influential aides, and congressional Republicans are staying mum, signaling that they will not break with the president over the revelations at a time when Trump is eager to demonstrate momentum in stemming illegal immigration.

Navy Secretary-- former Navy Secretary; Trump fired him Sunday-- Richard Spencer wants to share what he learned about working inside the Trumpist Regime. It's been a quandary for me since Trump took over the government how any self-respecting patriotic American could work for him. I spoke with an official at the Department of Justice a few days ago who had called me to get some help on a drug scam that we may all be reading about in a year or two. At the end of our conversation I asked him how he could work for Trump. He said he doesn't. He works for America and the American people.

Spencer served in the Marine Corps from 1976 to 1981 and then worked for a series of banksters, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, A. G. Becker, Paine Webber and Merrill Lynch. Trump appointed him Secretary of the Navy in 2017 and he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on August 1, 2017. Here's his OpEd:

The case of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was charged with multiple war crimes before being convicted of a single lesser charge earlier this year, was troubling enough before things became even more troubling over the past few weeks. The trail of events that led to me being fired as secretary of the Navy is marked with lessons for me and for the nation.

It is highly irregular for a secretary to become deeply involved in most personnel matters. Normally, military justice works best when senior leadership stays far away. A system that prevents command influence is what separates our armed forces from others. Our system of military justice has helped build the world’s most powerful navy; good leaders get promoted, bad ones get moved out, and criminals are punished.

In combat zones, the stakes are even higher. We train our forces to be both disciplined and lethal. We strive to use proportional force, protect civilians and treat detainees fairly. Ethical conduct is what sets our military apart. I have believed that every day since joining the Marine Corps in 1976.

We are effective overseas not because we have the best equipment but because we are professionals. Our troops are held to the highest standards. We expect those who lead our forces to exercise excellent judgment. The soldiers and sailors they lead must be able to count on that.

Earlier this year, Gallagher was formally charged with more than a dozen criminal acts, including premeditated murder, which occurred during his eighth deployment overseas. He was tried in a military court in San Diego and acquitted in July of all charges, except one count of wrongfully posing for photographs with the body of a dead Islamic State fighter. The jury sentenced him to four months, the maximum possible; because he had served that amount of time waiting for trial, he was released.

President Trump involved himself in the case almost from the start. Before the trial began, in March, I received two calls from the president asking me to lift Gallagher’s confinement in a Navy brig; I pushed back twice, because the presiding judge, acting on information about the accused’s conduct, had decided that confinement was important. Eventually, the president ordered me to have him transferred to the equivalent of an enlisted barracks. I came to believe that Trump’s interest in the case stemmed partly from the way the defendant’s lawyers and others had worked to keep it front and center in the media.

After the verdict was delivered, the Navy’s normal process wasn’t finished. Gallagher had voluntarily submitted his request to retire. In his case, there were three questions: Would he be permitted to retire at the rank of chief, which is also known as an E-7? (The jury had said he should be busted to an E-6, a demotion.) The second was: Should he be allowed to leave the service with an “honorable” or “general under honorable” discharge? And a third: Should he be able to keep his Trident pin, the medal all SEALs wear and treasure as members of an elite force?

On Nov. 14, partly because the president had already contacted me twice, I sent him a note asking him not to get involved in these questions. The next day, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone called me and said the president would remain involved. Shortly thereafter, I received a second call from Cipollone, who said the president would order me to restore Gallagher to the rank of chief.

This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review. It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.

Given my desire to resolve a festering issue, I tried to find a way that would prevent the president from further involvement while trying all avenues to get Gallagher’s file in front of a peer-review board. Why? The Naval Special Warfare community owns the Trident pin, not the secretary of the Navy, not the defense secretary, not even the president. If the review board concluded that Gallagher deserved to keep it, so be it.

I also began to work without personally consulting Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper on every step. That was, I see in retrospect, a mistake for which I am solely responsible.

On Nov. 19, I briefed Esper’s chief of staff concerning my plan. I briefed acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney that evening.

The next day, the Navy established a review board to decide the status of Gallagher’s Trident pin. According to long-standing procedure, a group of four senior enlisted SEALs would rule on the question. This was critical: It would be Gallagher’s peers managing their own community. The senior enlisted ranks in our services are the foundation of good order and discipline.

But the question was quickly made moot: On Nov. 21, the president tweeted that Gallagher would be allowed to keep his pin — Trump’s third intervention in the case. I recognized that the tweet revealed the president’s intent. But I did not believe it to be an official order, chiefly because every action taken by the president in the case so far had either been a verbal or written command.

The rest is history. We must now move on and learn from what has transpired. The public should know that we have extensive screening procedures in place to assess the health and well-being of our forces. But we must keep fine-tuning those procedures to prevent a case such as this one from happening again.

More importantly, Americans need to know that 99.9 percent of our uniformed members always have, always are and always will make the right decision. Our allies need to know that we remain a force for good, and to please bear with us as we move through this moment in time.

Extraordinary! What could Trump possibly do without the Stephen Millers of this world-- the Heinrich Himmlers, the Hermann Görings, the Walther Funks, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormanns and, eventually the Speers and Eichmanns... Yesterday, on CNN's Newsroom, ex-Congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA)-- who retired last year in disgust over Trump-- claims that in private, his former colleagues are "'wrestling' with whether it was more important to win their next election or preserve their legacy for years to come... Dent said he would have certainly 'voted for the impeachment inquiry based on the facts as I understand them now' and 'would probably support' the impeachment of Trump." He said Republicans members are basically afraid of the party's base voters but "there’s no question, having spoken to many of them privately, they’re absolutely disgusted and exhausted by the president’s behavior. They resent being put in this position all the time." They'll resent it for more when they lose their seats next November.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

But his emails!!!

Thanks to a new report from The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), it has come out that Trump advisor Stephen Miller has been the man behind a veritable slime trail treasure trove of up to 900 pro-white supremacy and pro-white nationalism emails to Breitbart, a goose-stepping pseudo news organization that serves as a source for FOX "News" goons such as Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, and Sean Hannity, and, is extremely popular among Republican Party members and other Neo-Nazi-affiliated organizations. The emails have been pushing a white nationalist agenda for years and have recently been emanating right out of Stephen Miller's office in the White House. The Philadelphia Inquirer has this to say:

Among the more damning email exchanges highlighted in the SPLC report is one that shows Miller directing a Breitbart reporter to aggregate stories from the white supremacist journal American Renaissance, or "AmRen," for stories that emphasize crimes committed by immigrants and nonwhites. In another, Miller is apparently upset that amazon removed Confederate flag merchandise from its marketplace in the wake of the 2015 Charleston,SC church massacre. Others reportedly show him promoting "The Camp of Saints," a racist French novel popular among white nationalists.

"The Camp of The Saints" is popular among white nationalists such as Miller and his boss if only because it features a lead character who dines on human feces and, also features lots of "brown people" coming to a new country to rape its white women. Sound familiar? To us, the emails seem incriminating and typically downright evil. To Republicans, they are evidence of Miller's "innate righteousness." Current White House Communications Director Stephanie Grisham, aka the new Sarah Huckabee Sanders, apparently agrees, stating, officially, that the well-respected and revered SPLC is "an utterly discredited, long debunked far-left smear organization." In other words, "We don't need your effing facts!" Stephanie Grisham meet Gym Jordan, or Sean Spicer for that matter. Like Miller, Stephanie must have been swell in junior high school; so swell her tiny, childish mind never left.

Some of the emails also give voice to conspiracy material such as the republican favorite known as the "Great Replacement" conspiracy, a hugely paranoid conspiracy that claims there is a plan afoot to replace white people with "brown" people. It's a sister of the "Jews will not replace us" chanting heard so loudly in Charlottesville,VA when the Republican Tiki Torch crowd was protesting the removal of statues that commemorate their beloved southern heritage of slave ownership. The "Great Replacement" conspiracy is a great favorite of "very fine people" everywhere including the most prominent white nationalists on "GOP-TV" and on other alt-right (Nazi) media outlets, and, of course, in the oval office.

Stephen Miller, who was once an aid to Alabama racist Jeff Sessions (former AG, disgraced Senator and soon to be next Senator), is the man who our white nationalist president hired to turn his stable genius hate-filled Neo-Nazi thoughts of national racial purity and sadistic repression into action. Stephen Miller authored the infamous Muslim Ban and he's the architect of policies that took children from the arms of their parents and put them in cages for months and, in an untold number of cases, soon to be years. As if that isn't bad enough, Millers psychotic concepts have even brought about many instances of the Trump government saying they can't tell us, or should I say, don't want to tell us what has become of them. They are "the disappeared." After all, whether or not those stolen babies and children are even still breathing matters not to anyone in the Trump White House. Would it even shock you at this point if at some time in the future it was disclosed that one of Trump's staff or top donors had organized a child-trafficking ring and all those claims about Hillary Clinton running something akin to that out of a pizza shop were projection? A party that is capable of working with Putin and accepts the cash of his Russian mobster teams is capable of any transgression upon human decency. In any event, Stephen Miller, is the epitome of this kind of republican thought. Stephen Miller is the essence of the Republican Party and the Republican Party is Stephen Miller. The two are inseparable in more ways than one.

Of course the fact that Stephen Miller is a white supremacist and proud of it is no shocker. Those who knew him even in his teen years knew what he was. He was malformed early as was his boss.To Trump, what Stephen Miller has always been made him a perfect hire; the "best people" indeed. Fellow racists Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, John Kelly, and others may be gone but you can bet that the Trump White House is still chock full of Nazi true believers brought in by the Trump and Miller himself, often with the nodding smiles and approvals of the republican-controlled $enate. Miller and his emails represent a Republican Party dream come true and it's a dream that 62,000,000 Americans embraced and voted for.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Trump's Lead Racist, Stephen Miller, is getting married! He's getting married to Katie Waldman, aka Mike Pence's Communications Director. It's a real White House romance! I'll just go ahead and assume that the happy couple has already compiled an invite list of "very fine people," registered at various White Supremacy web stores, and is being fitted for his and hers matching "honorary sell-out" KKK sheets and hoods, as are the "Best" Men and Maids of "Honor." As yet, there's no word as to whether or not the wedding ceremony will be officiated by Richard Spencer. Waldman first joined the Trump administration as Deputy Press Secretary for another Nazi wannabe, Kristjen "Cage 'em" Nielsen, the disgraced former Homeland Security head.

God, I hope Miller and Waldman don't breed! Imagine a whole house full of little rambunctious screaming cross burners. OK Stephen. You can now K-K-Kiss the bride. I imagine Waldman finds Miller appealing not just because of his Nazi predilections but because the men Waldman dated before entering into a relationship with Miller must have been a real bunch of winners; probably psychotic asylum escapees and cannibals.

Remember When Kidnapping Was Punishable By Death?

by Noah

The saddest, most horrific and sadistic thing about how Trump and his I.C.E. Gestapo are treating the children they've torn form their families and kidnapped is that they've done it in the first place. They did it to refugee families who ran from certain death and legally presented themselves at our border for asylum. Then kids were taken and deliberately mislabeled as illegal, for propaganda purposes. Trump and his Gestapo lie about it all. They laugh about it. They hope to do more and more of it, egged on by White House staff such as white supremacist Stephen Miller. We're getting more details now and it has become obvious that they wouldn't feel at all guilty if more of the children just plain die. Trump's supporters cheer that sort of thing at their rallies.

We now hear what we always suspected or only had inklings of: The kids sleep on concrete floors with aluminum blankets. They are crammed into cages (The El Paso facility, for one instance, is designed for 125 "prisoners"but, as of this writing is holding 800 stolen children) in such awful numbers that they have to take turns standing on the toilets just to get enough air so that they can go on living. There's no soap, no toothpaste, and no toothbrushes needed diapers, and what food there is is devoid of the nourishment that children need to have if they are to grow, but that's the point of instituting the deprivations of course. This is the stuff of dungeons. Trump Administration lawyer, Sarah Fabian (DOJ), even dismissively said in court that there was nothing "legally" wrong with the unsafe and unsanitary, life-threatening conditions the kidnapped children are being kept in. In fact, that is against the legal policy, if the children are imprisoned for more than 72 hours. That's the way it used to work and was designed to work, going back 22 years now. But notice that with Fabian and those she fronts for, the concepts of human decency and morality never enter into it but I guess that's why she got the job of presenting the Trump Administration's case.




We can, like Trump, point to the House and Senate not granting still more money to throw at the crisis but it is Trump and his white supremacy, xenophobic attitudes that have caused this crisis by deliberately overburdening existing systems. They saw some opportunities that fit their agendas That's a big part of what this sadistic game is to Trump, his republican Gestapo, and their followers. It's enough to put a smile on any republican's fat, ugly face. How many more of these kidnapped children have died that we haven't heard about? We've heard about rapes, too. How many more of those that we'll never hear about? Would you be shocked if pictures are privately couriered out to despicable, detestable scum like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tucker Carlson, Kellyanne, the Huckabees... and key Republican donors, for their own personal gratifications? When people dedicate their lives to spreading as much human misery with their laws and their propaganda as they can, it's easy to imagine them sitting at home at night with a glass of wine and a fresh packet of pictures of the day's goings on in the dungeons. Can you see Don Jr. and Eric joking with Stephen Miller at dinner about building giant roach motels ("They check in but they can't check out, Heh, heh!") for the little brown children? I can. Any open, honest, and reasonable person can.

These children are, by now, permanently damaged, mentally as well as physically. How many will one day soon become terrorists seeking some diabolical revenge upon this country that makes today's world look like Pleasantville by comparison? If any decent and sane government found the children of American parents living in their homes in the conditions of squalor Trump has willfully and sadistically chosen to place these children in, that city, county, or state government would have taken them away from their parents weeks or months ago. Ironic, isn't it?

This horror continues to exist because those in charge A) get off on it, B) are fattening their off shore bank accounts from it, or, C) most likely, both. Think about it: As the meme above shows, for the same amount of money we, as taxpayers, are spending to maintain this horror, Trump and his Gestapo could be housing each child in a comfortable, to say the least, $775 per night hotel room (Not in a Trump hotel though. Certainly not!). But I suppose republicans would loudly bellyache about that being some kind of socialism. No, better that socialism go to your friends and fellow fiends that can enjoy torturing people for fun and profit in their for profit prison facilities. That's kind of a big part of the Republican Party platform anyway.

After, World War II, many "good" Germans claimed to have not known what was going on right on the outskirts of their own towns. Now in 2019, none of us have that excuse, as implausible as it was back then. What's our excuse? We have our TVs and our social media but we use those things to watch mindless idiocy like the Kardashians, moronic shows like Naked and Afraid, and cats that can play the piano, instead of, at the least, demonstrating in the streets with our neighbors against people who are the worst mankind has to offer.

What is going on in our names, with our money, should be cause for impeachment and conviction and removal from office all by itself. Kidnapping is supposed to be a capital crime, not a capitol crime. We don't need the treason, the corruption, the obstruction, the lies, and everything else. "High Crimes And Misdemeanors" are what we the people say they are but only if we speak loudly enough and hold a big enough axe over the heads of our so-called leaders. We can start by burning down the phone lines in Washington from overuse, finding the local offices of our so-called representatives and acting accordingly, and shouting down the Trumps, Grahams, McConnells, Nadlers, Seans, and Nancys, shouting louder than such old, fat, and useless asswipes could ever do. Until then, this country will deserve whatever terrorism those children have in mind for us. It's coming.

A first hand report, via PBS, can be seen in the following clip:

A Handful Of Congressional Republicans Are Wondering If The Nazification Of U.S. Immigration Policy Will Hurt Them At The Polls Again

Monday evening there were a slew of reports that Capitol Hill Republicans were freaking out over the Trump-ordered mayhem at the Department of Homeland Security. And, believe me, virtually no one in Congress other than Steve King (R-IA) was excited to hear that the White House's pet neo-Nazi, Steve Miller, had been unleashed with full authority to reimplement his reviled "zero tolerance" agenda. What comes after babies in cages? Babies in gas chambers? Republican senators are grumbling that Miller was never nominated, investigated or confirmed for anything and that he's running the whole show. Trump breaking the law himself by explicitly instructing border agents to just ignore the law and defy the courts, isn't helping either. "If judges give you trouble, say, 'Sorry, judge, I can’t do it. We don’t have the room.'"

The Washington Post's Seung Min Kim reported that Grassley was raging against Trump, especially when he heard that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee Francis Cissna was on Miller's purge list. By Tuesday morning the NY Times was blaring that "Trump’s purge of the nation’s top homeland security officials is a sign that he is preparing to unleash an even fiercer assault on immigration, including a possible return of his controversial decision last summer to separate migrant children from their parents... But the longer term effect of the eruption of Oval Office frustration is likely to be a burst of hard-line policies that stand out even in an administration that has pursued an unprecedented series of executive actions and rules changes aimed at reducing legal and illegal immigration into the United States."

Jonathan Swan at Axios had the details for Republicans already on slow burn, reporting that "Trump has directed top officials to execute the most aggressive changes in immigration policy since his inauguration… Some officials consider the moves legally and politically dubious." Executive orders are aimed at making it "more difficult for people to invoke their fear of returning to their home country in order to seek asylum in the U.S.," largely by pretending the Orwellian fascist dictatorships in the U.S. protectorates in Central America are lovely places for people to live. Trump and Miller want to "change rules to allow the government to detain migrant children for longer than the 20-day limit allowed under the so-called Flores agreement... Sources close to Nielsen tell us that Trump and senior policy adviser Stephen Miller have called for changes that are legally dubious and would therefore be operationally ineffective."

• Nielsen has found Trump's demands unreasonable, and he has privately described her as "weak on the border," even though she oversaw actions that many viewed as the most brutal in recent memory-- such as the "zero tolerance" policy that separated migrant parents from their children.
• These sources say that Trump’s desire to make it dramatically harder for people to seek asylum in the U.S. wouldn’t produce lasting changes because they would immediately lead to court challenges. 

Is this going to have any impact at the polls? In other words, will the evangelical base still loyal to Trump continue to be fine with what his regime is doing refugee and immigrant families? Team Politico reports that even some of Trump's congressional allies are starting to worry. Senators are "urging him not to fire more top officials and warning him how hard it will be to solve twin crises at the border and the federal agencies overseeing immigration policy." And they're worried that Miller has taken over. John Bresnahan wrote that after November elections in which suburban voters rejected Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda, the president is once again making it the centerpiece of the GOP’s platform.

Texas Senator Cornyn, McTurtle's top deputy told Politico he has "no idea what Miller’s agenda is in determining immigration policy because he isn’t Senate-confirmed and doesn’t correspond with the Hill."

Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the most senior GOP senator, is trying to head off even more dismissals as Trump tries to reshape DHS into a “tougher” mold.

In an interview, Grassley expressed concern that Trump may soon boot U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Lee Francis Cissna and Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, who heads the office of policy and strategy at USCIS.

“I heard that they are on the list to be fired,” Grassley said. “They are doing in an intellectual-like way what the president wants to accomplish. So no, they should not go.”

Republicans empathize with Trump’s frustrations over the border and Congress’ languid pace at changing immigration laws. They mostly backed him on his 35-day government shutdown over the border wall, buckling only as the standoff dragged into its second month.

Most of them hated his emergency declaration on the southern border, but only 25 GOP lawmakers between the two chambers ended up bucking him. And when Trump and Miller sought to tank an immigration compromise last year, Senate Republicans overwhelmingly sided with the president and left Democrats holding the bag on the legislative collapse.

But on immigration, the party is not in lockstep with Trump. So even as the president pursues more aggressive strategies on the border, the GOP might not stick with him ahead of an election cycle that has the Senate up for grabs and with Republicans eager to take back the House.

“He thinks it’s a winning issue,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican whip. “It works for him. It may not work for everybody else.”

...Centrist GOP Rep. Will Hurd, who narrowly won reelection in 2018, said the turnover in the upper ranks of DHS isn’t helpful during a critical time at the southern border, though the Texan expressed confidence in Nielsen’s successor.

“When you’re dealing with something that’s the worst we’ve seen in 12, 13 years, having to deal with that problem and having new people come in and deal with it is always tricky,” said Hurd, whose district stretches along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Moderate GOP Rep. Tom Reed of New York said he would prefer to focus on issues like infrastructure, drug pricing and health care in the 2020 election cycle, saying the issue of immigration is being kept alive “for political purposes.”

Reed also took a veiled shot at Miller: “One hard-liner is not going to dictate the outcome of this.”

But Miller’s rise in the Trump administration is merely one more indication of how the president gravitates toward the restrictionist wing of his party.

“The president is really unhappy with the results and he’s trying to find a different formula that produces a different result,” said Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 4 Senate GOP leader. “Unless you either change the court directives or the asylum law, it’s very hard to quickly come up with a solution. And the president’s frustrated by that.”

The problem for Trump is that that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Congress’ dithering on immigration in the six years since the Senate passed its “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration bill, which died in the House, is no surprise.

Republicans have been signaling to Trump that with the election coming up so soon, they're not going to be able to confirm any more hard core neo-Nazis he sends over the the Hill. Xenophobic extremist Kris Kobach has been widely rumored to be the top choice of fellow-fascist Stephen Miller to replace Nielsen or one of her fired-- or soon-to-be fired-- lieutenants. Yesterday, the Kansas City Star reported that Kansas' retiring senior senator, Pat Roberts, warned, dramatically, "Don’t go there. We can’t confirm him."