Stephen Miller is deputy chief of staff in Trump’s White House and the man responsible for many of the worst excesses being promulgated by presidential Executive Orders, the power behind the throne. In fact, I am pretty sure that Trump doesn’t actually read and certainly doesn’t understand what he’s signing. They are simply props in the theatre that allow him to be the centre of attention, the same position he has craved for decades. Miller writes, or has the EOs legally written, and simply gives Trump a quick verbal summary before placing the folder in front of the president so he can add his signature in his usual thick marker pen. And that’s it.
Miller even looks the part, the heavily lidded eyes and cruel mouth are the giveaway.
Miller's latest media feather-ruffling activity is to claim the administration is looking at suspending habeous corpus, the fundamental legal doctrine that underpins western liberal democracies and allows people detained by the authorities to be brought before a judge to determine if their detention is lawful or not. Lawyers can apply to a court for a writ of habeous corpus, known as the ‘great writ,’ forcing a government to bring the detainee in front of a properly constituted court.
It was expressly designed originally to limit the power of a king, but nowadays is there to prevent governments from summarily jailing their opponents.
This is Miller speaking to reporters outside the White House last Friday:
I think he and Trump are angry that judges are regularly issuing temporary restraining orders against the EOs that Miller has drawn up, or ordering the immediate release of people wrongly detained. The first of these poor unfortunates was Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student legally residing in the USA and studying at Tuft's University just outside Boston, Massachusets.
She co-wrote an editorial in a student newspaper a year ago, criticising her university for its response to the genocide in Gaza. That was her 'crime.' A judge decided it wasn't a crime and ordered her immediate release.
"Lower level judges should not be dictating the foreign policy of the United States," said WH press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Miller called the ruling a "judicial coup by a handful of Marxist judges" and added, "We cannot individually litigate in court every single visa that we want to revoke."
The Department of Homeland Security shared a statement in response that didn't mention Ozturk directly: "Visas provided to foreign students to live and study in the United States are a privilege not a right. The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law and common sense to our immigration system, and will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of aliens who have no right to be in this country."
Trump and his mad appointees actually believe that his election victory last year gives him the right to not just make laws, but to decide what the laws mean at any given point. Read this, a typical 'truth' from a very dangerous and deranged man:
Note the: "I was elected in a landslide, won ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, 312 Electoral College Votes, Won 2750 to 525 Districts, and easily won the Popular Vote. I must be allowed to do the job that I was elected to do. If not, we won’t have a Country anymore. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"
Never mind what the Constitution says, I must be allowed to do what I think the voters who elected me want. This is a recipe for tyranny over minorities. If Harris had won and unleashed the state against Trump without 'due process' Trump would be the first and the loudest to complain. Trump has used the law countless times and spent millions and millions of dollars on expensive lawyers, even in hopeless cases, to obstruct and delay legal proceedings against him using the most spurious arguments.
He is perhaps THE foremost litigant in US history and has never AFAIK actually given evidence in court. Yet he would deny the same legal right to his fellow citizens, as required by the very same Constitution that he has sworn to uphold. It is sheer hypocrisy.
And now read this, from Miller:
This is right out of the Nazi playbook, deliberately accusing your opponents of the crimes that you are committing.
The real problems may come down the line, when men and women like Miller, who have actually done things they know are wrong, face an election they could and probably would lose. The prospect of facing legal consequences will begin to figure prominently in their thinking. The old "I was only following orders" defence from the Nuremberg trials isn't going to work and they know it.
Many Democrats will be arguing loudly for the worst offenders to face justice. Are they going to voluntarily give up power under those conditions? I suspect not. This is why despots and autocrats don't like to release their hold on the levers of government. The greater the excesses committed, the less likely they are to accept the will of the people in a free and fair election.
American democracy will soon be tested like never before.
The latest bit of open corruption is Trump's plan to accept a $400 million Boeing 747 from Qatar, use it temporarily as Ait Force One, before transferring it to himself when he steps down from office:
I honestly think Trump doesn't understand the Constitution, the law, or what corruption is. He thinks he deserves it all, like Nicolae Ceaușescu, the last president of Romania who was executed by firing squad on Christmas day 1989.
A fitting end you might think.
