Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and since he’s the leader of the country, he had his pick of the nation’s best and brightest to help navigate a difficult time in American history. He chose his son-in-law, the founder of a creepy website, and a millennial who graduated from college. As a college graduate who dabbles in conspiracy and trumpets white nationalism, thirtysomething Stephen Miller was an obvious choice as White House national policy director. Because Stephen Miller is in charge of policy for the entire nation, we now are subjected to his ideas on news programs like George Stephanopoulos’ show, This Week.
On Sunday, George Stephanopoulos asked Miller about Trump’s consistently absurd and unsubstantiated voter fraud claims, particularly that “thousands” of people were bused from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to vote in the November election, which led to Hillary Clinton winning the state and the ousting of incumbent Republican New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte.
Miller spun himself in rhetorical circles citing “academic research” and “an astonishing statistic.” But first, Miller started by hedging, saying: “This morning, on this show, is not the venue for me to lay out all the evidence.” “If this is an issue that interests you, we can talk about it more in the future,” he told Stephanopoulos. The 2007 Duke graduate’s obfuscation and contrived outrage grew, however, and was believable enough, to him, that he managed to wind himself up to the point that he was willing to fight Mike Tyson anywhere, anytime.
“We know for a fact that you have massive numbers of noncitizens registered to vote in this country. Nobody disputes that,” Miller said. “Just for the record you have provided absolutely no evidence,” Stephanopoulos glumly replied. “The White House provided enormous evidence with respect to voter fraud,” Miller shot back.
Miller then took out his retainer*, put it in a napkin, and launched into this reality-bending diatribe on national TV:
George, it is a fact, and you will not deny it, that there are mass numbers of noncitizens in this country who are registered to vote. That is a scandal. We should stop the presses. And as a country we should be aghast about the fact that you have people who have no right to vote in this country, registered to vote, canceling out the vote of lawful citizens of this country. That’s the story we should be talking about. And I’m prepared to go on any show, anywhere, anytime, and repeat it and say the president of the United States is correct 100 percent.
This is what we’re dealing with.
*Metaphorically, not actually.
*Correction, Feb. 12, 2017: This post originally misspelled White House national policy director Stephen Miller’s first name.
