Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Chris Newman: It’s my pleasure. Thanks, Greg.
Newman: Could you imagine having to do conference calls and Zooms with Stephen Miller on an ongoing basis and maintain your health and sanity? I couldn’t. And so it’s not surprising to hear that Lyons is buckling under the stress here.
Sargent: He’s really like those old newsreels of fascist leaders ranting at rallies, only he’s doing it right on Fox News. I absolutely agree that listening to him on a conference call berate the shit out of you like that would be as soul-destroying as anything you can imagine.
I mean, people see that the guy is disturbed. Truly he’s disturbed. You can see people like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham almost wanting to say, calm down, take a breath. And for him to vent and exercise whatever frustrations—or whatever ailment he has—in a workplace is truly torturous to even think about. And he reaches across all different agencies of the federal government.
Some people inside are disputing that—they’re saying that Miller is merely passionate, not abusive. But you know what, Chris, I’m going to put my money on abusive. Miller and Trump wanted to deport one million people a year, but by a number of different estimates, they clearly fell far short of that number, maybe hitting around 200,000 or 300,000 or thereabouts. Very plainly Miller is not happy about that. Chris, you’re on the front lines of these deportations. What’s your general sense of how close he’s coming to his targets?
People might not remember, but there’s a publication called The Washington Examiner. Last year they reported, as well, a kind of palace intrigue story of Stephen Miller yelling at the top of his lungs, saying the deportation numbers were too low—why are we not sending people to Home Depots to go after day laborers, who are the people that I represent and have represented for 20 years.
But the fact that there’s this kind of leaking going both ways, and a kind of crack in a sense—I hope that’s a good thing. But you could also imagine it cutting the other way. You could also imagine Stephen Miller lashing out in bizarre, maniacal ways. But it is something we have to pay attention to. The man clearly has an agenda that he’s pursuing, and we have to be attentive to it.
Chris, tellingly, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles now sees the deportations as a liability in the midterms. Now, I want to acknowledge up front that Trump’s feints of a pivot are often bullshit, but this time it’s clear that they’ve concluded that Miller’s agenda has become a serious political problem for them. Miller has always believed his fascism would be very popular. So it’s noteworthy that a lot of insiders are letting the world know—and trying to let Trump know—that this is a catastrophe for them. What do you make of that?
But he employed Stephen Miller and an accommodation was made, because Trump continued to kind of gain politically by his scapegoating and demagoguery and his effective pulling of the levers and dismantling of protections within the federal government. And so as long as Trump was in some ways benefiting—or believed to be benefiting—Stephen Miller was kind of given the ability to do whatever he wanted in terms of his deranged agenda.
I mean, in essence—and I know I’m going on here—but in essence, I think the key question that we don’t know the answer to is: is Stephen Miller a host of The Apprentice or is he a guest on The Apprentice? Because if he’s a host, we’re stuck with him for three more years. But if he’s a guest and he gets fired and kicked off the island or whatever, who knows what comes next?
He likes to talk about shithole countries and abuse Ilhan Omar to the degree that he can kind of get his racist rocks off in public and shit on other people who he hates. But he doesn’t have the profound ideological commitment to this that Miller does. And so one has to at least hope that the Susie Wileses of the world are able to get it through his damn head that this is just a disaster for them.
Now, I’m not saying that they will or won’t do that, but I am saying for sure that is the thing that we should all be cheering for and paying attention to. And maybe there might even be interest alignment, because things get so bad that Trump says, hey, I’ve got to make a big change here. Well, the biggest possible change in terms of domestic policy would be firing Stephen Miller.
We need to make a critical distinction here. Trump has been underwater badly on the immigration issue broadly for much of the last year, but he’s always remained positive on border security as distinct from immigration more generally. Now that’s changed as well. That means every last bit of his advantage on this issue is just gone. Stephen Miller single-handedly pissed it all away.
Sargent: Let’s step back for a sec. As of now, MAGA and the Republican Party are in chaos over funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Senate Democrats stayed united and forced Republicans to agree to fund other functions of DHS without anything for ICE. Democrats wanted reforms and restrictions and they stayed together.
Newman: It’s confusing in part because I can’t remember the last time Democrats have enjoyed a legislative victory on immigration—period. To the extent that Democrats are uniting, or to the extent that they are exercising power and turning the tide, it’s power that’s being given to them from people on the streets. And it started right in my hometown of Los Angeles, went to Chicago, went to Minneapolis. And there is a power that is being generated by people going out, helping one another, taking back democracy from the bottom up, from the outside in.
Sargent: I think that’s a really important point. And in fact, that brings me to the final question here. If you look at the current situation, big picture, and you squint—you can see a way that Miller might be able to get a whole lot more deportations in the next year. He seems to be securing a whole new system of prison camps, enormous warehouses, which would allow him to massively increase the numbers in detention. He’s still got huge amounts of money available to him and he’ll probably keep staffing up ICE. But the flip side is that the level of public resistance they’ve run into is truly formidable.
Newman: As long as people keep demonstrating, keep their cameras on, and reveal all the terrible things that ICE is doing, I think things will continue to go our way. Because we can speculate all we want about the palace intrigue, but the presence of Miller puts Trump in a kind of inexorable dilemma when it comes to deportations. They want a huge total number of deportations—mass deportations, right? But they also want to be able to say that they are prioritizing getting the so-called worst of the worst. They cannot do both of those things at the same time.
And so the people that actually are charged with public safety—police, sheriffs around the country—and people who are not necessarily totally committed to an ideological project, but are more committed to kind of just getting through every day and keeping their community safe, are starting themselves to see how ICE is in conflict. The expansion of ICE is literally in conflict with the goal of community safety.
Sargent: Chris Newman, that is really brilliantly put. I’ve said this before on the show and I’ll say it again—for Stephen Miller, he has to prioritize removing the non-criminals over going after the criminals, because it’s the only way to get the numbers he needs to do the ethnic re-engineering of the country that he so badly craves. And that works against Donald Trump. That is the basic essence of this that you captured so well. Chris Newman, awesome to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.
Newman: Thanks so much.
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