No tears for Stephen Miller
When America elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in a blowout, it was, in part, a demand for the return of humanity. For years, we have witnessed the Trump regime pursue a reign of inhumane destruction and obstruction while flashing somber, angry visages at the camera, as if they are heartless automatons executing protocols with massive chips on their shoulders.
This week, the human emotions of two Trump loyalists — Mitch McConnell and Stephen Miller — were on rare display. Spontaneous expressions can be powerful statements, such as when President Obama grew teary when speaking frankly about the Sandy Hook massacre. But through these surprising flickers of their humanity, McConnell and Miller ironically only revealed the extent of their souls’ depravity.
McConnell broke down on Wednesday as he praised outgoing Senator Lamar Alexander. As MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell put it, “the tears came from a place we didn’t know tears existed: the eyes of Mitch McConnell.” The fact McConnell openly expressed sadness over his departing colleague and friend is not the problem. It’s what McConnell never cried over that is.
“They were not tears for the 273,823 people in this country who have died from COVID-19… [or] for the 205,733 people infected… in the last day alone,” O’Donnell explained. “They were not tears for the 628 children held in custody at the southern border… [or] for the way Donald Trump disgraced the White House… by reading a 46-minute speech… that was a lie… [or] for Donald Trump’s relentless degrading of democracy.”
As for Stephen Miller, his wife, Katie, who has served as Mike Pence’s communications director for the past year after a stint at Homeland Security as Kirstjen Nielsen‘s deputy press secretary, tweeted this week to announce that the couple just became proud parents. Miller appears without his trademark scowl in a photo with his wife sporting a unified expression of their unbridled “joy beyond measure” over their newborn’s arrival.
What about the hundreds of parents who experienced that same joy only to have their babies ripped from their arms and orphaned by U.S. agents? Stephen Miller was the salivating, evil mastermind behind the Trump administration’s cruel child separation policy. Katie Miller is also a monster, as she revealed in an interview for Separated, NBC’s Jacob Soboroff’s recent book. “My family and colleagues told me that when I have kids I’ll think about the separations differently. But I don’t think so,” she admitted. “DHS sent me to the border to see the separations for myself — to try to make me more compassionate — but it didn’t work.”
People need leaders who have a sincere appreciation of human struggles and can address them without lies, cons, greed, and shameless pandering. McConnell and Miller’s rare emotional displays this week appear genuine—yet they are perversely warped. An administration that exudes bona fide humanity is what America sorely needs, and it’s what we’re going to get on January 20. At long last, the world is about to see the Biden administration make America human again.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month