The real takeaway from this bizarre new Stephen Miller story

| 10:26 am EDT September 19, 2019
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This morning the name “Stephen Miller” and the phrase “Dating Stephen Miller” began trending atop Twitter, after the news broke that Mike Pence hired a woman named Katie Waldman, who is indeed dating Stephen Miller. Considering the widespread feelings of disgust toward Miller due to his evil treatment of immigrants, and his obnoxious behavior on television, the sheer ick factor of someone dating him was enough to spawn a thousand eye roll tweets. But there’s an important takeaway here that has nothing to do with Miller’s personal life.

Last week we documented that things were rapidly falling apart between Donald Trump and Mike Pence. There was the Pence stay at a Trump resort, which steered the media toward exposing Trump’s much larger grift of having the Air Force stay at his resorts. There was the leak, likely from Trump, that Trump and Pence had been feuding over whether Pence will run in 2024. Then there was the leak, likely from Pence, that he and Bolton opposed Trump’s Camp David Taliban plan. There was Trump’s subsequent firing of Bolton, presumably only because he’s not allowed to fir Pence.

It was all seemingly adding up to Donald Trump trying to dump Mike Pence from the 2020 ticket. That specter was compounded by a tweet that Nikki Haley posted somewhere in there, in which she decried the rumors about her replacing Pence on the ticket, despite the general lack of such rumors at the time.

Now we’ve got Mike Pence suddenly hiring Stephen Miller’s girlfriend to be his new press secretary. We have no idea if Katie Waldman is qualified for the job. But considering the corruption, nepotism, and sexism of the Trump regime, her competence surely wasn’t a factor in her hiring. Pence hired Miller’s girlfriend because he’s trying to kiss up to Miller, the one adviser Trump seems to still listen to. This is just Pence trying to get back into Trump’s good graces. It’s also yet another reminder of how much control Miller has over the Trump White House.