What I want to do is not to study the most important studies.
The semester-by-tag lab-tabücher soft-behind the internet.
It's a master's real-time.
“I'm saying, you can say that you're a jerk.”
You're a master, right? But you don't understand. Egal, it's a failure for a job. Do you just do it with this story? And if you then work, you'll be able to do it.
- That's right? - Safe. This story is... - You're right. - Now you're a lawyer. - This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic. - This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic. - This is the Daily Blast.
- This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic. - This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic. - This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic. - This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic. - This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. - I'm your host, Greg Sargent. Steven Miller suddenly seems to be in the crosshairs of a lot of leaks. In recent days, we've learned that Donald Trump has come to see mass deportations as a major political liability.
Miller's unhinged conduct internally may have also driven a top official into severe health problems. And Miller appears in a rage over lagging deportation numbers.
“So how is Miller's overall project going right now? What's coming next?”
We think the signs are mixed. It's very plausible that Miller is not coming close to realizing his true designs. So we're parsing through all this with one of our favorite Miller watchers, Chris Newman, counsel for the National Day Labor or Organizing Network. Chris, good to have you on. It's my pleasure. Thanks, Greg. So political had this really striking report, which says that the acting head of ice, Todd Lyons, has been hospitalized at least twice, due to stress-related episodes, turns out a big culprit of this is Steven Miller yelling at Lyons on private conference calls.
Political calls this the latest example of continued infighting over immigration policy. Chris, it looks like there's trouble and fascist paradise, doesn't it? Could you imagine having to do conference calls in zooms with Steven Miller on an ongoing basis and maintain your health and sanity? I mean, I couldn't. And so it's not surprising to hear that Lyons is buckling under the stress here. Anyone who's watched television watch, Steven Miller yell into Sean Hannity's ear, can see how stressful and grading just, you know,
“the sound of his voices. And now imagine having to endure back and forth with them on a daily basis. I guess that's what we're seeing.”
He's really like those old news reels of fascist leaders, ramping at rallies, only 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 sold as strong as anything you can imagine.
And to have to pay to report him, and one of the things that we know from the first term, of course,
on a serious note, is how effective he is at reaching into the bureaucracies across agencies in gaining control and wielding whatever power he's been aerating in the White House. And so he really does tend to torment people who are these kind of mid-level technocracts across agencies. And it is clearly abusive. And there's no question. I mean, people see that the guy is, I mean, he's disturbed.
Truly he's disturbed. You can see, you can see people like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, almost wanting to say, hey, calm down. Take a breath. And for him to kind of vent and exercise whatever frustrations or whatever ailment he has in a workplace, it is truly torturous to even think about. And he reaches across all different agencies of the federal government.
Yes, his manipulation of the bureaucracies of profound point that you raised there, and I want to get back to it. It appears right now that a big source of Stephen Miller's anger is deportations, political reports that Miller yelled at lions over low deportation numbers, and other tactical matters forcing lions to apologize for failing to meet Miller's expectations. Okay, 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 heading 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?
Well, first, let me say that I'm with you.
I tend to try to avoid all the palace intrigue drama, because one of the things that Trump has done is turned our government into a reality TV show. And so I would like to not have to pay attention to the latest rumors from within the White House, but there are ginormous material consequences to the way in which these lunatics will their power, and I actually think that we do need to pay close attention, and I'll share with you, by the way,
“a lesson where I kind of learned this. People might not remember, but there's a magazine or newspaper called The Washington Examiner.”
And 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. And so I was asked about my opinions about it. I was like, "Oh, well, I don't trust necessarily the reporting of this magazine." And anyway, it's gossip within the walls of the palace. And then shortly thereafter, masked men were deployed all around the country to terrorize day laborers at home depots, and this type of reporting had a real impact. And so, you know, we do need to pay attention to it.
And I'm not going to allow false hope to set in, but the fact that there's this kind of leaking going both ways and a kind of crack in a sense, I hope is a good thing. But you could also imagine cutting the other way. You could also imagine Stephen Miller, you know, lashing out in bizarre, you know, maniacal ways. But it is something we have to pay attention to.
The man clearly has an agenda that he's pursuing. And, you know, we have to be attentive to it.
“Well, look, I think you're absolutely right that there are cracks showing.”
There's actually other evidence of this that I want to get to. The thing about these leaks is that a lot of people internally now have their knives out from Miller. The Wall Street Journal had a major piece the other day that really threw Miller under the bus. It reported that Trump is privately telling advisors that he wants a new approach on immigration. He wants people to talk more about going after bad guys,
and not to use the world's mass deportations. Chris, telling the White House Chief of Staff, Suzy Wiles, now sees the deportations as a liability in the midterms. I want to acknowledge a front that Trump's faints of a pivot or 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? I like it because it represents a departure from where things have been in the past. My belief is that Trump himself doesn't give a shit one way or the other. But immigration he never did. He kind of recognized during a kind of call in response during the campaign 2016 that the bill the wall stuff was was useful. And I think he just as easily could have gone the other way if saying past the dream, I got a call in response to could have gone that way.
But he employed Steven Miller and the accommodation was made because Trump continued to kind of gain politically by his scapegoating and demagoguery and his kind of effective, you know, pulling of the levers and dismantling of protections within the federal government. But it does seem that and so as long as Trump was in some ways benefiting or believed to be benefiting. Steven Miller was kind of given the ability to kind of do whatever he wanted in terms of his deranged agenda. And I think now the signs that that accommodation no longer works is potentially hopeful because my sense is if Steven Miller is ejected from the White House, I really do think anything is possible.
In part because I think Trump is in fact so in you know crazy and and I think he is crazy enough to to spin in any direction. And I think that the most destructive single individual in the Trump administration orbit over the last 10 years has been Miller and if he leaves.
“I think that that would be a good thing. 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 Steven Miller a host of the apprentice or is he a guest on the apprentice? Because he was a host where 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? To stay up to date on all the news that you need to know, there's no better place than right here on the DSR network and there's no better way to enjoy the DSR network than by becoming a member.
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Thank you and enjoy the show. I'm Teresa and my experiences in all entrepreneurs started a shopping trip.
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“Yes, I think that is a reasonable way to think about the situation.”
Donald Trump absolutely does believe in all the white nationalist horse shit. He believes in the western civilization stuff. But his commitment to that stuff is kind of skin deep. And I think that's the real essence of this. He likes to talk about shithole countries and abuse Elon 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 Suzy wilds of the world are able to get it through his damn head. That this is just a disaster for them. There is no question at a given point.
Trump or the people around him or certainly, you know, any free thinking to the Suzy but there are any Republicans in the Senate. They're going to want to hit or reset button. And I do think that in some sense, there's a huge country because the reset button now on the war and Iran is beyond their control. You know, it's not like they can just end that. They could potentially eject Miller from from the office. Now, again, I'm not saying that they will or won't do that, but I am saying for sure that that is the thing that we should all be cheering for paying attention to.
And and maybe there might be even interest alignment, you know, because because you things get so bad and Trump says, I got to make a big change here. Well, the biggest possible change in terms of domestic policy would be firing Steven Miller. I agree 100% and by the way, Trump hit a milestone on this in terms of unpopularity. G. Elliot Morris is new poll for his sub stacks, strength and numbers. Finds that with Americans nationally, Trump is now underwater by a couple of points on border security.
We need to make 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 Steven Miller single handedly pissed it all away. Steven Miller is trying to turn every street corner every location in the country into a border zone and the country doesn't like that. People might be willing to stop and wait and line for four hours when crossing back from Tijuana in San Diego.
But no one wants to be pulled off of a bus to be able to, you know, to have to prove their immigration status. And in essence, what Miller has done is through his kind of concocted dystopian, you know, fiction that they lie to the American public and perhaps lie to themselves about, you know, that immigrants are all criminals and so forth. Well, the logic, logical extension of that is that now, you know, your elementary school in your neighborhood is part of the border.
“And I think people are now seeing what, again, that vision looks like in real life and no one likes it.”
Let's step back for a second.
And I think that's the first thing that's been done. But now, house Republicans have rejected the funding that Senate Republicans passed.
House Republicans want to fund all of DHS ice included Chris, I think it's a ...
What's happening there.
It's confusing in part because I can't remember the last time the Democrats have enjoyed a legislative victory on immigration period.
To the extent that 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. Helping one another taking back democracy from the bottom up from the outside in and I'm not going to look into Chuck Schumer's soul in terms of how he's doing his maneuvers.
“But but he's been given power by people on the streets and I think there's an expectation that that that that he use it and I think it's important that we continue to raise expectations on people like Schumer and Jeffries in particular.”
I think that's a really important point and in fact it brings me to the final question here.
If you look at the current situation, big picture and you squint, you can see away 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 and detention. He's still got huge amounts of money available to him and it'll probably keep staffing up ice but the flip side is that the level of public resistance they've run into is truly formidable.
You've got Democrats becoming aware as you so aptly put it that the people are giving them power against Donald Trump and Steven Miller and you know what on some level Trump is not happy with Miller's program.
“I think that's pretty obvious by now by all these leaks and so it's a little hard to tell which way this is going to go. I can see it continuing to go south for them. What's your overall take?”
As long as people keep demonstrating, keep their cameras on and revealing 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 entry but the presence of Miller puts Trump in a kind of inexorable dilemma when it comes to deportations. I don't want a huge total number of deportations of 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 in fact, in trying to do both of those things, ironically they're turning the country against mass deportations.
The numbers are down from the Republican convention when people wear signs and also just importantly, they're undermining the ability to actually have a functioning law enforcement system that doesn't fact prioritize public safety. And I can tell you my own life. I mean, there are people that I know in law enforcement that maybe initially were even Trump voters that are saying, hey, you know what these knuckleheads that ice are giving all of us a bad name. So the people that actually are charged with public safety, you know, 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 in literally in conflict with the goal of community safety. And so I think, you know, the one person who most kind of personifies that inexorable dilemma for or contradiction or everyone to call it for Trump is Steven Miller.”
And you can, you know, there's different ways in which it could maybe arrive at Trump's kind of adult mind, whether it's the kind of political pressure, whether it's another shooting, whether it's another atrocity or whether it's just people being annoyed by ice. Agents at O'Hare airport. And a given point, Trump is going to say the guy who got me into this mess was Steven Miller. Chris Newman, that is really brilliantly put. I've said this before on the show and I'll say it again for Steven 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 reengineering of the country.
That he's so badly crazed. 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 now. Thanks so much. And with the checkout with the world for the best conversion, that's right. The checkout with the world for the best conversion. The legendary checkout from Shopify, just for the shop on your website,
