Steve Miller is stealing Trump's Thunder like Bannon and Scaramuchi did before him. I would guess he might be gone soon because he is now called "President Miller" because on immigration Miller IS the president right now because Trump is so wishy washy on the subject on his own. I'm not sure Trump even has Any view on Immigration on his own (other than what he said to people on the stump) which likely doesn't resemble what he actually thinks, if anything.
begin quote from:
Trump takes immigration cues from 'Pres. Stephen Miller' - CNN.com
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/22/opinions/immigration-stephen-miller.../index.html
Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist and CNN political commentator, was a political consultant for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992 and was counselor to Clinton in the White House. He was a consultant to Priorities USA Action, the pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
(CNN)The
government shutdown is over for now. Senate Democrats have agreed to
fund the government. Senate Republicans have said they would give
Democrats a vote to allow Dreamers -- young people brought to this
country as children -- to stay. What remains to be seen is how the
President will handle immigration going forward -- and by "President," I
mean Stephen Miller.
Trump's
32-year old senior policy advisor is getting his 15 minutes of infamy,
infuriating some Republicans nearly as much as Democrats. "As long as
Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating on immigration, we are going
nowhere," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has said.
Donald
Trump ran for president in part on his celebrity status. As star of the
reality TV show "The Apprentice," he appeared on our screens each week
as a strong, certain, determined CEO. Little did we know that, instead
of "The Apprentice," we have been living a very different TV show: the
old Tony Danza sitcom "Who's the Boss?"
The
government shutdown revealed the stunning, almost mutinous dysfunction
of the Trump White House, and the powerlessness and fecklessness of
President Trump to stand up to his own staff. Let's face it: on Donald
Trump's signature issue, Stephen Miller is the boss.
How else can you make sense of Trump's meandering on immigration? In the famous "Chuck and Nancy" dinner in September, he seemed to promise that
he'd support the Dreamers in exchange for more border security. The
morning after that dinner, Trump got on his Twitter machine and gushed
about the Dreamers, writing,
"Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished
young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really! ...
They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their
own -- brought in by parents at young age. Plus BIG border security".
In
a remarkable bipartisan meeting on January 9, the President said he
would sign what Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, called "a clean
DACA bill," which would allow the Dreamers to stay with no strings
attached. After that, he said, we would move to "Phase Two, which would be comprehensive immigration reform. ... But I think we need to do DACA first."
One
can, I suppose, fault Democrats for taking the President at his word.
He is, after all, the Liberace of Lying: fluid, florid, flamboyant. But I
wonder if this is something different than the standard Trump diet of
supersized lies. This looks more like a President not in command of his
own staff.
In that January 9 meeting, President Trump promised to take the heat
and sign a bipartisan immigration reform bill. Acting on his urging,
Senators Graham and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, hammered out a compromise.
At 10:15 a.m. on January 11, Durbin phoned the President and said they
had a deal. He was receptive and invited the senators to brief him.
By
the time Durbin and Graham came to the White House at noon, the
President's tone had changed radically. Surrounded by hardline staffers
like Mr. Miller, and bolstered by anti-immigration Republicans like
Senator Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Virginia, the President launched into
a racist tirade, saying he wanted more immigrants from overwhelmingly
white Norway, rather than black and brown immigrants from "shithole
countries" in Africa, the Caribbean and Central America.
"Every time we have a proposal, it is only yanked back by staff members," Graham said. How
can it be that the President, who ran as a deal-maker, is being
overruled by a young man who seems to want to upend every deal?
The
shutdown has made the President look like an empty suit -- one who can
sit at a conference table in a TV studio or the Cabinet room, but who
ultimately relies on his producers to make the real decisions. In
Hollywood, they call the people who have creative control over a
production "showrunners." In Washington, there is no doubt that it is
Mr. Miller who is really running the show.
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