wow, Bess Levin /VF: "Given his status as one of the most evil people to have worked for Donald Trump .." -- (edited)
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mud
Jun 27 '23, 15:38
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Trump Administration Angel of Darkness Stephen Miller Allegedly Wanted to Bomb Migrant Boats: Report
Given his status as one of the most evil people to have worked for Donald Trump, this should not come as a surprise.
BY BESS LEVIN
JUNE 27, 2023
f you haven’t fully repressed any and all memories of the years between 2017 and 2021, you likely know that the Trump administration was stuffed to the gills with evil people willing to do evil things on behalf of a very evil man. That can make it pretty difficult to come up with, like, a definitive ranking of the most evil people who worked for Donald Trump, but one person who would unquestionably be near the very top of the list is longtime adviser Stephen Miller.
As a reminder, Miller:
Was the architect of the Trump administration’s family-separation plan
Oversaw a program in which literal infants were taken from their parents, a policy the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics said amounted to “government-sanctioned child abuse”
Was said to “actually enjoy” seeing photos of families being separated at the border
Was reportedly behind the White House’s decision to stop the Justice Department from striking a deal to pay for mental health services for the migrant families the Trump administration had separated, many of which included children who believed their parents had “deliberately abandoned them”
Is to thank for the fact that, as of December 2022, 120 children separated from their families under Trump had yet to be reunited with their parents
All of which is to say, a new report detailing Miller’s alleged desire to bomb boats filled with migrants is not at all hard to believe.
Per Rolling Stone:
Stephen Miller, one of Donald Trump’s top immigration advisers, advocated using US predator drones in 2018 to blow up migrant boats full of unarmed civilians, according to an upcoming book by a former administration official. In a passage reviewed by Rolling Stone, former Trump Department of Homeland Security appointee Miles Taylor writes about an April 2018 conversation in which Miller allegedly advocated an attack on a migrant ship headed for the United States. Miller, Taylor writes, argued for the potential mass killing of civilians by suggesting they were not protected under the US Constitution because they were in international waters.
Taylor is the writer behind the infamous “Anonymous” New York Times op-ed that set off a furious hunt for the turncoat in the halls of Trump’s administration. After leaving the administration, Taylor endorsed Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election, and later revealed himself to be “Anonymous.”
According to Taylor’s new book, Blowback, in 2018, Miller asked Paul Zukunft, a since retired admiral who at the time was the commandant of the US Coast Guard, “Why…can’t we use a Predator drone to obliterate” a boat full of migrants? Per Taylor, Zukunft responded, “Because, Stephen, it would be against international law.” Miller, according to Blowback, continued to press his case:
[The] United States launched air strikes on terrorists in disputed areas all the time, Miller said, or retaliated against pirates commandeering ships off the coast of Somalia. The Coast Guard chief calmly explained the difference. America attacked enemy forces when they were armed and posed an imminent threat. Seafaring migrants were generally unarmed civilians. They quarreled for a few minutes. Stephen wasn’t interested in the moral conflict of drone-bombing migrants. He wanted to know whether anyone could stop America from doing it.
In a statement, a spokesman for Miller told Rolling Stone, “This is a complete fiction that exists only in the mind of Miles Taylor, desperate to stay relevant by fabricating material for his new book.” Zukunft told the outlet he had “no recollection” of the exchange as recounted the book. Rolling Stone says it “reviewed written documentation from during the Trump administration that supports Taylor’s claim.” According to reporters Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, “multiple people intimately familiar with the matter say that Miller, [and] other anti-immigration hard-liners of his stripe, are…on the short list for [Trump] administration posts should the twice-impeached, twice-indicted former president retake the White House.”
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