Trump Throws Stephen Miller Under the Bus in Surprise Show of Panic

On the surface, Trump wants less attention paid to mass deportations. Meanwhile, Miller is taking new and hidden steps to wreak havoc in the lives of undocumented children and their families.

Has Donald Trump finally figured out that Stephen Miller’s fascist cruelties have become a niggling political liability for him? Well, maybe. A striking report in The Wall Street Journal suggests Trump may be moving to marginalize Miller’s influence. But Trump appears to think the difficulty can be cured by a few optical tweaks, when the real culprit is a deeper ideological one.

Trump wants to “lower the profile of his mass deportation effort,” the Journal reveals. He wants voters to think the targets of these deportations are “bad guys,” not noncriminal undocumented residents. He wants less visibility for ICE raids in cities, fewer public confrontations with local officials, and less public talk about “mass deportations,” which, he now grasps, are hideously unpopular.

Tellingly, White House chief of staff Suzie Wiles now sees deportations as a liability for the midterms, per the report. That Trump is siding with her on the politics here is a sign of political panic and a rebuke to Miller, who apparently delights in flaunting the administration’s vicious sadism and overt white nationalism—and seems certain that latent majorities are quietly cheering along.

To be clear, this report deserves serious skepticism. It very much bears watching whether ICE will actually end up deprioritizing the removal of noncriminal immigrants. Trump mostly wants the appearance of a pivot: According to the Journal, he wants a focus on “criminals” in GOP “messaging.”

But recalibrating the “messaging” won’t address the public’s broad rejection of Trumpism’s deeper anti-immigrant project. And all signs are that this project is fully forging ahead.

Case in point: Miller just met........

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