Ocasio-Cortez and Omar call on Stephen Miller to resign after top Trump aide exposed as ‘Bonafide White Nationalist’
“This type of racism and hatred has no place in our government,” said Omar. “Miller needs to step down. Now.”
Content from CommonDreams.org and SPLCenter.org
In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.
The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump’s presidency. These policies include reportedly setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, an executive order effectively banning immigration from five Muslim-majority countries and a policy of family separation at refugee resettlement facilities that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said is causing “intense trauma” in children.
Hatewatch exposes the racist source material that has influenced Miller’s visions of policy. That source material, as laid out in his emails to Breitbart, includes white nationalist websites, a “white genocide”-themed novel in which Indian men rape white women, xenophobic conspiracy theories and eugenics-era immigration laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in “Mein Kampf.”
Hatewatch reviewed more than 900 previously private emails Miller sent to Breitbart editors from March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016. Miller does not converse along a wide range of topics in the emails. His focus is strikingly narrow – more than 80 percent of the emails Hatewatch reviewed relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration. Hatewatch made multiple attempts to reach the White House for a comment from Miller about the content of his emails but did not receive any reply.
Miller’s perspective on race and immigration across the emails is repetitious. When discussing crime, which he does scores of times, Miller focuses on offenses committed by nonwhites. On immigration, he touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States. Hatewatch was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.
Miller has gained a reputation for attempting to keep his communications secret: The Washington Post reported in August that Miller “rarely puts anything in writing, eschewing email in favor of phone calls.” The Daily Beast noted in July that Miller has recently “cut off regular contact with most of his allies” outside the Trump administration to limit leaks.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar on Tuesday decried racist emails from President Donald Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller published by the Southern Poverty Law Center and called on the White House aide to resign.
“This type of racism and hatred has no place in our government,” Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, said on Twitter. “Miller needs to step down. Now.”
“Stephen Miller, Trump’s architect of mass human rights abuses at the border (including child separation and detention camps with child fatalities) has been exposed as a bonafide white nationalist,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman Democrat from New York. “He’s still at the White House shaping U.S. immigration policy.”
On Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez started a petition to force Miller to resign. In an email to supporters, Ocasio-Cortez called Miller out for his “vile brand of xenophobic hatred.”
“We’re not going to let him do any more damage,” wrote Ocasio-Cortez.
