Donald Trump's "senior advisors": racists, do-nothings and liars

Donald Trump’s so-called “senior advisors” are either “all in the family”—meaning their “loyalty” is taken for granted—or hold views that are so extreme that Trump doesn’t have to concern himself with hearing things he doesn’t want to hear, save on those occasions when his own views are even more extreme and defeat his own purposes. In the latter group of course is Stephen Miller, who has no qualifications to be a “senior advisor” save for his dependably racist and white nationalist views, views welcomed not just by Trump but by Miller’s former boss Jeff Sessions, who repeatedly blocked bi-partisan immigration reform as a U.S. senator. Why people like Miller hate Hispanics goes well beyond the “illegal alien” trope, since Hispanic illegal immigration has either stagnated or actually decreased in recent years, while that from Asia has been growing by leaps and bounds (from India alone, the number has risen from an estimated 28,000 in 1990 to at least a half-million today), yet the likes of Miller do not seem to be concerned about those people.

Miller’s anti-Hispanic attitude seems to stem largely because he simply doesn’t like them around; he once called a high school classmate to say that they couldn’t be “friends” anymore because he was “Mexican,” and he once ran for class president on the “platform” of rescinding a school policy that students refrain from throwing garbage on the floor; Miller insisted that it was the “Mexicans” job to clean-up after lazy white litterbugs like himself. Let’s not forget that Sessions “loaned” Miller to Trump’s campaign while Miller was engaging in his Breitbart propaganda campaign to smear Hispanics. Knowing Trump doesn’t like to read, it is very likely he kicked-off his presidential campaign targeting Hispanics with ugly stereotypes (illegal immigration is only a cover for the wider “campaign”) on the “advice” of Miller.

Miller is one kind of “senior advisor.” The other is the kind with the “family” connection, like Jared Kushner. Kushner is an “advisor’ with no qualifications and nothing to show for his “senior” position. He initially was given a portfolio of “responsibilities” that even qualified advisors with long records of public service would find challenging, but for someone with no experience save for being a businessman of no particular note it was clearly just a matter of “loyalty.” Kushner was among other things Trump’s “point man” in the Middle East, smoothing things over with the Saudi crown prince after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and then he was supposed to concoct a “peace plan” that was never taken seriously for a minute by any party. Today, Trump’s Middle East policy is in a shambles, no thanks to his inexperienced and unqualified “senior advisor.” Kushner is currently “in charge” of Trump’s wall-building project, which at this point he does more “overseeing” than actual work.

But Miller and Kushner are not Trump’s most trusted “senior advisor”; that would be his daughter, Ivanka, who dotes on daddy and apparently is “flattered” by his suggestions of incestuous lust. What exactly she “advises” daddy on is not precisely clear, since although she claims to have a similarly large “portfolio” as husband Jared, the only policy initiative that can be said to have been “influenced” by either she or her husband to date was convincing daddy to sign-off on an executive order barring anti-Semitic “free speech” on college campuses, saying nothing about racist, white nationalist speakers being invited by “conservative” student groups. Kushner, who is Jewish, and Ivanka, who is converted Jewish, both stood beaming behind daddy as he put his illiterate scrawl on the order. I hate to beat a dead horse, but we have to remember that it is a man of the Jewish persuasion (Miller) who is facilitating the caging of children in concentration camps. Given past history, the fact that a man of the Jewish faith is doing this makes the word “irony” unsuitable to even describe it. Miller’s desire to stop not just all immigration from what he would call “shithole” countries, but to find ways to deport legal residents and even naturalized U.S. citizens recalls pre-war Nazi Germany, and somehow the term “exterminate” in regard to halting all Hispanic immigration seems an appropriate descriptor. While I commend the Jewish liberal organization The Forward for calling out those who would accuse Miller’s detractors as “anti-Semitic,” the fact is that Miller isn’t going anywhere as long as Trump is in office.

What does “senior advisor” and mother herself Ivanka have to say about this? I mean, it isn’t like she and hubby don’t talk about caging children, since he is in charge of (or rather, “oversees”) the building of the “wall.” But apparently this is one thing that Ivanka doesn’t bother daddy about. While Newsweek was pointing out that Ivanka’s “accomplishments” are more fog than fire—including the phony claim that she was “responsible” for creating all the 6 million new jobs in this country since Trump took office (plus another 8 million or so that can’t be accounted for), on Face the Nation she defended herself by claiming that putting children in cages was not part of her “portfolio.” This was not a “new” excuse, either; back in July, she made the bizarre claim to the panelists on The View that in regard to this, she was not the “president of all women’s issues.”

Not long after Trump’s election, John Oliver did a Last Week Tonight exposé warning people that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump would not be the “moderating” influences on Trump’s far-right agenda that they’d hoped they would be, and this has clearly been the case even in regard to a DACA compromise. Ivanka has been allowed by the media to claim that she “opposes” the child separation policy, but this is clearly a lie. How do we know this is a lie? This is what she went on to say in her Face the Nation interview:

 

I think everyone should be engaged. And the full force of the U.S. government is... is committed to this effort to border security, to protecting the most vulnerable. That includes those being trafficked across our border, which this president has committed to countering and combating human trafficking in an incredibly comprehensive, aggressive way.

This is precisely the hypocritical talking point that the Trump administration has been using to “justify” family separation and caging children in concentration camps. Children being brought into the country with their parents are being “trafficked,” and putting them in cages is “protecting the vulnerable.” Ivanka in fact supports separating and caging children in concentration camps. Caging children is what the Trump administration via Ivanka Trump’s own mouth is calling “countering and combating human trafficking.” These children are trying to escape to a better future like all immigrants to the U.S., but according to Ivanka doublespeak, they are just being “trafficked” across the border.

These are Trump’s “senior advisors”: racists, do-nothings and liars. And we are supposed to be “surprised” by the crimes of this administration?