Calling anyone in the Trump administration, or anyone in the Republican Party for that matter, a “hypocrite,” is pretty redundant. In some ways it has become far too reductive a way of speaking about the craven evil being enacted throughout our country by the current political powers in control of our government. Donald Trump’s cabinet has been a revolving door of con artist opportunists; but dirt bag Stephen Miller and his well-documented hatred of immigrants has remained. It’s been so obvious that the predominantly cowed media has even called out Miller for being a “white nationalist,” a new term used instead of “white supremacist,” in order to make it sound … new.
David S. Glosser is Stephen Miller’s uncle. He’s the brother of Stephen Miller’s mother, Miriam. Glosser wrote a piece in Politico entitled “Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle.” In it, Glosser details the classic American immigrant story of the Wolf-Leib Glosser clan, fleeing eastern Europe during the anti-Jewish pogroms that terrorized and displaced Eastern European Jews during the turn of the 20th century. Wolf-Lieb Glosser arrived at Ellis Island, in New York, January of 1903. One of his sons followed shortly after him. By 1906, the two Glosser men had paid off the passage and debts needed to bring the rest of his immediate family across the ocean to America. Over the next few decades the Glossers became prosperous as merchants, professionals, and all of the other industries you would imagine an upwardly mobile family would branch off into.
Glosser explains that while every immigrant is going to face an uphill battle in a new country, the one thing that his and Stephen Miller’s recent ancestors didn’t have to contend with was becoming an American citizen.
I shudder at the thought of what would have become of the Glossers had the same policies Stephen so coolly espouses— the travel ban, the radical decrease in refugees, the separation of children from their parents, and even talk of limiting citizenship for legal immigrants—been in effect when Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom. The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the “America First” nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees. Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family would likely have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.
No one with any sense of morality wants to be aligned for any reason with Miller. Rabbis and Jewish organizations have very openly distanced themselves from Miller. But Miller has been able to stay relatively under the radar during this administration because there have been a never-ending garbage fire of scandals and incompetence coming out of the White House—and Miller is just a run-of-the-mill racist asshole. These days the Republican Party seems to be made up of about 98 percent racist assholes; and it has become not only the Party’s platform but the only thing resembling a philosophy of how to run our government. Stephen Miller and Donald Trump are still in the White House because they are the best representation of the Republican Party’s values that the Republican Party has to offer the world. Distilled, unclouded, contempt for humanity, coupled with the organizing principal of hate and fear.
