In “Stephen Miller Can’t Act Alone: The Trump administration’s vicious immigration policies didn’t implement themselves,” New York Times editorial board member Michelle Cottle considers Stephen Miller to be “a man whose anti-immigration zeal remains unfettered by concern for the law, international norms or basic humanity.” She says Miller is “ a figure of singular evil” who is a force for darkness “ but that blaming him for Trump’s cruel nativist immigration policy is “overly simplistic and counterproductive.”
She writes that “society does not fall because of a small coterie of bad actors.”
She continues:
A society does not fall because of a small coterie of bad actors. Widespread rot requires legions of enablers, many of whom are driven by varying blends of personal ambition, ideological expedience and the self-aggrandizing delusion that, through their invaluable counsel, they can save the state from total destruction.
Going on, she names some names:
Advisers like Kellyanne Conway, lawmakers like Senator Lindsey Graham and the former House Speaker Paul Ryan, party apparatchiks like the Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel and a whole host of Trump-friendly media personalities may not personally share the president’s views or policy aims. But their willingness to swallow some of the administration’s cruelest acts renders them complicit. Neither their reputations nor their consciences should be wiped clean.
She is absolutely right.
It may be a Heavin sent blessing that Jarod and Ivanka have a major influence on the president because they are not outright sociopaths. They can at times steer Trump away from acting on his own dark and ultimately self-destructive impulses. However, they do this because they are able to recognize the long term consequences of his hasty bad decisions, especially on his chances of re-election.
Ivanka needs him to be a two-term president so she is able to fulfill her dream of being the first woman president. By the time she runs, if she does, the demographics of the country will have altered so much that she would be unable to win without a good percentage of the minority community vote.
Jarod is no angel. Aside from his cozy relationship with Mohammad bin Salman and unethical if not illegal business practices, he needs Trump to succeed so he can be first husband.