President Donald Trump is being undermined by his top aide, Stephen Miller, according to two experts fighting to maintain American democracy.
Joshua Kolb and Susan Corke, from State Democracy Defenders Action, penned a column on Monday for MSNBC.com that analyzed the latest polling data, showing a sharp decline in trust and popularity for Trump. They think they know who's impacting the numbers.
One of the biggest Trump scandals involves Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland father mistakenly deported to a notorious El Salvador megaprison. In court, the government admitted that a clerical error led to Ábrego García being sent to the infamous prison.
The Trump administration attempted to defend the flub by releasing an application for a restraining order from four years ago that his wife ultimately never pursued. They also continue to claim that Ábrego García is a member of an international gang.
"One figure seems to have more responsibility than anyone else for this mess: Trump adviser Stephen Miller," wrote Kolb and Corke. "The reprehensible removal of Ábrego García is the natural result of Miller’s attempt to impose his draconian and seemingly unrealistic deportation goals as rapidly as possible, even when it means disregarding or misrepresenting court orders."
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None of the facts were in dispute, the two wrote. It was only when Miller spoke up that questions surfaced.
"He heatedly claimed that Abrego Garcia was neither mistakenly removed from the country nor denied any due process," Kolb and Corke wrote.
Miller claimed Ábrego García "was no longer eligible, under federal law … for any form of immigration relief in the United States" after Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization.
The Supreme Court wrote, “The United States acknowledges that Ábrego García was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal.”
It flies in the face of the statements from the Trump government.
The lawyer at the Justice Department, who admitted to the "error" in deportation, became Miller's scapegoat. Kolb and Corke described DOJ lawyer Erez Reuveni as a 15-year veteran of the immigration division who had been promoted weeks before Miller decided to point a finger at the lawyer.
Now, Reuveni is being called “a saboteur, a Democrat” who “put an incorrect line in a legal filing," according to Miller. Reuveni has since been "relieved" of his duty. The writers noted that Trump's solicitor general, John Sauer, made the same point, although he has not been relieved of duty.
It appears Miller has also been trying to convince the MAGA world, including the president, telling Fox News: “We won the Supreme Court case, clearly, 9-0."
The Supreme Court ruled that the White House must "'facilitate' Ábrego García’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador."
Kolb and Corke wrote that Miller's “brazen misrepresentation” has either been adopted by Trump or believed by Trump, who claimed in a Time magazine interview that he won the case.
Trump told Time: “That’s not what my people told me — they didn’t say it was, they said it was — the nine to nothing was something entirely different.”
All of it is part of Trump's "desperation" to "obscure the reality that Miller and Trump are falling short of their own promises," said Kolb and Corke.
