Did anyone in Trump World really think the un-telegenic white nationalist Stephen Miller would do well defending Trump’s racist, anti-American “go back” tweets on Fox News Sunday? Or was there just no one else willing to take on the task?
Whatever the reason Miller was trotted out, host Chris Wallace made Miller look like just the bigoted knee-jerk Trumper he is.
For example, when Miller ridiculously claimed that Trump “has been a president for all Americans,” Wallace immediately cited some of Trump’s racial animosity, directed squarely at America and Americans.
WALLACE: But when he questioned -- and let's -- there's a long record here, when he questioned whether or not Barack Obama was an American citizen, when he said the people, in his announcement, that the Mexico is sending this country are not their best, they are rapists, they are drug dealers and some are good people, when he called for total and complete shutdown of the Muslim ban, something I know you were very involved in -- that's not protecting the American people. That is playing the race card.
[…]
WALLACE: Let's talk about the Obama and the birther. You don't think that questioning whether or not the president of United States, the first black president is an American, you don't think that there's a race quality to that?
Miller never had any good answers. In response to Trump’s birtherism, he cited “questions about John McCain's circumstances of birth.”
Wallace smacked that down.
WALLACE: No, there were never raised questions about John McCain. There are questions about whether he was or born in the Panama Canal or not. There was never a race question about John McCain.
Miller couldn’t defend that, either. So he deflected again, to no better effect.
MILLER: I fundamentally disagree with the view that if you criticize somebody and they happen to be a different color skin, that that makes it racial criticism. In fact, you saw from -- you saw from --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: He wasn't criticizing him. He was questioning whether he is an American.
Later, Wallace played a clip of Trump accusing the four American congresswomen of color, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, collectively known as “The Squad,” of not loving America. Wallace followed it up with a clip showing Trump hating America:
WALLACE: But, during his 2016 campaign, and even as president, Mr. Trump has been as critical of this country as anything "The Squad" has ever said.
Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
TRUMP: I think President Obama has been the most ignorant president in our history.
Nobody respects us. They are laughing at us. We don't know what we're doing.
Rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.
We've got a lot of killers. What, you think our country is so innocent? You think our country is so innocent?
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
“Why is what those congresswomen have said in general any worse than what you just heard Donald Trump say?” Wallace asked Miller.
Miller called it a “great question.” But his answer surely wasn't. “There’s a fundamental distinction between people who think that we need to lean into and strengthen America's core values, whether it'd be our constitutional values, the rule of law, the principles of Western Civilization, or people who think it would basically need to turn America into Venezuela,” he claimed.
Wallace shot that down, too. Noting that The Squad has a Constitutional right to their opinions about policies, he again hammered on Trump’s attacks on the U.S. Miller had yet another inane response:
WALLACE: The president said that President Obama has been the most ignorant president in our history. When asked about Putin, he said, there are a lot of killers, you think our country is so innocent? … That's being sharply critical of the United States, as critical as the four members of Congress -- of "The Squad" have been.
MILLER: What I'm saying is there's -- is there's a canyon-sized difference between saying that we need to have better enforcement of our immigration laws to protect U.S. citizens, that we need to have better trade deals to end the deindustrialization --
It went on and on like this for nearly 13 unfortunate-for-Miller minutes. But the rest of us can enjoy watching him and Trump get their phony-patriot, just deserts below, from the July 21, 2019 Fox News Sunday.
(Transcript excerpts via Fox News)