Still in the White House

[Trump adviser Stephen] Miller has rocketed to the upper reaches of White House influence along a distinctly Trumpian arc — powered by a hyper-fluency in the politics of grievance, a gift for nationalist button-pushing after years on the Republican fringe and a long history of being underestimated by liberal forces who dismissed him as a sideshow since his youth.

[...]

Mr. Miller has emerged in recent days as the driving force behind the administration’s insistence on a wish list of hard-right proposals as part of any deal with Democrats to protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation. White House demands include a crackdown on unaccompanied children at the border, the construction of a border wall with Mexico and legislation to sharply reduce legal immigration.

[...]

“We have this running joke,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, “that if we were going to get key man’s insurance on anyone, Stephen would top the list.” She was referring to policies that companies take out on their most important employee.

  NYT

But she said it's a joke.

“It does have this tang of the seething id of Santa Monica,” [former felow high school] student, Jake Zambas, said of Mr. Miller’s nativist streak, noting that their high school, like the town, was largely self-segregating. “Everyone here is just a scared white person.”

Which just goes to show, segregation isn't good for anybody.

[In high school, Miller] jumped, uninvited, into the final stretch of a girls’ track meet, apparently intent on proving his athletic supremacy over the opposite sex.

WTF?

(The White House, reaching for exculpatory context, noted that this was a girls’ team from another school, not his own.)

Way to miss the point.

Most memorably, classmates say, Mr. Miller established a reputation for barreling eagerly toward racial tinderboxes, leaving some to wonder whether his words were meant to be menacing or hammy. Jason Islas, who had been friendly with Mr. Miller in middle school, has little doubt.

Shortly before the start of ninth grade, Mr. Islas said, he received a call from Mr. Miller informing him that the two could no longer be friends.

“He gives me this litany of reasons,” Mr. Islas said.

Most were petty, if mean, he recalled: an insult about his social awkwardness, a dig at his acne-specked face. But one stuck out.

“He mentioned my Latino heritage as one of the reasons,” Mr. Islas said.

[...]

Several students said Mr. Miller’s trail of racially tinged comments amounted to a pattern. He railed against bilingual announcements, asking in a local editorial why there were “usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school.”

So, yes. Stephen Miller was always a jerk. Aren't they all?

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, called Mr. Islas’s account “a completely inaccurate characterization of their relationship, or lack thereof,” disputing his recollection and suggesting the two were more acquaintances than friends. (Mr. Miller declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Case in point. What the hell does Sarah Fuckabee Sanders know about it?

“Confrontation was his sort of modus operandi,” said Mr. Rosmarin, the former Santa Monica high school newspaper editor, who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union. “I think it’s why he came to school in the morning.”

[...]

Mr. Miller’s defenders have argued that Mr. Miller’s high school persona — more merry prankster than fearsome bomb thrower, in their view — should not diminish the seriousness of his beliefs.

I think it positively underscores them. ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.