Quite a story

On July 4, David Glosser, the brother of [extremist anti-immigrant Trump adviser Stephen] Miller’s mother, posted a Facebook note announcing the death of his mother, Ruth Glosser, who was Miller’s maternal grandmother:

This morning my mother, Ruth Glosser, died of the late effects of COVID-19 like so many thousands of other people; both young and old. She survived the acute infection but was left with lung and neurological damage that destroyed her will to eat and her ability to breathe well enough to sustain arousal and consciousness. Over an 8-week period she gradually slipped away and died peacefully this morning.

[...]

“She lost the will to eat because of enormous fatigue, enormous confusion, and the loss of her sense of smell and taste, and her lungs continued to deteriorate. Finally, she could not sustain a level of oxygen to remain conscious. In accordance with her living will, the oxygen was withdrawn. She basically fell asleep and died.”

Like many other relatives of COVID-19 patients, Glosser found the hardest part of this loss was that he could not visit her because the facility had gone into lockdown: “We did the best we could with phone calls and the occasional FaceTime. But as time went by, her ability to focus and to breath and talk diminished. I could get only a few words. ‘I love you.’ But there was no chance to hold her hand and help her go out easy.”

  Mother Jones

I'm hearing more and more stories of resulting (likely permanent) neurological effects of Covid-19 infection.

David Glosser is a retired neuropsychologist and passionate Trump critic who has publicly decried Miller for his anti-immigrant policies, and he contends that Trump’s initial “lack of a response” to the coronavirus crisis led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans who might have otherwise survived. In an interview, he says, “With the death of my mother, I’m angry and outraged at [Miller] directly and the administration he has devoted his energy to supporting.”

We feell the same.

In response to a request seeking comment from Miller, a White House spokesperson sent Mother Jones this statement:

This is categorically false, and a disgusting use of so-called journalism when the family deserves privacy to mourn the loss of a loved one. His grandmother did not pass away from COVID. She was diagnosed with COVID in March and passed away in July so that timeline does not add up at all. His grandmother died peacefully in her sleep from old age.

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Responding to the White House statement, [Glosser] writes in an email, “Keeping the tragic facts about COVID deaths of our countrymen and women, young and old, from the American public serves no purpose other than to obscure the need for a coherent national, scientifically based, public health response to save others from this disease. My mother led a long, satisfying, productive life of family and community service. She had nothing to be ashamed of, and concealing her cause of death to offer ‘privacy’ to me, our family, her hundreds of relatives and friends, does nothing to assuage our regret at her loss.”

Moreover, Ruth Glosser’s death certificate—which her son shared with Mother Jones—lists her cause of death as “respiratory arrest” resulting from “COVID-19.”

Informed that Ruth Glosser’s death certificate cited COVID-19, the White House spokesperson replied, “Again, this is categorically false. She had a mile [sic] case of COVID-19 in March. She was never hospitalized and made a full and quick recovery.”

Miller has played a role in the Trump White House’s ineffectual response to the coronavirus crisis. He was credited with helping to write the Oval Office address Trump delivered on March 11 that was widely panned. [...] In the months since, Miller has attempted to exploit the pandemic to implement anti-immigration measures.

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Glosser has long been a foe of the Trump administration and his nephew. Shortly before the 2016 election, in a letter to a Pennsylvanian newspaper, he criticized Miller for engineering Trump’s assault on immigration.

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“I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family’s life in this country. 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 [Glosser] made his desperate bid for freedom” and fled anti-Jewish pogroms for the United States.

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“My nephew and I,” he said, “must both reflect long and hard on one awful truth. If in the early 20th century the USA had built a wall against poor desperate ignorant immigrants of a different religion, like the Glossers, all of us would have gone up the crematoria chimneys with the other six million kinsmen whom we can never know.” He explains that this letter was written at the behest of several family members to disassociate the family from Miller.

I would have done the same.

Glosser describes his nephew as “an ambitious kid” who “for some reason decided to become infatuated with the idea of white supremacy” and who has been obsessed with gaining power and influence. Miller, Glosser maintains, “sees Trump as a useful idiot in his quest to advance his white power agenda…He has been able to use Trump to advance his political vendetta against the world.” Glosser is not surprised that Miller has been part of the Trump administration’s coronavirus failure: “He has no ability to demonstrate empathy.”