White House Aide Stephen Miller Denounced by Uncle in Withering Essay

Trump administration officials have faced no shortage of critics in the mainstream media, but seldom have its criticisms come from members of their own families. (Strategist Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George, has repeatedly inveighed against the president but has, to date, spared his wife in his diatribes.) However, such is the fate of White House aide Stephen Miller, whose uncle has penned a withering indictment of his nephew and his sadistic immigration policy.

“Let me tell a story about Stephen Miller and chain migration,” begins David Glosser in Politico. “It begins at the turn of the 20^th century in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl of subsistence farmers in what is now Belarus.”

Glosser then proceeds to trace his family’s history, from its persecution in Eastern Europe to its ascension in the United States—first selling goods from a horse and wagon in the coal town of Johnstown, Pa., and generations later as the owners of a chain of supermarkets and discount department stores. The Glossers’ is a distinctly American story, replete with hardship and discrimination, but one that would have probably been impossible under the kinds of restrictions imposed by the Trump administration.

“I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, who is an educated man and 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,” he writes. “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 [my great-grandfather] Wolf-Leib made his desperate bid for freedom.”

In one of the essay’s more annihilating passages, Glosser all but renounces his sister’s son, questioning how he could align himself with a far right that sought his family’s destruction less than a century ago.

“The Glossers came to the U.S. just a few years before the fear and prejudice of the ‘America First’ nativists of the day closed U.S. borders to Jewish refugees,” he continues. “Had Wolf-Leib waited, his family would likely have been murdered by the Nazis along with all but seven of the 2,000 Jews who remained in Antopol. I would encourage Stephen to ask himself if the chanting, torch-bearing Nazis of Charlottesville, whose support his boss seems to court so cavalierly, do not envision a similar fate for him.”

Glosser is also careful to note the president’s own descendants fled torment in Europe for a better life in the United States. (Donald Trump’s grandfather reportedly evaded conscription in the German army, while his mother’s family sought to escape the destitution of rural Scotland.) Melania Trump’s parents were naturalized just last week, beneficiaries of an immigration mechanism the president aims to deny to thousands upon thousands of would-be Americans.

“No matter what opinion is held about immigration, any government that specifically enacts law or policy on that basis must be recognized as a threat to all of us,” Glosser concludes. “As free Americans, and the descendants of immigrants and refugees, we have the obligation to exercise our conscience by voting for candidates who will stand up for our highest national values and not succumb to our lowest fears.”

Read the essay in its entirety at Politico.