Bob Schwartz

Trump has appointed Stephen Miller his new Chief of Staff. That is all we need to know about Trump’s post-election agenda.

Innocent optimists may have hoped against hope that Trump got a message from the midterm election that would lead to a conciliatory attitude. Most who have observed Trump figured that rather than back down he would double down. That case is now closed.

For me the signal Miller moment comes from the first Trump administration, eight years ago on Rosh Hashanah.

Miller’s former rabbi, the man who presided over his bar mitzvah, excoriated him. The Guardian reported:

The childhood rabbi to Stephen Miller, special adviser to Donald Trump and a key architect of his “zero-tolerance” immigration policies, criticized his former charge on Monday as a purveyor of “negativity, violence, malice and brutality” who had learned nothing from his Jewish spiritual education.

Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels of Beth Shir Shalom, a progressive reform synagogue in the beachside city of Santa Monica where Miller grew up, devoted his sermon marking the Jewish New Year to a striking denunciation of Miller and the now-abandoned policy he championed of separating immigrant families at the border.

“Honestly, Mr Miller, you’ve set back the Jewish contribution to making the world spiritually whole through your arbitrary division of these desperate people,” the rabbi said. “The actions that you now encourage President Trump to take make it obvious to me that you didn’t get my, or our, Jewish message.

“This is the season of apology, and to get to an apology, shame over past actions is necessary. Some shout at others when they are self-righteous enough: you should be ashamed of yourself! That’s not something I would ever shout or demand.” But Comess-Daniels went on to say it was up to Miller to acknowledge his wrongdoing.

In the years since, it appears Miller has not gotten the Jewish message, at least not the message that Rabbi Comess-Daniels was teaching and promoting. It appears he has not been ashamed of himself. It appears he has not apologized.

Which makes him the perfect person to execute the Trump post-election agenda as Chief of Staff. Which he now is.