Hatemonger Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the white nationalist agenda

Journalist Guerrero (Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir) underwhelms in this outraged biography of the Trump administration senior policy adviser Stephen Miller. Reconstructing Miller's upbringing in a politically conservative Jewish family in Santa Monica, Calif., in the 1990s (when the state was riven by starkly different approaches to illegal immigration), Guerrero spotlights Miller's early interest in right-wing radio, middle-school subscription to Guns & Ammo, and opposition to bilingual education, multiculturalism, and a gay student club at Santa Monica High School. At Duke University, Miller gained national prominence for a series of student newspaper columns about a group of white lacrosse students wrongfully accused of raping a black woman. After graduation, Miller worked on the staffs of Minnesota congresswoman Michelle Bachmann and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions before joining the Trump administration, where he led the charge to ban immigration from predominantly Muslim countries and to separate migrant children from their parents at the U.S.--Mexico border. The inner workings of Trump's anti-immigration policies have been covered in more depth elsewhere, and Guerrero's research into Miller's family background (his great-grandparents immigrated to America to escape Russian pogroms) reveal many ironies but few deep insights. Readers will be left in the dark about what makes Miller tick. (Aug.)

An unsparing portrait of the young architect of Trumpian nationalism. "Stephen's rhetoric has completely infected the tone and mantra of this administration," says a former high school classmate of Donald Trump's chief henchman. "It's his." That rhetoric, writes California-based journalist Guerrero, centers on multiculturalism, which Stephen Miller, descended from Jewish immigrants from pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe, rejects in favor of white nationalism. The author charts the ambitious Miller's rise, claiming that, at one point, he aspired to be a U.S. senator. Fresh out of college, he started working as an assistant to tea party darling Michelle Bachmann, moved on to work with a right-wing Arizona congressman, and then snagged a job with Alabama senator and erstwhile Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions, "an elfin nativist with white hair." He eventually jumped into the White House, promoted by Steve Bannon, having been nurtured by right-wing entrepreneur David Horowitz, and forged connections with a broad range of nationalist allies, including white supremacists and neo-Nazis. By Guerrero's account, Miller is the principal author of the administration's immigration policy, with its tent-city prisons and separation of infants from parents. The "demonization of migrants" as criminals and people who, as Trump once said, "would never go back to their huts," is an essential tool to keep a nationalist base galvanized and ready to fight. Trump didn't need Miller to teach him the art of hatemongering, Guerrero writes, but all the same, Miller's "fanatical ideology, work ethic and strategic thinking" have furthered the aims of a president bent on destroying existing norms. Guerrero sometimes shades off into idle speculation, as when she connects Miller's California origins to Hollywood make-believe, but her account of his unsentimental education by way of racist texts, a carefully cultivated hatred for the nonwhite world, and a core group of mentors is carefully documented and persuasive. A readable study in the banality of evil, even if it comes clothed in bespoke suits. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.