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By Aiden Pink January 30, 2019

White House senior advisor Stephen Miller said he would be “happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched America’s soil,” a new tell-all book by a former Trump administration staffer claims.

“Team of Vipers,” by former White House communications advisor Cliff Sims, details the infighting and backstabbing that took place between administration officials. In his book, the contents of which were revealed Monday by The Atlantic, Sims, a devout Christian, expressed disappointment that Trump had promised to protect Christian refugees from the Middle East but never did so. Sims said Trump was pushed in that regard by Miller, the staunch immigration restrictionist who later advocated for the family separation policy at the Mexican border.

Miller’s family fled anti-Semitic persecution in the early 20th century, arriving in America before the modern refugee system was established. Miller has been condemned by his relatives and his childhood rabbi over his harsh anti-refugee stances, which they say would have prevented Miller’s family from arriving in America.

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“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,” David Glosser, the brother of Miller’s mother Miriam Glosser Miller, wrote in Politico last August.

According to The Atlantic, Sims claimed in his book that Miller helped overthrow his erstwhile ally and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, “plung[ing] the knife” into Bannon’s back and “twisting it with relish” by telling Trump that Bannon was leaking to the press and undermining senior advisor/son-in-law Jared Kushner.

In one episode in Sims’ book, he recounts National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow acting befuddled after Trump ordered him to stop a “special deal” that the Postal Service supposedly had with Amazon. Kudlow asked his outgoing predecessor, Gary Cohn, what Trump was talking about. Sims wrote that Cohn laughed and said, “It’s total bulls—-…He’s just mad at [Jeff] Bezos for owning The Washington Post.”

Cohn recommended that Kudlow not try to do anything about the nonexistent Amazon deal. “But now you know why I’m so happy to be leaving,” he said.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

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