It was a Sunday in mid-February at the Trump International Hotel. The whole gang was there: Mick Mulvaney, Reince Priebus, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mike Pence, and yes, the Big Man himself. POTUS had flown in from Daytona Beach just in time for the party, hilariously complaining in his toast about having been inconvenienced by the groom, Stephen Miller: “He is the only one who could have a damn wedding in the middle of Presidents’ Day weekend. I’m sure it didn’t affect anybody here.” The rabbi was an adviser to the ambassador to Israel, and there was an Elvis impersonator. This may not have been every girl’s dream wedding, but for the bride, Katie Waldman, it was perfect. Stephen, 34, and Katie, 28, had fallen in love—as young people do—while figuring out how to separate children from their parents at the border. Now, thanks to Katie, Stephen was officially off the market. It didn’t throw her that half the country was blasting him as a white nationalist due to a recent cache of leaked emails, or that one chunk of his family had disowned him. No, this was the “perfect day,” Katie tweeted, and Stephen Miller, “the perfect man.”
To those in the public who didn’t know much about the bride, the whole thing was amazing. Not only had Stephen found a human woman to marry, but Katie, as the pictures showed, was pretty, with a warm, vivacious smile. Stephen, by contrast, cut a villainous figure. Cartoonishly so, like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons—with an orb-like forehead, funneling into a long, pale face; mistrusting, soulless eyes; and a petulant lower lip. Rarely has a face been such an apt illustration of the person inside.
[…]
But to those who knew Waldman, the union wasn’t surprising. As a college classmate from the University of Florida puts it, “The only thing she loves or values in this world is power. Anyone she attaches to in her life is simply a pawn to feed her addiction to it.” After all, even Goebbels was a ladies’ man. Accounts from her high school and college years bring into focus a woman with charm and energy—she had YOLO tattooed inside her lower lip—but it was always trained toward power. These people recall how Waldman cut corners, employed dirty, even illegal tricks, and laughed as she got away with it. Accounts from more recent colleagues add detail to the portrait—one not of a counterbalance to Miller, but rather of a powerful reinforcement. A Washington media flack who’s rapidly ascended—from Capitol Hill to the Department of Homeland Security to the vice president’s office—she can display a bright, even friendly manner, but behind the scenes, acquaintances say she can be ruthless and underhanded, and at times has seemed callous about the suffering of others.
In some way, Mr. and Mrs. Miller are emblematic of young Washington, circa Trump: arrogant and gleefully pugnacious. They have few close friends outside the administration. They don’t hang out much in public because they tend to get harassed. They recently traded D.C. for the more secluded Arlington, Virginia. Outside of Jared and Ivanka, and Don Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle, they are perhaps the city’s most powerful couple under 50. Their influence reaches beyond immigration policy into the two most pressing issues of the day: civil unrest around systemic racism, and the pandemic. He plays a key role in Trump’s messaging, decrying the removal of Confederate monuments and the threats to American “heritage.” She, as the spokesperson for the White House Coronavirus Task Force, is a poster child for its disastrously bungled response. The Millers’ respective issues dovetail in a single phenomenon: harm to immigrant communities and people of color. And given the new couple’s knack for pulling the levers of power, and the Trump administration’s control over the judicial and legislative branches, they may be with us for a long time to come.
I’m still blinking at “after all, Goebbles was a ladies man.” Wow, that’s awelcome embrace of reality, right there. Good for Vanity Fair.
But this couple is a truly evil portent of what’s to come if the US can’t kill the GOP beast. It simply must be done. We can see what it’s become and we know where it’s going.
By the way, Waldman works for that nice Christian fellow, Mike Pence.