Ring of Fire

From The New Yorker: Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of Trump. “Pompeo, an evangelical Christian who keeps an open Bible on his desk, now says it’s possible that God raised up Trump as a modern Queen Esther, the Biblical figure who convinced the King of Persia to spare the Jewish people. He defines his own job as serving the President, whatever the President asks of him … No matter what Trump has said or done, Pompeo has stood by him. As a former senior White House official told me, ‘There will never be any daylight publicly between him and Trump.’ The former official said that, in private, too, Pompeo is ‘among the most sycophantic and obsequious people around Trump.’ Even more bluntly, a former American ambassador told me, ‘He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.'” (This gives new meaning to energizing the Trump base.)

+ “Stephen Miller was 22 and looking for work in Washington. He lacked government experience but had media appearances on talk radio and Fox News and a history of pushing causes like “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” A first-term congresswoman from Minnesota offered him a job interview and discovered they were reading the same book: a polemic warning that Muslim immigration could mean ‘the end of the world as we know it.’ By the end of the interview, Representative Michele Bachmann had a new press secretary. And a dozen years later, Mr. Miller, now a senior adviser to President Trump, is presiding over one of the most fervent attacks on immigration in American history.” NYT Mag: How Stephen Miller Seized the Moment to Battle Immigration.