Jason Miller Responds to Bush and Obama Attacks on Trump: Thanks for the $20 Trillion in Debt You Left Behind

The Associated Press
The Associated Press

Jason Miller, former communications director for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, joined SiriusXM host Matt Boyle on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily to talk about the struggle between President Trump and both the Republican and Democrat political establishments.

Miller said the president has a “really good shot” at getting his tax reform plan through Congress after a successful budget vote on Thursday.

“If you’re not on board with cutting taxes, then this truly is one of those issues where you probably need to look in the mirror and evaluate whether you’re in the right party or not,” he said.

“It looks like things are in pretty good shape here. I think what the president is trying to do with lowering the marginal rates for people and giving them a paycheck increase, and also lowering the business tax to help us create more jobs – I think this is going to lead to explosive economic growth,” he predicted.

Miller said it was important for the politicians in Washington to understand that the American people “want to get this done.”

“The president ran on this agenda,” he pointed out. “They need to get on board with it.”

Boyle noted with some incredulity that “not one Democrat voted for the budget framework last night,” which could have ramifications for the midterm elections.

“One of the important things for people to remember is there are all these states where the president won by 10 or 20 points, where you have red-state Democrats who are up for reelection in 2018,” Miller said. “We talk about Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Claire McCaskill in Missouri. There are a number of these, I believe it’s nine red-state Democrats overall, that are in states where the president won. I would be really surprised if a couple of them didn’t wise up and join the president’s effort to cut taxes.”

“There are going to be a few holdouts because they’re so beholden to the liberal special interests. I think they’re probably going to get bounced in their reelection efforts next year as a result,” he said.

Boyle raised the count of incumbent red-state Senate Democrats on the ballot in 2018 to ten and predicted “a real bloodbath for the left in the midterms, and for the Establishment in the primaries.”

Turning to the feud between President Trump, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL), and now White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly, Boyle faulted the Democratic congresswoman for bringing partisan politics into the death of an American soldier in Niger and the grief of a Gold Star family.

Miller praised General Kelly for bringing “some moral clarity to the issue yesterday in the White House briefing room.”

“When I first saw Congresswoman Wilson’s remarks, I was shocked,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that a congresswoman would be listening in on a phone call like this, and then to go springing to the television cameras, as she magically pops up on CNN, on MSNBC. Literally, you could not get between Congresswoman Wilson and a TV camera. This seemed to become all about her, and it really seemed to distort everything. It politicized it.”

“I think this is kind of a good reminder for supporters of the president out there that this is what the liberal left does. They’re so desperate to attack President Trump that they will turn such a sensitive personal issue like this, that should not be politicized, into some sort of political football. I was shocked, disgusted. It’s really disturbing to see this kind of stuff. It’s a reminder that we’re going to have these attacks coming at the president literally every day that he’s in office,” said Miller.

Boyle asked what Miller thought of Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon declaring “war” on “Establishment Republicans who have been standing in the way of the president’s agenda.”

“What I think a lot of folks in the media are missing here is the fact that the reason why Steve is doing this is to make sure that we have people in there who are supporting President Trump’s agenda. It’s not any more complex than that,” Miller replied.

“These Republicans who ran as conservatives and got elected as conservatives, and then went to Washington and basically sold out and paid lip service to all these Trump agenda items – but then, as we know what happens in Washington, they all kind of find it’s a shell game. They find ways to vote against different procedural moves, and then we see the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare tank, and things like that. It’s all thumbs down on all these different moves,” he explained.

“Really, what Steve is trying to do is hold these guy’s feet to the fire,” he said. “I think there are a number of these politicians who have been in Washington entirely too long. They’re going to have a big spotlight shone on them, and if they’re not on board with the president’s agenda, then I think we need to bounce them and send them out.”

“We’ll ultimately see how many challengers there are in Republican primaries, and how many of these candidates that Steve and other conservatives help to recruit in the general election. I crack up when I hear these comments about nominating candidates who can’t win in the general election because that’s what the Establishment said about President Trump,” he recalled with a chuckle.

“I think if you went back and looked at the Republican field from 2016, I think you can make a case was the only candidate that was going to be able to beat Secretary Clinton. Thank goodness we did nominate him,” Miller said.

Boyle noted some rather thinly veiled attacks against President Trump from former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush over the past few days and said it was unusual for former presidents to criticize the current occupant of the Oval Office in this manner.

“First I’d say to the former presidents, thank you very much for the $20 trillion in debt that we’ve been left behind,” Miller said with dry sarcasm. “I think it would be tough to say that their presidencies were successful all the way across the board.”

“It’s a good reminder that not only did President Trump defeat the Democratic establishment in the general election this past year, he also defeated the Republican establishment in the primaries,” he said. “As long as he’s in Washington and fighting for his agenda, and America First, and everything that he’s trying to do, that the entrenched powers are going to come after him. I think this is something that the president and this current White House is now starting to realize, is that change is hard. It doesn’t come easy. They’ve got to stay after it every day.”

“Look, President Obama can go out – former President Obama, as you correctly pointed out – can go out and give speeches all the time. Actually, I think when he goes out and does that, it just politicizes it even more, and it reminds people: ‘OK, this is what we fought against in this last election, this is what we rebuked. We didn’t like it the last eight years, and thank you very much (not really!) for Obamacare and everything else that you foisted upon us.’ I would expect that he’s probably not going to stay silent,” Miller anticipated.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern.

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