Conway v. Miller

sag: Well friends, this is it! Five weeks and many Tuesday afternoons spent giving the axe to Trump associates later, here we are in the final round of The Advisors. I have to say, there was something cathartic about playing a make believe game in which the goal is to fire 31 horrifically unqualified public servants. This game also familiarized me with names like Sonny Perdue and James Lighthizer, a tool that mostly comes in handy at cocktail parties where I want to assert my intellectual superiority. Just kidding--I usually spend my time at cocktail parties anxiously scrolling through Instagram in the bathroom and Google mapping the closest bodega so I can buy a comfort Diet Coke. All of this is to say that I will miss this exercise, and look forward to seeing which of my predictions are realized over the next few years (mostly so I can say "I TOLD YOU SO" to the haters who thought Ivanka would outlast Mike Pence and I was an idiot for choosing otherwise).

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ANYWAY, here we go! Miller versus Conway. To be honest, I guess I kind of knew it would end with these two. I think Hayley put it best in the last round when she said that Conway had TENACITY. She has clung to this presidency with every fiber of her being. She has certainly put more effort into the Trump administration than Trump himself, spending the better half of two years battling Chris Cuomo and his gaggle of liberal media elites like an evil Harry Potter. Now that I think about it, Kellyanne is really the closest thing we have to Bellatrix LeStrange. [Note to self: write a piece that compares the advisors to Voldemort's army]. Stephen Miller is, ultimately, fragile. He is a fragile, fragile, ignorant man, and I don't think he can survive as a White House pariah forever.

 

Ultimately, I just have a feeling that Kellyanne will stand by her man even if his Titanic regime sinks. Meanwhile, I can see Miller sneaking into the "women and children first" line and boarding some kind of Breitbart lifeboat. Miller can, and likely will, sail away from Trump's shipwrecked administration in search of the next demagogue to influence. CONGRATS, KELLYANNE! You have won bigly.
 

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hmc: Wow! I can't believe we made it to the end. That really was a marathon huh? So many white men to choose from. But we did it! Thank you all for indulging us in our own version of March Madness because we thought it was a fun idea to try to predict what some (most) would say is the most erratic and unpredictable presidency in American history. Easy-peasy! At least the stakes are low... for us, I mean. And Sarah and I will find out who was right in due time, and we'll be able to lord it over each other for THE REST OF OUR LIVES!!! I am a tad bit competitive if you can't tell. 

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Now, what I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for: my pick. Conway v. Miller... obviously a hard choice. But I'm pretty confident in mine: Miller. And here's why. 

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I know just last week I went on a whole rant about Kellyanne's tenacity, and I'm not going back on that but I think Miller will outlast her for two reasons. First, because Miller is more relevant than Conway. She committed 100% to being Trump's talking head but she may have taken it too far with the, you know, blatant lying. There's no reason for her to suspect that it was going to come back to bite her. I mean, her boss does it even more than she does! But when you don't have all that electoral backing, it's easier to not invite you back on talk shows. Kellyanne has been fading from the public eye (and the public TV waves) slowly but surely. She may find use elsewhere in the administration, but she'll never be the same Kellyanne. 

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And second, on a much more hopeful note, I'm picking Miller because I think Miller believes more than Kellyanne. He's always been a hard right fanatic - I mean when he was in college he helped Richard Spencer fundraise and said Maya Angelou suffered from "racial paranoia." I mean MAYA ANGELOU! NO ONE HATES MAYA ANGELOU! CMON! I'm getting distracted, but the point is that Stephen Miller has found a home in the Trump administration that is true to his beliefs. Kellyanne Conway...hasn't. She originally backed Cruz in the Presidential primary. She made her career by advocating that the Republican Party should pay more attention to female public opinion. I know she's not some ACLU advocate, but she's not in the same league as Miller. And (I promise I'm nearing the optomistic point) I'm still hopeful that those who don't actually believe in the Trump agenda (possibly including Trump himself) might abandon the cause. Who knows how consciences work? Maybe they just kick in at random times! Either way, those odds are better with Conway. 

 

And with that, good night and good luck (to us all)!