President Donald Trump’s Republican allies are trying to get him to rescind his endorsement of Rep. Max Miller (R-OH), who is accused of physically abusing two of his former romantic partners and his young child. Yet even after Democrats pulled their support from their nominee for the Senate in Maine, oyster farmer Graham Platner, when he was accused of domestic violence and sexual misconduct, Trump is reportedly struggling to do the same thing for Miller.
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“It’s a very sad thing; I know Max,” Trump said during an Oval Office press conference on Monday. “He’s a good person. I mean, I always thought he was a very good person. And I’m going to let the families figure that out. You know, those families, I know they’re working on it. It’s a very sad thing, but it’s accusations, and I’m going to let them figure that out.”
Miller, by contrast, has denied all of the accusations, falsely claiming that only his wife has accused him (Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham has also done so). He also argued that if he had assaulted his then-wife, Emily Moreno, that she would not have later offered to cook dinner for him or spend an afternoon at a playground with their daughter. In fact, domestic violence survivors frequently feel compelled to continue interacting with and helping their abusers for a number of reasons, and their doing so is never an excuse for or exoneration from abuse.
In an appearance on CNN, former Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) quoted a letter from Moreno’s father, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who called for Miller to resign and said at one point that “it’s been horrific to watch this play out in full public view, all while knowing an innocent two-year-old girl is caught in the middle” and that “I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”
“That’s hard to skip past,” Meijer told CNN”s Kasie Hunt. “I mean, I totally believe that Sen. Moreno, again, did not want to bring additional attention to this. This is a private family matter. It’s taking place over a custody dispute over his daughter’s daughter — not something you want to get litigated in the public eye.” He then explained why Republicans are turning on Miller.
“I mean, both on the personal family side of the house and on the political side of the house — Congress is not in session right now, but I can tell you, if you’re a member of Congress and you are the reason why all of your colleagues are getting a microphone shoved in their face and being asked, ‘Hey, what do you think about this terrible thing your colleague is alleged to have done?’ — that is not a way to build alliances within a caucus. It’s a great way to have folks start to throw you under the bus,” Meijer explained to Hunt.
At that point Hunt pointed out that there are reports Trump has privately told allies Miller is not able to win, even though publicly he remains supportive.
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“This is such a hard story,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, former Trump White House communications director, told Hunt on Monday earlier in the same interview. “Listen, I personally really liked Max Miller. We served together in the first Trump administration. He’s someone you’d want to be seated next to on Air Force One. He’s a charming, gregarious person. But oftentimes, abusers are that way. And listen, he’s obviously denied all allegations, but I would remind folks that before these allegations from Emily Moreno were leveled against him, former White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham also accused him of domestic abuse when they were dating.”
She added, “The allegations were in her book, and they were very similar, and they show a pattern of behavior. And I wish that more people had believed her at the time. And perhaps he never would have been in office in the first place. But it’s a tough moment for the Republican Party, because many of us were saying recently that Graham Platner needed to get out of the Maine Senate race because of the allegations against him.”
Speaking exclusively to AlterNet about Miller’s response to the abuse allegations, Dr. Harriet Fraad — a mental health counselor, hypnotherapist and a woman who has had 55 years of experience who has studied this in depth — described them as “self-pitying” and typical of abusers who wish to avoid accountability.
“This is the usual self-pitying deluge of a person who feels that the real crime is being exposed,” Fraad wrote. She also added, “He broke her collarbone in child abuse. And this is not only his wife, but it’s also a girlfriend who reported violence. And so I don’t believe him. I think that he’s a violent man who’s now a frightened man and is covering it up.”
Fraad concluded, “Because the idea is — which you can really get from Trump, who’s also a rapist [he was found liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll] — that they are not an abuser, but rather a victim. Because they feel that the person who told on them is victimizing them. That the victimization is in reporting their behavior, which they want to disavow. That’s a betrayal: ‘Keep my secrets. Shut up.’”
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