Can Everyone Stop Being a Complete Moron About the Max Miller Situation?

L-R: Emily Moreno, Max Miller, Bernie Moreno, Donald J. Trump

Max Miller, now widely referred to as the “embattled” Republican Congressman from Ohio — since he’s been facing a crush of calls to terminate his 2026 re-election campaign and/or resign from office entirely — was supposed to be appearing at a rally today, August 10, in Strongsville, OH. Joining him on the bill was supposed to be Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), whom Miller had frequently cited as a valued woman colleague continuing to vouch for him, despite the torrent of “allegations” he’s been inundated with: namely, that he physically abused his former wife, Emily Moreno, and even more shockingly, assaulted their two-and-a-half-year-old child, causing the toddler to fracture her collar bone.

The scheduled rally was canceled a few days ago. For what reason, you ask? Organizers claim an avalanche of “threats” of an unspecified nature had made holding the rally “untenable” — a determination they insist had only been arrived at after careful consultations with law enforcement. Despite this unfortunate outcome, local Republican officials seized the chance to spin the cancellation into a dramatic partisan rallying cry; it was intimated that the terrifying “threats” had somehow originated with George Soros, AOC, and the usual cast of diabolical left-wing characters. “They may have forced us to cancel Monday’s event, but they have not canceled our movement,” the organizers declared. “They will not silence us.”

If the stated reason for this sudden cancellation seems a bit dubious… well, that’s probably a sound intuition. Because the chairman of the Strongsville GOP, Shannon Burns, did not provide me with any specifics whatsoever about the purported “threats” that necessitated shutting down the rally, nor any insight into how they could have been of such a frightful magnitude that the safety of two sitting members of Congress, plus members of the public, could not be assured by Ohio public safety officials. Burns instead directed me to Miller’s office for more info, which in turn also said it had nothing.

The apparent dearth of evidence illuminating these supposedly cataclysmic “threats” is understandable, because I am reliably informed the whole explanation was a total charade — a bogus cover story, concocted to conceal the real reason for the cancellation, which no one involved seems particularly eager to publicize. Here’s what happened: Anna Paulina Luna, who is usually quick to fire off showy denunciations based on rumors of personal-life impropriety, however groundless, had reportedly become “uncomfortable” over the latest insane “allegation” hurled at Miller: that he disseminated a “CSAM” image of his own daughter. It was a photo of the toddler child with her shirt off.

Let’s be 100% clear right off the bat, please: only a sicko would ever have even the slightest notion that this totally innocuous image could possibly constitute “CSAM” — the recently-updated federal government term for “child pornography.” Yeah, I saw the image myself, because I was simply scrolling through the Dropbox files Miller posted August 2, which contained volumes of evidence related to the dispute with his former wife, Emily. Some of those materials predictably dealt with claims that he’d inflicted physical violence on their young daughter. So it was not surprising to see an image of the girl having a mark on her collarbone examined, in which she happened to have her shirt off. But because I am not sick in the head — or at least, not in this way — I never would’ve dreamt of imputing anything sexually explicit to the image, which again, is of a freakin’ two-year-old with her shirt off. (There was no “genitalia” visible, despite what her mother’s sleazy lawyers suggested.) The only way for the image to be described as anything remotely in the realm of “CSAM” would be for the describer to have some seriously depraved motive: whether a deviant sexual impulse to sexualize toddlers, or as seems to be the case here, a desire to opportunistically capitalize on some sick stretch of an argument to wield in an increasingly explosive litigation / PR battle. Because what better way to further villainize Miller than to put out the claim that he’s such an irredeemable psycho, he would manufacture and distribute child pornography featuring his own toddler daughter. We’ve really reached rock bottom.

So no — by any rational conception, the image was not “CSAM.” Which is a designation that at least nominally requires an image to be “sexually explicit.” This image wasn’t even in that universe, and again, to even suggest such a thing is genuinely repulsive. But that didn’t stop Congresswoman Luna from professing sufficient “discomfort” that she apparently felt obliged to drop out of a scheduled political appearance with Miller. Which meant a flurry of GOP operative underlings had to contrive a phony excuse for why the rally was being canceled at the last minute. (Luna did not respond to a request for comment.)

The ill-fated rally

This episode is only the latest example of how the Max Miller affair has become so pernicious — but as usual, not for the reasons 99.9% of the media and political class has been screeching about. Because what’s truly pernicious is the radical expansion of the “allegation escalation” vortex, that is, the process by which some kernel of an “allegation” about the personal-life wrongdoings of some public-facing individual can be transmogrified, virtually overnight, into the most grotesque “allegations” imaginable, particularly in a turbo-charged political environment — and better yet, when some obscure election law deadline is coming up. It’s probably not a coincidence, dontcha think, that the apparent deadline for Miller to drop out of his Congressional race and be replaced by another party-chosen Republican was this afternoon, August 10. Miller had always been adamant that he was not dropping out regardless, and seemingly confirmed this today as the deadline came and went — although Ohio election law is extremely convoluted as to what the precise deadlines for acceptable ballot-replacement are. (Try wading through this mess of statutory gobbledygook.) In any event, a flurry of righteous concern-trolling op-eds in the New York Times and elsewhere, demanding that Miller honor the deeply important deadline and defenestrate himself ASAP, did not achieve their intended objective.

We saw something very similar happen earlier in the summer, albeit with a considerably different outcome: the Democratic Party handles such ordeals with far more hyper-reactive, unforgiving ruthlessness than its Republican counterpart. For reasons that are interesting to expound. The differences of course must begin and end with the Republican coalition still being structured around the daily whims of Donald J. Trump, and if Trump hasn’t called for someone’s humiliating ouster, that will keep a lid on any collectivized denunciatory outburst. Internal GOP consensus for some alleged wrongdoer to resign or withdraw remain overwhelmingly (but not 100%) dependent on Trump. Whereas the Democrats have no comparable shot-calling figure, so its party infrastructure is less hierarchically distributed, and functions more like a decentralized network of mad-scrambling hysterics that coalesce organically into ritualistic condemnation the minute any “allegation” of sufficient gravity is conjured.

Max Miller, unlike recent Dem casualties Platner or Eric Swalwell, has not been accused of rape. Indeed, the “allegations” against him are not so much “sexual” as they are about his alleged proclivity for sadistic interpersonal violence. But the allegations basically put him in the same category of public disavowal anyway, as if he were an alleged rapist, because the demanded retribution is approximately the same warp-speed vaporization — fueled by the usual aversion to engage in any dispassionate assessment of the relevant facts and evidence.

Although publicly non-committal about Miller’s fate, Trump was reported to have privately phoned him last week and opined he’ll probably now have a tough time winning re-election, in light of the accusation-tornado unleashed by his former wife and her PR-minded lawyers. This tepid treatment by Trump created a bit of an atypical vacuum in the Republican Party ecosystem, with the void marginally filled by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who just happens to be Miller’s former father-in-law. Bizarrely, the media has decided to elevate Moreno as an authoritative commentator on everything allegedly wrong with Miller’s behavior and personality. We’re told in a NYT column that Senator Moreno triumphantly “broke his silence” last week — like he should be given a Profile in Courage Award or something — because he finally went out in front of the cameras and publicly excoriated Miller, declaring him unfit for office, on account of his allegedly terroristic treatment of Moreno’s beloved daughter Emily, and their two-and-a-half-year-old child.

The way this whole saga has been portrayed, pretty much everywhere in media/political circles, has been totally maddening. I really did not even want to get involved, frankly, because I can only stomach so many of these endless “allegation” cycles. But then I was stupid enough to actually read through the Dropbox repository Miller and his lawyers made available — replete with court records and copious other primary source evidence. Which I realize is silly stuff for journalists to bother reviewing before they make flamboyant pronouncements on a matter of public import. But as I unwisely scrolled through the material, I couldn’t help but notice a wealth of highly pertinent details that were being completely omitted from the outrage-saturated media cacophony. Sigh, I thought to myself — here we go again.

The prevailing representation of Emily Moreno as a conclusively victimized and battered woman, who is merely trying to escape her former husband’s wrath for the sake of herself and her child, just seems straightforwardly wrong. Or at least, not nearly as clear-cut as the first-blush media treatments have led the public to assume.

NOTE: This does not mean Miller hasn’t ever done anything wrong in his personal life, or that he hasn’t caused his former intimate partners to become upset at his behavior in certain instances. But I’m sorry — things are just not black and white in this fallen world, and everyone should be immediately suspicious whenever a black and white moral caricature gets gleefully blasted out for public consumption. Especially if it stems from a heated divorce and custody dispute — as though it’s EVER defensible to just parrot one side’s unvetted narrative in such matters. Here, it’s only made worse by the fact that this is all taking place in such a blatantly POLITICAL context — a wildly escalating feud between two newly embittered Ohio political fiefdoms: Miller and Moreno. Skepticism would be called for even if one of these “sides” did NOT include a sitting Ohio Senator, who last week set about cajoling his Senate colleagues to presume the credibility of his daughter’s torturous tale, with his own fatherly comments added, so they’d join him in demanding that Miller self-immolate his career and reputation. These unusual add-on political factors make it truly insane for the media, or any minimally rational observer, to be so hyper-credulous about the lurid details the Moreno father/daughter combo have pumped out, along with their team of leaking lawyers.

In the absence of Trump taking any kind of decisive position on Miller’s fate, Senator Moreno is now playing a kind of surrogate “leader” role, which has a particular purchase with his colleagues in the Senate — a body largely predicated on informal customs of collegial deference and decorum. And so it was that Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) broke his own “silence” August 6, calling on Miller to stand down, based on what Husted took to be the presumptive veracity of the narrative advanced by his trusted same-state colleague, Emily’s dad. Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) then followed suit, going so far as to declare Miller “a degenerate sociopath” — because Sheehy apparently saw a tweet thread from the Mother Jones reporter who’s been leading the charge against Miller. That’s some classic “strange bedfellows” for you. What seems eminently doubtful is that Sheehy took the time to examine very much of the voluminous court files and investigative records before rattling off his brutal public verdict on Miller’s psychological state. Other GOP figures of note have also called for Miller’s withdrawal, but it’s a less uniformly frantic party-wide consensus than would almost certainly be the case if something like this had gone down with a Democrat.

Worth underscoring is that even as the heat on Miller had been building in recent months, until last week he stood accused of no sexually predatory behavior per se — only interpersonally abusive behavior toward his former wife and young daughter. Which would be bad enough on its own, of course. But then the accusation train left the station, and by last week it escalated to an almost incomprehensible extreme — the claim that he put “CSAM” material of his own toddler daughter out on the internet. Such an insane allegation goes way, way beyond anything that might have arisen out of a messy custody/divorce fight that got progressively hyperbolic over time. “CSAM” is the kind of thing that can get somebody ostracized for life, and thrown into prison for decades. In fact, that’s exactly what Miller’s former father-in-law, a SITTING US SENATOR, Bernie Moreno, has expressly called for: that anyone who disseminated, or perhaps even viewed the offending image of his granddaughter with her shirt off, should be charged with felonies and locked up. Which means at the very least, this Senator is calling for Congressman Miller to be prosecuted, and not just for any old criminal violation, but one of the worst offenses anybody can ever commit, as far as the median member of the public is concerned: producing and distributing child pornography. With the added gobsmacking detail of Miller supposedly child-pornographying his own two-year-old toddler. Seriously: try to think of anything more vile an elected official has ever been accused of doing! And… it’s total friggin’ nonsense!

TO REPEAT: There was no “CSAM.” That’s just an outrageous and preposterous lie. An image of a toddler girl with her shirt off, having a mark on her neck examined pursuant to a state welfare agency’s investigation of potential abuse claims — which ultimately absolved Miller, by the way — is absolutely not CSAM by any stretch of the imagination. Because there was nothing at all sexually explicit about it. You’d have to be a sick freak to even have the faintest inclination otherwise. So what’s really freakish is for this poor little girl’s own mother and grandfather — a US Senator — to “sexualize” her in this way, as nothing more than a gross cheap-shot to use against her “embattled” father, whom they are embroiled in an increasingly vituperative legal confrontation with. Emily Moreno’s lawyers are the ones who put the crazy “CSAM” charge out there, suggesting that the photo in Miller’s Dropbox file “could be considered” CSAM. Which is priceless weasel wordage — there are no rational criteria by which the image could be classified as “CSAM.” If I’m repeating this point too much, that’s because it really does bear repeating. But of course, the precise legalities were irrelevant for Emily Moreno’s lawyers, whose intent was obviously just to toss out another sick “allegation” into the already-whirling media frenzy, and then sit back with smug satisfaction as Miller gets pilloried not just for the original domestic violence stuff, but now for being one of the most disturbing predators in America — one who’s so world-historically wicked that he’d knowingly circulate child pornography of his own daughter on the internet. Bernie Moreno then repeated this nonsense claim in a Senate hallway scrum, and bam, the accusatory frenzy gets dialed up to a crazy new crescendo. Remember: when in doubt, whip up a Pedo Panic.

Even with this wild evolution of the claims against Miller, he hasn’t resigned or dropped out. Which does tell us something instructive about the Republican vs. Democratic coalitions. Pray tell, what good did capitulating to the drop-out brigades do for Graham Platner? (Anyone remember that guy?) Well, here’s what it got him: “rapist” branding in perpetuity, as any remaining political support structure he might have had vanished in a split-second. No one was supposed to notice that the fatal accusation emerged just days before the Maine statutory deadline for Democrats to install a party-selected replacement, which they have subsequently done. As far as I know, there haven’t been any updates in the past several weeks as to whether the Platner rape-accuser has gone to law enforcement, even though the purported 2021 rape would be well within the statute of limitations for Maine authorities to prosecute. Hmmm.

Again, in Miller’s case, he wasn’t even initially accused of rape, or any kind of sexually violative conduct at all, really. But he might as well have been — because in the current political/media climate, every potential private-life impropriety gets glommed together in the same vortex of nastiness. And that was even prior to the preposterous “CSAM” claim. The initial “allegations” only pertained to Miller’s allegedly wrongful conduct with intimate-partner women, which is phenomenologically similar enough to “rape” in terms of how it gets publicly transmitted and processed — the dreaded R-word doesn’t even have to be expressly invoked to carry the same nebulous connotation. Then upon the absurd addition of the “CSAM” charges, Miller became saddled with a monstrous dilemma: capitulate to the drop-out commands, or even the indirect nudging by Trump, and he’d wind up branded indefinitely not just as a wife-beater and child-abuser, but a child pornographer. Of his own child. Try recovering from that in the public mind. Despite his refusal to capitulate so far, the “CSAM” stench is already a huge problem, notwithstanding its utter substantive falsity — case in point, the hysterical Congresswoman Luna aborting their planned rally.

I’ve also seen evidence that Senator Moreno was privately imploring Republican county chairs in Ohio to repudiate Miller, although none seem to have done so — which, for one thing, is another window into the divergent dynamics between the Republican and Democratic coalitions. Because if this were a Dem allegation frenzy, we all know no one would have even had to ask any of the relevant party operators to automatically renounce — the fevered renunciations would’ve already been flying fast and furious. Like a naturally occurring cosmic explosion. Conversely, these GOP local officials found themselves in a more ambiguous predicament, because if they did publicly call on Miller to drop out, and he continued to refuse, they could thereafter be obliged to continue providing campaign resources to a Congressional candidate whom they had denounced for allegedly despicable conduct. Which might be a tad awkward. On the other hand, even if they might have privately wanted Miller to drop out, there was no real mechanism for effectuating this, other than to exert pressure through various public and private channels, such that Miller would be made to drop out of his own volition. Which he always maintained was not gonna happen. So for these hapless GOP operatives in the Cleveland suburbs, it was damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

All the while, nobody was ever supposed to notice that Emily Moreno is not just Miller’s beleaguered former wife, much as that might make her a more sympathetic figure in media depictions. Please do not observe that she is also an adult political operative in her own right, and with that, has a variety of potential political incentives that may be motivating her conduct in this allegation-frenzy. Or that her motives might be heavily intertwined with that of her Senator Father’s career. Which should be painfully obvious. But for some reason, it’s considered very rude to point out that Emily is not just a helpless traumatized mother, but the chairman (not chairwoman?) of the Cuyahoga Republican Party, a trustee of Ohio Right to Life, as well as numerous other sinecures she’s largely gained by dint of her prestigious GOP familial connections. (Whatever the hell the “Deputy Director of State Action” at the America First Policy Institute is.)

Emily may not be entirely wrong that her former husband has various unpleasant character traits, but for the media and political system just to credulously parrot the “allegation escalation” shitshow she’s unleashed is completely bonkers. It’s one thing for a reasonable person to conclude that Miller might be a bit of a hothead, and maybe not someone you’d recommend your own daughter / sister / female friend go out with on a date, given the turmoil that always seems to spill out into public view regarding his romantic activities. But that’s a million lightyears away from assaulting his own toddler daughter, and disseminating “CSAM” images of her — both utterly baseless garbage. Even if Daddy’s Little Girl (Emily) has been able to get the Senior Senator from Ohio to amplify these ridiculous claims.

“I sent my daughter, granddaughter, and wife out of State to a secure place until such time as they feel safe,” Senator Moreno said last week. This makes zero sense, not least because Miller retains full shared custody of the daughter — meaning she stays with him on a regular court-approved basis. This routine has not been changed, and Miller will soon retrieve the daughter again as normal. However, since nobody bothers to look at the actual boring details, Senator Moreno can blurt out this crazy assertion that he is paying for Emily, Ruthie (the daughter), and his own wife to flee the state of Ohio or something, as if remaining within the state’s borders would be intolerably dangerous. What was gonna happen — Miller would do a mass shooting or something? It’s just so stupid. Miller might not be the optimal boyfriend or husband, and he might even have a volatile temper, among other less-than-desirable characteristics — but what the hell are we even talking about here? Suddenly he’s the Pedo Ted Bundy? Within a few days, his daughter will be dropped back off to him per court order, notwithstanding the loony threat-inflation Senator Moreno is rambling about, and which the media just dutifully repeats.

Some “serious” right-wing commentators have even called for Miller’s expulsion. Recall, the same threat was made against Eric Swalwell last April, albeit more formally — that is, if Swalwell didn’t immediately resign from Congress because of the mounting accusation vortex, an actual legislative resolution was being prepared to expel him. This tactic has almost never been used in American history: since the founding of the Nation, a grand total of six House members have ever been expelled for anything, and half are Confederates expelled in 1861 for literally waging insurrectionist war against the Union. Not once has any Congressperson been expelled for some sexual or private life impropriety. Although in fairness, the House did markedly lower the threshold for expellable conduct in 2023, when it utilized this extremely rare power to throw out George Santos. (Which, it should be said, Max Miller vocally supported at the time.) Santos’ expulsion-worthy offenses included lying about playing on his college volleyball team. (Really.) And yeah, Santos might’ve been a schmuck, and even a fraudster, but there’s a reason why expulsion had never been used so capriciously before: he hadn’t been convicted of any crime when he was expelled, only indicted by that point, and so his expulsion created a new precedent whereby from 2023 onwards, no dispositive evidentiary burden need be met for alleged criminal conduct to justify expelling a Representative who’d otherwise been duly voted into office by their constituents. Hence, in 2026, the expanding expulsion threat has been leveraged against Swalwell, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), and now Miller to try to browbeat them into submission, and compel them to resign on their own accord. Only Miller has withstood the pressure so far.

But it gets even crazier in his case, because not only has Miller never been convicted of a crime related to this deluge of “allegations,” and not only has he never been charged, and he’s actually been cleared — multiple times! — by various government agencies that investigated his conduct, including the Bay Village, OH police department and the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services. Both of which investigated Miller following claims by Emily Moreno that he’d done very bad things to both her and their daughter. Emily’s claims were found unsubstantiated by the relevant authorities. You’d think this minor exonerating detail would be emphasized just a tad more in the ensuing coverage and commentary, but no, of course not. Because it’s supposed to be beyond obvious that Miller should either be expelled, bludgeoned into resignation/withdrawal, or perhaps face some other terrible punishment yet unknown. Which could even include severe criminal consequences, given what Senator Moreno declared should happen due to the non-existent “CSAM.” So once again, we have “allegations” being treated as unassailable fact, and uncritically broadcast by the media — while actual investigative findings by the authorized state agencies are just steadfastly ignored. Go figure.

Other details deemed irrelevant in the Miller uproar:

• Months after the most scandalous incident of marital abuse against Emily allegedly took place, which has been trumpeted all over the media as inarguable proof of Miller’s depravity, Emily is on record saying to Miller directly, QUOTE: “I don’t think you would ever hurt me physically.” She does claim to have been hurt by Miller “emotionally,” which may be a telling insight into the situation. But as to any physical abuse, she’s extremely clear in her statement that this never took place. The pertinent verbal exchange, from August 2024, is on audio recording — no one has to paraphrase it, or purportedly recall what was said years later. It’s right there for anyone to hear in plain English. The allegedly abusive incident that has dominated so many headlines and social media screeds is that Miller supposedly attacked Emily in June 2024, while they were still married, by dousing her with boiling hot water. Yet two months after this alleged mortifying abuse, Emily is on record saying Miller would never hurt her physically. Which would presumably have to mean she did not regard the “boiling hot water” incident — whatever may have happened there — as tantamount to any physical abuse at all.

• In a May 2026 court hearing, Emily Moreno effectively admitted that she was involved in leaking false information to the media, by way of a Daily Mail article that falsely claimed Miller had psychotically hurled a pot of boiling hot water at her in the famed June 2024 incident. Accompanying this headline-blaring claim is a photo of Emily appearing to display her injuries.

  

• A casual internet user scanning this article would infer that Emily’s accompanying photo was meant to exhibit the brutal injuries she sustained from the incident.

  

• We’ve since come to learn there was no pot of water at all, only what Miller describes as “horseplay” with a running-water faucet. (Emily also acknowledges the use of a faucet, rather than a “pot.”) And the accompanying photo had nothing to do with any hot water attack. It’s very possible that whatever precipitated the June 2024 incident was emotionally troubling to Emily and/or Miller; it appears to have occurred during a period of escalating marital strife. Nonetheless, by all available evidence, there was no “pot of boiling hot water” ever chucked at her, even though this claim was blared screamingly across the media. And by her own effective admission, Emily was involved in propagating that falsehood. Furthermore, Emily herself said in the months after the incident, as shown by the August 2024 audio recording, that Miller had never physically abused her, and she had no fear that he would physically abuse her. In October 2024, she also made a sworn statement to the Cuyahoga County court that Miller had never physically harmed their daughter, and she had no reason to believe he would ever do so. (Emily left Miller on August 1, 2024, moving out of their shared domicile without advance notice to him, and Miller filed for divorce shortly thereafter.) If the Miller/Moreno fracas is going to dominate US political “discourse,” why are these details being completely left out?!?!

• Also notably left out: that the court-appointed forensic psychologist mediating between Miller and Emily, who happens to be a woman, testified in a May 2026 deposition that the barrage of recent media reports promoting graphic new claims of Miller’s abuse were “greatly exaggerated.” That was the under-oath judgment of the person whom the courts had named to keep tabs on both Miller and Emily, and make recommendations as to the proper care of their daughter. The “greatly exaggerated” media reports subsequently spiraled into even more heinous allegations (“CSAM,” etc.) even though Emily effectively admitted having a role in facilitating the leak of the original false reports — almost certainly orchestrated through her lawyers. Not that much speculation was ever necessary, because how else would the mirror selfie of Emily end up distributed to tabloids, if not by her having some role? (The photo even says “Copyright Emily Moreno” at the bottom!) She’s the one who took the friggin’ photo of herself. Asked what might explain this latest round of allegation-escalation, the forensic psychologist noted relations between Miller and Emily had grown “significantly more contentious” in the two-and-a-half months leading up to May 2026, for reasons related to Miller “running for re-election.” Huh. Maybe that’s got something to do with the whole way this thing has unfolded. Just maybe. Since, you know, Emily is also a professional political operative working with her father, the Ohio Senator, and they’d sure like to have her ex-husband out of the picture. Because his continued presence in Congress is probably a big headache.

QUESTION: If absolutely none of this Miller-favorable information ever gets mentioned in any of the boisterous media coverage around the “abuse allegation” saga, what exactly are we supposed to make of that? Why should we be taking any of this at face value? Couldn’t we even preliminarily infer that Miller is the actual aggrieved party? You know, since he’s the one being berated with fabricated smears, the most appalling of which is that he’d be so depraved as to create and distribute “CSAM” featuring his own toddler daughter. NOTE: this wouldn’t preclude also inferring that Miller has got some serious problems with his personal life dealings. You could even say that Ohio voters would be entitled to infer that the distraction has gotten so ridiculously out of hand, it’s now consuming way too much of his time as an elected official, and thus impairing his ability to focus on things like policy-making and constituent services. A voter could thus reasonably conclude he should be voted out of office. But for God’s sake, the guy is now being threatened with expulsion — and lifelong reputation-destruction — thanks to a cycle of allegation-escalation that now has him widely believed to have physically assaulted his two-year-old daughter, despite being exonerated for this by every government entity that’s investigated, and most outrageously, that he’s committed “CSAM” felonies related to the daughter. Who is two-and-a-half years old.

This is just repugnant. It can’t be allowed to stand, if we want to retain any semblance of a rational political and media culture. Which, yeah, may be a lost cause at this point. But even so, c’mon, Miller’s been accused by his former father-in-law of CHILD PORNOGRAPHY CRIMES — I just have to keep repeating this unseemly fact for emphasis — and Senator Dad Girl’s nonsensical rants about it are being given mindless credence. I guess just because he’s another elected official from the same party and state? Even if Miller himself isn’t dropping out, colleagues he’d previously been on good terms with are dropping out of joint events, because who wants to be within twelve football fields of anything even allegedly associated with “CSAM”? (It doesn’t help that Anna Paulina Luna is already a longstanding hysteric on “trafficking,” Epstein, etc.) Senator Moreno’s rolling commentaries are treated with total credulity by pundits, as though he’s some neutral arbiter, rather than the dad and political patron of one of the media-leaking litigants in an out-of-control custody dispute. Sen. Moreno has even inserted himself as an active participant in the custody brouhaha, since he’s the one who, as of early August, personally went to retrieve little Ruthie from a hand-off by Max, in a police station parking lot, supposedly because it was too dangerous for Emily to go herself. And Emily isn’t just Bernie’s benighted daughter, which on its own would be enough to cast massive doubt on the impartiality of his assessments — she’s also one of his seasoned political operatives. Meaning they obviously have conjoined political interests, as well as the obvious familial ones. But please, nobody mention any of that.

Here’s the usual annoying qualifier: you don’t have to like Miller at all politically (I never did) to find this whole fiasco abominable.

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