(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Max Miller: Donald Trump’s pick to unseat a Republican congressman has a history of aggressive behavior. [1] ['Michael Kruse Is A Senior Staff Writer At Politico', 'Female Classmate', 'Max Miller', 'Jonah Schulz', 'Republican Candidate For Ohio S Congressional District'] Date: 2021-07-28 “He played with a lot of anger,” said Dan Cohen, the starting catcher. “He’d get mad.” “He’d walk up to the lineup, he’d see that he wasn’t catching, and he’d walk away, and in earshot of everybody, kind of like, ‘Goddamnit, this is bullshit,’” McWilliams told me. “He wasn’t shy about that.” And if Miller was in the lineup and he struck out? “Steer clear of the path of the tossed helmet.” In school, he was not a particularly serious or committed student, in the recollection of classmates. Prominent in the yearbook from his junior year that I reviewed in the public library in Shaker Heights was a couplet of quotes attributed to a friend of his (“I go to my HOUSE and bring GIRLS!”) and to Miller (“I go to Kevin’s house and steal his GIRLS!”). Under Miller’s senior picture was an aphorism (apocryphally) ascribed to Mark Twain: “I never let schooling interfere with my education.” Again, though, what is most vivid in the memories of those who knew him then is not his academic performance but the nature of his behavior—more than anything else, they said, the way he talked about girls, and to them, too. “Broadcasting his sexual exploits, whether they were true or not,” Cohen told me. “Boys are gonna be boys who don’t really know what they’re doing,” he continued, “but he was always kind of the head of the conversation … trashing girls.” “He could turn on the charm and be a very pleasant person. But writ large? Not a nice person.” female classmate “He could turn on the charm and be a very pleasant person. But writ large? Not a nice person,” said a female classmate. “He felt very entitled to comment on people’s appearance,” she said. “Went out of his way to make negative comments,” she added. “Especially about girls, especially about their appearance”—especially, classmates said, about their weight, butts and breasts. “[N]othing could be further from the truth,” Zukerman, Miller’s attorney, wrote in his letter. “Such is an obvious, classless, and outright attempt to smear Mr. Miller’s character prior to an election.” A female friend called Miller “loyal.” A male friend called him “thoughtful.” Another male who was Miller’s friend in high school described him as “my pit bull”—“I felt special,” this person told me, “because he would never get angry with me.” Still, though, the memories of many of Miller’s classmates, male and female alike, are what they are. “I just remember people being, like, a little bit scared of him, including myself at times,” one male classmate told me. “He had a huge temper that you didn’t really want to be on the other side of,” he said. “A loose cannon,” another male classmate said. “The Max I knew in high school was very belligerent, very angry,” Blair Kurit told me—and “super misogynistic,” she said. “He was not respectful of women,” another female classmate said. “Not the guy you wanted to be alone in a room with,” still another female classmate said. “He kind of had this anger about him that made me very uncomfortable, so I just sort of disassociated from being anywhere near him,” a fourth female classmate said. That’s why, she said, she wasn’t there “that night.” That night, with eight to 10 friends at Miller’s house, Miller pushed a girl out the door of his room and she fell down some stairs after he became enraged when she resisted his attempts to touch her, according to three people who were there and many more who heard about the incident in the aftermath. “He flipped a switch,” one witness told me. Max Miller’s junior yearbook in 2006 at Shaker Heights High School. “I know what I saw,” another witness told me. “It sort of escalated in a quick moment and just sort of took a turn, and I feel like in my memory she kind of defended herself and pushed back a little harder in a way that maybe wasn’t as playful—but still, like, being the far weaker person in the situation—and he sort of snapped and became more violent towards her and pushed her, shoved her, really, up against a wall that was next to the door of his room, which was at the top of this landing of stairs” and “effectively down the stairs.” The girl was not physically hurt. There was no trip to the hospital. Nobody called the police. Miller, through his attorney, “categorically denies” that this incident happened. But people who were there and who knew Miller and the girl talked about it after it happened. “It wasn’t a secret,” said a female classmate. “Everybody knew about it,” said a male classmate. “It’s always,” said another female classmate, “kind of been a point of discussion regarding Max Miller.” Over time, they told me, it has become for them an extreme but nonetheless definitional episode. “It is the boiling-over point of exactly who he was in high school,” said a male witness who consoled the crying, frightened girl that night outside in the yard. “It’s not surprising that it’s something that happened. I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s fair to say, like, he’s somebody who consistently throws people down the stairs, no—but, yeah, it’s right in line with kind of who he was.” “Who I was in the past is not who I am now” Miller’s path from high school to the highest and highest-profile strata of American politics involved stops at two universities over the course of six years, speeding tickets and a series of arrests in Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights and Oxford, Ohio, a stint in the Marine Corps Reserve and a job at a local Lululemon store. He started college at the University of Arizona in August of 2007, according to the school, and left in December of 2009 without having picked a major. Back home, he started attending Cleveland State University in August of 2010, according to the school, and graduated in May of 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in history. Miller had no documented interactions with the police during his time in Arizona, according to the city police, the university police and the county sheriff. Nor did he have any at Cleveland State, according to the school’s police department. His interactions with police, though, had started even before he graduated from Shaker Heights. In the spring of his senior year—April of 2007—Miller was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after punching a male in the back of the head and running from police, as the Washington Post first reported in 2018. He pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct and obstructing official business, misdemeanors, and the case was dismissed in part because he was a first-time offender. The file in Shaker Heights is now sealed. Two months later, and just three days before his graduation, Miller was pulled over in Shaker Heights for going 61 miles per hour in a 35-mile-per-hour zone. The following January, he was pulled over in another 35-mile-per-hour zone, this time going 54. Later that summer—June of 2008—he was charged with underage consumption of alcohol. He pleaded no contest, and the case was dismissed—another file that is sealed in Shaker Heights. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/07/28/max-miller-ohio-congress-trump-profile-500187 Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/