Miles Taylor is the former chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for the Trump administration. For two and a half years, his job was to meet with officials at the DHS and then bring that information and their intelligence reports to the president in order to allow the president to make intelligent decisions regarding our country’s national security. That’s the job—technically. Taylor, a Republican, worked for a very long time in an administration that has been one never-ending garbage fire, and whether for noble reasons or just self-preserving ones, Mr. Taylor is no longer a part of the administration. In fact, he is actively trying to get the administration replaced by Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
In a new campaign ad from a group called “Republican Voters Against Trump,” Taylor speaks about his time as Trump’s DHS chief of staff and about how it was exactly what everyone reading this site expected. Taylor introduces himself and gives his bonafides, saying what he and others observed for the two years he was there “was terrifying.” He explains what most of us have known for a long time, and anyone who was aware of Donald Trump knew in the 1980s: Trump’s only priority is himself. “The president wanted to exploit the Department of Homeland Security for his own political purposes and to fuel his own agenda.”
Taylor gives a first-person account of Trump telling FEMA officials to cut off aid to California wildfire victims because he was “so rage full that people in the state of California didn't support him, and that politically it wasn't a base for him.” Taylor says that Trump not only supported a zero tolerance immigration policy but he wanted a more extreme version, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents actively “ripping children away from their parents” to set some kind of insane example.
And while many of Trump’s ridiculous ideas were “impossible” to carry out, many others were illegal, leading to this amazing quote: “He didn't want us to tell him it was illegal anymore because he knew that there were, and these were his words, he knew that he had ‘magical authorities.’” Taylor warns that people still within the administration are hoping to receive a second term in order to further push more extreme and likely anti-democracy, illegal measures, saying that while he does not agree with Biden on key issues, he believes that Biden will protect our country’s national security, something this current president has greatly damaged.
Taylor and other Republicans now voicing their opposition to Trump and his administration are welcomed in our effort to oust Trump from office. However, the Trump administration’s general policies, while uncouth in their presentation, are essentially all long-standing GOP notions and ideological positions. Trump’s pathological incompetence is something that clearly most everyone on either side of the aisle can agree upon, but that is it. When Biden and Harris become the next president and vice president, just changing the placards on desks and office doors will not be enough.
Miles Taylor and others who helped craft and carryout the inhumane policies of the last few years must all be held accountable.
