Once Taylor described it, Trump was fixated on the state to review his homeland security team in action. “He would order us to go to the border so he could see us there under work,” Taylor said. “Do you really think Kirstjen and I set up the steel pollers? That was disproportionate, to say the least. ‘
Taylor said the White House’s constant pressure to focus on immigration enforcement and border security keeps senior DHS officials focused on other issues, including election security and cyber threats. The department’s leadership was “round in circles” for his time there, he said.
“There would literally be threatening currents that we would read about in the PDB [President’s Daily Brief] and we would say ‘Shit, we need to spend the day here!’ And the president would call and we would be, ‘Nope, the day will not be able to spend here because he is focused on dah-dah dah-dah.’
Judd Deere, a White House spokeswoman, said Taylor was speaking only for mercenary reasons.
“This individual is another creature of the DC Swamp who never understood the importance of the president’s agenda, or why the American people chose him and clearly just want to bail him out,” he said. he in a statement. “President Trump has an unusual number of achievements, despite government bureaucrats who are only for themselves, not the forgotten men and women of this country.”
On Monday, Taylor signed Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race. Numerous former Trump administration officials have criticized the president’s leadership and have expressed doubts about voting for him. But Taylor is the first former senior official in his administration to support his opponent. The former chief of staff of DHS appeared in a video clip of Republican voters against Trump, and also wrote a Washington Post op-ed and appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America – all to mention his former top boss.
Trump, meanwhile, tweeted that Taylor is “a former DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE” he had never heard of. Taylor responded by tweetjen a photo of him and Trump side by side, both giving the camera big thumbs-ups.
Nielsen did not respond to a request for comment.
