Miles Taylor, a former Trump administration official, warned President Donald Trump on Tuesday that he was just the ‘opening salvo’ of former administration officials coming forward to tell unflattering stories that testify to ‘ first hand from within the Trump administration – with the aim of ensuring Trump is not re-elected in November.
“The president has not heard the last of us,” said Taylor, a former department chief of Homeland Security. “Actually, I said yesterday, you can think of it as an opening salvo.”
It did not take long for Trump to shoot back.
Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, Taylor told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that going public with his criticism of Trump has nothing to do with money but “to be honest about the president” and set the country on fire. “
“The president can expect to hear from more people who have served in his administration in the coming weeks and months following the election, and he will hear more from them giving the same testimonies I gave, that “is that he is ill-equipped to keep the office he has and that a second term would be more dangerous than a first term. You will hear that soon,” Taylor said.
He described his time at work with the While House as playing “whack-a-mole with bad presidential decisions.”
Taylor first went public on Monday with his criticism of the president in a video released by Republican voters for Trump, making him the highest-ranking official in previous administration to distinguish former vice president Joe Biden.
In the video, Taylor called Trump “uncivilized and undisciplined,” said day-to-day operations in the administration “afraid of him,” and accused Trump of using the department several times to serve his own political agenda.
After the interview, Trump took to Twitter to portray Taylor as a former “DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE” who “is said to be a real ‘stiff.'”
Taylor told Stephanopoulos that he took up certain issues during his tenure with maintaining the Trump administration’s family divorce at the U.S.-Mexico border. While acknowledging that he had served as counter-terrorism adviser to then-Chief of Staff John Kelly when the policy was being developed, he called the implementation of the policy an ‘error’.
“How that played out is an example of textbooks going wrong and an example of textbooks of how this president has created an environment where bad policy decisions are made,” Taylor said, adding then to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, with whom he worked, describing the policy as the making of a “train wreck” before the White House gave an executive order that put an end to it.
Notably, Nielsen has always maintained that family divorce was not a policy – even though the administration took a “zero tolerance” approach.
“But here’s the bigger concern, George, every single month that I served on that board, after we ended family divorce, the president would come to us and say, not only did he want to reinstate it,” he said. Taylor continued. “He wanted to double down and implement a conscious policy of ripping each child apart from their parents who appeared at the border, every child at the border.”
Taylor said Trump’s continued support for the policy was “one of the most disappointing and disgusting things I have ever experienced in the public service – and that has significantly contributed to me wanting to leave this administration.”
The former senior administration official also expressed his strong disapproval of Trump for trying to evade California federal aid during the 2018 wildfires.
“He did not feel he had a base of supporters in California because fires burned in the state, the president basically told us, ‘I do not care,'” Taylor said.
“The secretary (Nielsen) and I were so worried because we did not want our senior leadership to be exposed to how undisciplined and tumultuous the White House was, because it made it harder for them to do their jobs,” he said. he said.
Taylor said the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not comply with Trump’s request for support, but it reflected greater chaos in the administration.
“I think they ultimately decided by the lawyers that a tweet was not an official assignment, but this is what we are talking about here, having to play with a bad presidential decision, instead of just doing the job of government,” he said. hy.
In response to senior adviser and son-in-law of President Jared Kushner who told CNN Monday that Taylor was “not up to the task,” Taylor said he did not intend to slander anyone else working for the president, but to focus on the character of the president himself.
Taylor said he left the administration on his own terms and was offered a number of jobs that would have been dream opportunities for him in any other administration.
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