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Former United States Department of Homeland Security chief Miles Taylor has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Donald Trump’s intelligence have been made more than once.
During an interview on CNN, Mr. Taylor told a story about an interaction with Mr. Trump, in which he claimed that the president was fascinated by the way hurricanes spin, instead of staying focused on the potential damage and loss of life that the storm could cause if the White House did not act.
The former DHS chief said the interaction happened during a 2018 briefing.
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“We had to suffer Hurricane Florence from the United States, it was coming towards the Carolinas on the coast,” he said. “We informed the president about the damage we had expected and also our concerns about significant loss of life if he did not tell Americans to evacuate.”
Mr. Taylor said he initially thought the president was studying the storm intensively, describing him studying a foam board where photos of the hurricane and its projected path hung.
“Then he turned to me and said ‘I have a question’ … ‘do hurricanes always spin this direction?’ Said Mr Taylor. “He meant counter-clockwise, that’s called the Coriolis effect.”
He claimed that the president then followed suit and asked if that was the reason why water flows into Australian toilets opposite opposite to that in the US.
“This is what the president was aiming for. Americans were on the verge of a deadly hurricane, he had to get out there and tell them to evacuate, and he was just amazed at the way hurricanes spin, in a way that a third graders might have learned about earth science, “Mr Taylor said. “This is the president we’re talking about to keep us safe.”
Mr. Taylor – now deployed at Google – was once a major ally of Mr. Trump. He helped shape the policy that led to Mr. Trump’s migrant child species policy at the border. Mr. Taylor tried to distance himself from the policy in a Washington Post-op-ed he wrote earlier this week. He recently resigned from Google so he can campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 U.S. election.
Over the past few days, Mr. Taylor has made the cable news circular that tells damning stories of his time in the Trump White House.
Mr. Taylor appeared in an anti-Trump campaign ad.
“What we saw – week in and week out, after two and a half years in that board – was horrible,” Mr Taylor said in the ad. “The president wanted to exploit the Homeland Security department for his own political purposes and the fuel is his own agenda.”
Mr. Taylor also claimed that Mr. Trump withheld money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency intended to reduce Californians struggling in the fall of the wildfires because the state did not support its political agenda.
On Tuesday, the former DHS chief claimed that – if Mr. Trump wins a second term – he “will agree with dictators around the world.”
“There are people who serve very close to the president who have verbatim told me that we should expect, quote, ‘shock and fear’ when the president wins a second term. You will see a flurry of executive orders. “You will see the president pull from foreign alliances. You will agree the president with dictators all over the world,” he said.
He said US security would be substantially less and relations with allies strained even further in Mr Trump’s second term.
“And if we are just less safe right now because we have fewer friends and stronger enemies than before, you can expect to see that on steroids in another four years of the Trump administration,” he said.
Mr. Trump attacked Mr Taylor on Twitter, calling him a “dissatisfied employee” and a “stiff.”
“Many thousands of people work for our government. With that said, a former DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE named Mile Taylor, who I do not know (have never heard of him), said he walked away and on open arms is Fake News circuit. Said said a real “stiff”. They will take everyone up against us! “he wrote.
Mr. Taylor said he is not a Democrat, but that he supports Mr Biden.
“Even though I’m not a Democrat and do not agree on major issues, I’m sure Joe Biden will protect the country and I’m sure he’s not making the same mistakes as this president,” Mr Taylor said.
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