Apr 10, 2024 - 11:05
By huffpost.com

Ex-Trump Official Says Trump Realized 1 Thing Late In His Presidency... And It's Chilling

A former official in Donald Trump’s White House has shared what the then-president realized too late in his administration that could have chilling consequences if he returns to power.

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor said Trump discovered “very late in his first term that he had far too many people who went to bed and grew a conscience every night and came back in with the little inklings of a conscience to say no and push back” on his most controversial and divisive plans.

Trump “doesn’t want those people around,” said Taylor, who in 2018 anonymously wrote the “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” opinion piece for The New York Times.

The presumptive GOP nominee’s preference “is for that Oval Office to be an echo chamber,” he added. “That’s what he wants and that’s what he’ll get. And very few people realize he’s found ways to make that happen.”

Taylor pointed to the lack of consequences to Chad Wolf’s unlawful appointment as acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security as evidence of that.

Trump “learned a very valuable lesson” over the lack of fallout over Wolf’s appointment and that he “can put whoever the hell he wants into these jobs,” added Taylor, the author of “Blowback: A Warning To Save Democracy From the Next Trump.”

Earlier in the interview, Taylor said there were “no heroes” and “only survivors” in Trump’s first administration. “In a second term, it’s not going to be heroes, it’s not going to be survivors. It’s going to be supplicants and that’s by design,” he added.