White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a scathing rebuke of Miles Taylor, the former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staffer who said on Wednesday that he authored the anonymous New York Times op-ed that revealed a member of the Trump administration criticizing the president’s character.
“This low-level, disgruntled former staffer is a liar and a coward who chose anonymity over action and leaking over leading,” McEnany said in a statement to reporters. “He was ineffective and incompetent during his time as DHS Chief of Staff.”
Taylor, who worked for DHS from 2017 to 2019, including as chief of staff to former Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen, announced Wednesday that he penned the op-ed, titled, “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration.” It was published under an anonymous byline in the newspaper in 2018.
In the piece, Taylor described a chaotic White House and an unhinged commander in chief showing little regard for constitutional or political norms that posed a danger to the country and world.
“We do not owe the President our silence. We owe him and the American people the truth,” Taylor wrote in a blog post shortly after his identity was revealed. “Too often in times of crisis, I saw Donald Trump prove he is a man without character, and his personal defects have resulted in leadership failures so significant that they can be measured in lost American lives. I witnessed Trump’s inability to do his job over the course of two-and-a-half years. Everyone saw it, though most were hesitant to speak up for fear of reprisals.”
Since leaving his post at DHS, Taylor has taken a job as a CNN contributor and has appeared in political advertisements for the group Republican Voters Against Trump.
In late August, Taylor was asked directly by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper if he had written the op-ed, which he denied.
“I wear a mask for two things, Anderson: Halloween and pandemics. So, no,” he said at the time.
Taylor was also reportedly involved in DHS’s family separation policy, in which images of migrant children in cages sparked bipartisan backlash.
McEnany also tore into The New York Times for running Taylor’s piece and painting him as a senior member of the Trump administration, dubbing the former chief of staff as a “low-ranking official.”
“It is appalling a low-ranking official would be granted anonymity and it is clear the New York Times is doing the bidding of Never-Trumpers and Democrats,” she said. “The American people elected President Trump to carry out his vision for the country, not an arrogant deep state operative trying to put their agenda ahead of the President’s America First policies.”