Miles Taylor, the former Trump administration official who publicly endorsed presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, said Tuesday it is time for Republicans “to put country over party,” arguing that President Trump is not equipped to be commander in chief.
“At the end of the day, the man with his finger on the nuclear trigger is a man whose mind is not on his job on a daily basis,” Taylor said in an interview on CNN. “That is alarming, and that isn’t the opinion of just a handful of folks in the administration.”
Taylor, who served in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) between 2017 and 2019, added that more people would be speaking out in opposition to Trump in the coming weeks.
“What they’re going to tell you is that this was a widespread sentiment in the administration,” Taylor said. “And I can tell you having talked to friends today in the administration, who messaged me to say, ‘thank you for speaking out,’ that there are a lot of folks very close to the president who feel this way about him, about his leadership and about a desire that he not have a second term in office.”
On Monday, the group Republican Voters against Trump released an advertisement in which Taylor called Trump’s presidency “terrifying” and said that he felt compelled to vote for Biden this November “given what I experienced in the administration.” Among other things, Taylor claimed that Trump attempted to exploit DHS for his own “political purposes and to fuel his own agenda.”
He alleged that Trump tried to cut off federal wildlife aid to California because the state did not support him and that his child separation policy at the southern border was part of an effort to stop people from going to “the border in the first place.”
The former DHS official, who once served as chief of staff to former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, also penned an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he argued that the president’s decisions were harming the U.S.’s standing around the world.
In an early morning tweet Tuesday, Trump branded Taylor a “disgruntled employee,” saying he had never heard of him.
“He left & is on the open arms Fake News circuit,” Trump tweeted. “Said to be a real ‘stiff’. They will take anyone against us!”
Speaking on CNN, Taylor dismissed Trump’s comments, saying that “anytime Donald Trump finds out that someone doesn’t share his views or opposes him, he really, really quickly finds a way to say, ‘I don’t know that person.'”
He later added that many joined the administration believing Trump could do an effective job in the White House only to be deeply disappointed by his performance.
“I think at this point it’s time for us to put country over party, and I hope other Republicans will do the same,” he said.