A former senior official in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who served under President Donald Trump is urging Americans to reject his bid for a second term.
In an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Monday, Miles Taylor, who served in DHS’s leadership from 2017 to 2019, excoriated Trump. He wrote, “After serving for more than two years in the Department of Homeland Security’s leadership during the Trump administration, I can attest that the country is less secure as a direct result of the president’s actions.”
He continued, “Like many Americans, I had hoped that Donald Trump, once in office, would soberly accept the burdens of the presidency — foremost among them the duty to keep America safe. But he did not rise to the challenge. Instead, the president has governed by whim, political calculation and self-interest.”
Taylor said he was not “in a position to judge how his personal deficiencies affected other important matters.” However, he said, “When it came to national security, I witnessed the damning results firsthand.”
He claimed Trump was trying to turn DHS into “a tool used for his political benefit.” When it comes to immigration policy, Taylor claimed the president urged the agency to crack down on immigration to boost his electoral prospects.
Additionally, he said Trump’s “indiscipline was also a constant source of frustration.”
One example of Trump lacking discipline occurred during negotiations with Congressional leaders to avoid a government shutdown in 2019, when the president reportedly requested a DHS briefing to discuss “the color of the [border] wall.”
“He was particularly interested in the merits of using spray paint and how the steel structure should be coated. Episodes like this occurred almost weekly,” he added.
Taylor also said Trump pressured DHS officials to “implement a more deliberate policy of pulling migrant families apart en masse, so that adults would be deterred from coming to the border for fear of losing their children.”
“Top DHS officials were regularly diverted from dealing with genuine security threats by the chore of responding to these inappropriate and often absurd executive requests, at all hours of the day and night,” he said.
He also claimed Trump showed “vanishingly little interest in subjects of vital national security interest, including cybersecurity, domestic terrorism and malicious foreign interference in U.S. affairs.”
“Trump has also damaged the country in countless ways that don’t directly involve national security but, by stoking hatred and division, make Americans profoundly less safe.”
Finally, he warned about the ramifications if Trump won a second term, “It is more than a little ironic that Trump is campaigning for a second term as a law-and-order president. His first term has been dangerously chaotic. Four more years of this are unthinkable.”
Taylor’s op-ed comes hours before the Democratic National Convention begins. Four Republicans are scheduled to speak in support of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
