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As Taylor described it, Trump was determined to be able to watch his Homeland Security team in action. “He was ordering us to go to the border so that we could see us there working,” Taylor said. “Do you really think Kirstjen and I are installing the steel bollards?” It was discouraging to say the least.
Taylor said constant pressure from the White House to focus on immigration enforcement and border security has kept senior DHS officials from focusing on other issues, including election security and cyber threats. The ministry leadership was “going around in circles” while he was there, he said.
“There would literally be streams of threats that we could read in the PDB [President’s Daily Brief] and we were like, “Shit, we have to spend the day on this!” And the president was calling and we were like, ‘No, I’m not going to be able to spend the day on this because it’s focused on dah-dah dah-dah.
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said Taylor was speaking only for mercenary reasons.
“This individual is another creature of the DC Swamp who has never understood the importance of the president’s agenda or why the American people elected him and clearly just wants to cash in,” he said in a statement. . “President Trump has accomplished an unprecedented number of accomplishments despite government bureaucrats who are only for themselves, not the forgotten men and women of this country.”
Taylor endorsed Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race on Monday. Many former Trump administration officials criticized the president’s leadership and expressed reluctance to vote for him. But Taylor is the first former senior official in his administration to endorse his opponent. The former DHS chief of staff appeared in a video cut by Republican voters against Trump, also wrote a Washington Post op-ed, and appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America – all to denounce his former boss.
Trump, meanwhile, tweeted that Taylor is “a DEGRADED FORMER EMPLOYEE” he had never heard of. Taylor replied with Tweeter a photo of him and Trump side-by-side, both giving the camera a big thumbs up.
Nielsen did not respond to a request for comment.
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