Former President Donald Trump remains hugely popular with a large segment of Americans – even as his critics have ramped up their warnings that he should never be allowed to return to the White House. While his high-profile detractors include former New Jersey Governor and onetime advisor Chris Christie and former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney among others, the most dire warnings are coming from a name few Americans are likely to know – Miles Taylor.
The White House whistleblower first warned of Trump’s alleged abuses in a 2018 op-ed for The New York Times, using the pen name “Anonymous.” Taylor, the chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at the time, went on to back President Joe Biden in 2020 after he was revealed to be the author of the editorial titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”
Taylor is now warning that Trump is a threat to the future of American democracy – and laid out his argument in his new book, “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump.”
Donald Trump Means Nuclear War?
In his book, Taylor described how many at DHS expressed concerns that Trump would accidentally lead the country into a nuclear war with North Korea.
“For the first time in the history of the Department of Homeland Security, we convened every single leader to talk through actual real-life preparations for what we might have to do if we ended up in a nuclear conflict with another nation state. I will tell you that, in the wake of those preparatory meetings, I felt like we were woefully unprepared as a country to enter that type of conflict, which made it all the more reckless that Trump was being so bellicose with regard to the North Koreans,” Taylor wrote.
Boots on the Ground – in America?
Taylor offered a more concise warning in a recent editorial for Time magazine, suggesting it isn’t just nuclear war that is a threat. It could be literally American soldiers deployed on our streets.
“Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, aides worried he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy the military on U.S. soil. The prospect became a vivid possibility on January 6, 2021. What hasn’t been widely discussed is that Donald Trump came within sentences of making it happen – two years prior.”
Taylor explained that the former president had asked aides to draft language invoking the extraordinary powers in 2019 so that he could expel migrants from the United States by force. Though Trump was eventually talked out of it, the concern is that he could still do so if he returns to the White House.
“‘Trump 2.0’ won’t be as bad as many think. It will be worse,” Taylor further cautioned, and added, “We should assume the probability of a MAGA redux is significant. The GOP’s anti-democratic, populist wing remains firmly in control of the party, and if another Trump-like leader is elected, Congress and the courts will struggle to keep up.”
Countdown to Doomsday
Even if Trump weren’t to end the world in nuclear war, he could end democracy, Taylor suggested to the Guardian newspaper by employing secret powers known by national security officials as “the doomsday book” to manipulate elections and satisfy his authoritarian impulses.
“The aides that guarded that book were concerned about the president reading it, or MAGA allies around him getting a hold of it, because especially towards the end of the administration, they witnessed the president’s proclivity to abuse his authorities for political purposes, and especially as he started to signal that the 2020 election might be stolen or he could be cheated, those same people were concerned about Trump realizing he had even more extraordinary powers than he knew and that he might potentially use those to cement a coup,” Taylor explained.
“Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump” is published in the US by Atria Books.
Author Experience and Expertise
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
From 19FortyFive
AOC Just Proved How Stupid She Is
