The Trump administration whistleblower who wrote an unflattering essay in The New York Times has been named as Miles Taylor. And naturally, Taylor has been able to leverage his willingness toward maligning Trump into a book deal. Taylor’s first book, published under the name “Anonymous,” was titled A Warning and released in November 2019. Taylor’s forthcoming second book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, will be released under his own name.
Taylor recently gave an interview with The Guardian.
“It’s been my experience the past couple of years that when someone notices you and they come over say, ‘Are you such and such person?’, you don’t know if that’s going to be someone who says thank you for what you did or someone spits in your face and tries to punch you. So yeah, I try to lower my voice in public.”
Regretting anonymity
Taylor regrets that he remained anonymous for so long. “It’s obviously very ironic coming from me but, in the aftermath of all of that, I came to the conclusion that the biggest threat to our democracy was anonymity,” he said. All of that refers to the fervor surrounding his first NYT article melodramatically titled ‘I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.’
“The article made public what cabinet members were saying in private: Trump was unstable and unfit,” The Guardian reported. And then, “guessing the identity of the author became a Washington parlour game, with Trump demanding the Times unmask him (“TREASON?” he tweeted).”
Taylor wouldn’t unmask himself until October 2020.
“The people who most needed to come forward and tell the truth were cowed into silence, including me. I thought anonymously surrounding the alarm about the president would draw attention to the message instead of the messenger and always intended to unveil myself. But in the aftermath I realized I really should have done that a lot sooner both for political reasons and personal reasons.”
Taylor elaborated on his decision-making process. “But then personally, the living two lives was an enormous stressor on my psyche and my life. The pressure to come forward or not? Frankly, at the core of it, the reason why I delayed was fear and, as I dove deeper into myself, it felt like cowardice because I saw what happened to people who went against Trump. While I convinced myself, Look, you’re going to unmask yourself eventually,’ I was hesitant in that time after the publication of the op-ed and the book, because I didn’t want my life ripped to shreds. But ultimately, I felt I really had to do that,” he said.
Incentive to dissent on Donald Trump?
I do wonder if Taylor didn’t take a look around and recognize that no one was more in demand than a conservative who was willing to denounce Trump. Liberal America, desperate to have their views on Trump validated, have been instantly praising any conservative willing to denounce Trump. Former Representative uber-hawk turned MSNBC martyr Liz Cheney is the prime example.
Granted, Taylor was criticizing Trump before it became fashionable. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Taylor anticipated the benefits of criticizing Trump. Two books for example. Left-wing hero worship. A job at Google. That’s a pretty sweet deal.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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