Part 2 of 2
Former Trump Insider [Miles Taylor] EXPOSES Trump MISHANDLING Classified Info and MORE
by Ben Meiselas
MeidasTouch
Jul 24, 2023 MeidasTouch Podcast - Full Episodes
Ben Meiselas interviews former Donald Trump official Miles Taylor, who became an outspoken whistleblower against Donald Trump. Miles is out with a new book warning about the dangers of another Trump term and how our democracy will be destroyed if that happens. Meiselas gets Miles to deliver some breaking news exclusively with the MeidasTouch Network that Miles Taylor saw Donald Trump mishandle classified information. Special Counsel Jack Smith, are you listening?
Transcript
I'm Ben Meiselas from the Meidas touch Network and we are joined by Miles
Taylor miles previously served as the chief of staff at the U.S Department of
Homeland Security in the Trump Administration where he published an anonymous essay in the New York Times
blowing the whistle on Donald Trump miles has been an outspoken critic of
Donald Trump giving us an inside perspective of the dangers posed by this
malignant narcissistic unqualified sociopathic criminal traitor and Miles a
New York Times Best Sellers out with a new book blow back a warning to save
democracy from the next Trump was released on July 18th I've had the
opportunity to read it and now I have the opportunity to speak with you Miles Taylor and share it with all of the
Midas Mighty watching out there how you doing Ben I'm just glad you didn't introduce me as a narcissistic
sociopathic criminal traitor so you know if I ever enter that territory I need
you to send me a text message and call me out but uh but it's always great to be with you and uh and I've got to say uh just the other day she's gonna get a
kick out of this but my stepmom said I hope you're talking to the Midas touch guys because I love them and I said you
will be delighted to see on the schedule that I am that is so good to hear that she's a part of the Midas Mighty and
knowing that she's gonna be watching this interview so let's get right into
it you know and I've seen a lot of your interviews out there we've covered your book in some of these segments we do
here on the Meidas touch Network so our viewers are familiar but there's one nagging question that I haven't heard
you've been asked by anybody yet and it relates to Donald Trump's handling of
classified information and if you've observed anything about that yesterday there was a big ring in the Federal
Criminal Case brought by special counsel Jack Smith against Donald Trump for his
willful retention of National Defense information so I think the million
dollar question out there that I've never heard you've been asked is did you Miles Taylor observe Donald Trump
mishandling classified information and has special counsel Jack Smith reached
out to you?
[Miles Taylor] well you know Ben uh I did and I haven't heard from the special counsel but you
know I'm I'm willing to say I'm I'm more than happy to talk to the special counsel and his team if it's additive to
this case and I think there's actually probably a lot of other people from the administration who could add color to
this Narrative of Trump's really really reckless handling of National Security
Secrets which we saw all throughout the administration in my case there were several episodes I mean one was getting
a phone call early in the administration from Trump's Homeland Security advisor who uh called to say that the president
had just disclosed highly classified information in the Oval Office uh not
just to some civilians and tourists but to a foreign adversary it's when the Russians were visiting the white house
uh and and that was publicly reported the Sensitivity I think people still don't understand the extreme sensitivity
of what Trump had shared but it didn't stop there because after that we became really concerned about what to share
with Donald Trump and when because we had no confidence that he would protect
highly classified information that we put in front of him because he had a proclivity to talk about those things he
liked having leverage which was you know secrets that other people didn't know that he did know and I saw him brag
about it uh you know in a number of occasions and and one that stood out in particular was a day that I was sitting
in John Bolton's office having a conversation with him when he was Trump's National Security adviser and
and Sarah Sanders then press secretary enters sort of breathlessly to say that Trump had just had a meeting with a
group of reporters and sort of carelessly picked up a fistful of classified documents and waved it in
front of the reporters to brag about the sensitive intelligence he got as
commander-in-chief it was a it was an unbelievable lapse in protocol but I think is in indicative of a wider
Behavior we saw from Donald Trump which was again a failure to protect those secrets that American lives depend on
and we've seen it since the administration so I do hope the special counsel is building out a longer
historical Narrative of Trump's mishandling of documents so that they can show that what happened with the
documents at Mar-A-Lago was by no means some accident or just a brief lapse
[Ben Meiselas] And you'd be willing to testify and speak with special counsel Jack Smith about your observations about how Donald Trump
continuously mishandled classified information while you were in the administration correct well look I'd be
happy to talk to any of the investigators in any of these cases that have to do with the former president
because I think there is really important historical context to a lot of these cases so I mean let's take January
6th and the Insurrection for example the special counsel is investig creating Trump's failure to respond to that
incident or more directly his fomenting of an attempted Insurrection against the capital but I think one of the things
that will be really important in that case is telling the story of how Trump had an affinity for this idea of
invoking the Insurrection act years before he uh ended up fomenting January
6. then it's something that I talk about in blowback is you know as far back as I
remember an episode in 2019 when we had to rush to the White House to stop
Donald Trump from including the Insurrection act in his State of the Union Address he had seen on Fox News
these images of migrants coming to the border and Trump was well aware that he
had in his words this magical Authority called the Insurrection act where he could deploy the U.S military on
domestic soil and he wanted to exert that power and he was this close to
including that in his State of the Union and saying that he was invoking the Insurrection act that it was a national
emergency and he was going to deploy U.S troops uh on soil uh to you know turn
migrants away migrants who had a lawful right to come to the United States by the way people seeking Asylum and we
ultimately talked him out of it we got his lawyers to stand down but what this shows is that this was in Donald Trump's
mind years earlier he knew that if there was an incident like an Insurrection at
the Capitol it would give him pretext to potentially invoke those extraordinary presidential powers and that's why I
think he sat there in the west wing of the White House for hours and watched the event unfold is that he was waiting
for the moment when he felt like he could justify invoking those Powers now that is speculation on my part but I
think it's completely backed up by the history of him wanting to use those authorities for unlawful purposes well
what's not specular Nation though on your part and you've talked about this before and I want you to share with the
Meidas Mighty what you observed Donald Trump wanted to build out his own
mercenary force similar to what he observed with Vladimir Putin and he talked about in a serious way building
out his own personal Army to guard him and protect him and carry out his will
did he not?
[Miles Taylor] yeah I mean this this sounds like the type of thing that is in a is in a bad
Hollywood flop you know just a really bad screenplay but it was the president
of the United States that wanted his own mercenary force and I witnessed some of
the chaos around this internally in the administration in the first year is we
were in the process of briefing Trump on Afghanistan and trying to give him options for what to do next because we
were worried that Trump was going to recklessly handle the exit from Afghanistan and that people would die
U.S troops and civilians uh because of the way that he wanted to just pull out in an instant he needed a much more
sequenced uh reasonable plan so that troops wouldn't be put in danger civilians wouldn't be put in danger in
the course of us developing those options we got word that the president was having private conversations with
people about potentially creating his own mercenary force that could be deployed into Afghanistan allegedly one
of those people he was talking to was Eric Prince the controversial founder of Blackwater the Blackhawks Ops group that
got a lot of attention during the Iraq War um and thankfully we talked him down
from this and in the process of that you can read about it in the book was was absurd I mean you know John Kelly called
me and said you know this 50-page memo that we would normally give to any other president about what his options are is
something Trump literally can't read the man doesn't read we've got to boil this down into a one-pager in his voice and
so I had to write this incandescently stupid memo called something like Afghanistan how to put America First and
win and then Bullet by Bullet I summed up this highly classified memo into Trump's sort of bombastic language
because it was the only way he was going to understand I mean I literally said in there you know if we leave Afghanistan
too fast the terrorists will call us losers but if we want to be seen as winners we need to make sure the Afghan
forces have the strength to push push back against these criminals I mean it was it was that dumb and that's how you
had to talk to him so you know I had to write this this absurdly stupid memo in Trump's voice to persuade him to really
take the serious options seriously and not go create a private mercenary force
that he could send into Afghanistan instead of the military but then in the course of writing this book I didn't
want people just to hear from me I wanted them to hear from dozens and dozens of dozens of people almost all of
them Republicans who were appointed by Trump or were Republican members of Congress about what would happen in a
second term and in the course of those interviews someone brought up this idea of a mercenary Force again a top
official on Trump's National Security Council said that after I left the idea came back again and that Trump
desperately wanted to create his own armed mercenary group so much so that
the NSC had to scramble to write these memos and brief Trump and explain to him why it was a bad idea and they they
ultimately shut it down but what was clear to them is that he had this deep Envy of Vladimir Putin and Vladimir
Putin's own Wagner group right his sort of unaccountable you know band of uh you
know ex-military Fighters that he directly controlled now we've all seen how that worked out for Vladimir Putin
but Trump wanted his own group like that and a number of other officials former top counter terrorism officials and
folks from different departments and agencies said that they also had seen plans on the Shelf to deploy the U.S
military domestically to deploy DHS Security Forces domestically with political aims and that's what they
worry about in a second term and it's what I worry about in a second term I mean one of the people I spoke to for this book who was on Trump's National
Security Council appointed by the president said look in a second term they will try to take DHS forces and
they will send them to polling places in the name of election security but the goal will be to have armed individuals
at the polls to intimidate the political opposition and Ben we saw this in Arizona in the last election these
so-called ballot Watchers these militia men who showed up with guns and their goal wasn't to protect the polls from
violence their goal was to scare Democrats away from voting and to have one of Trump's own senior National Security Council officials say in the
second term he'll do that and he'll do that with official state Security Forces is I think deeply deeply just disturbing
it's the kind of thing you would hear about in a story about a third world Republic about a North Korea or an Iran
uh not the United States but that's the moment that we're in and that's the possibility we're facing yeah and both
unlawful and stupid when you when you look at some of his ideas and you talk
about in the book how Donald Trump's former Chief of Staff someone you mentioned earlier in the interview John
Kelly made the comment that you heard that look one-third of the things that Donald Trump does is illegal one-third
of them is just completely stupid and one-third of that is not possible did I
butcher the quote or do I get it about right well that's that's about right I mean you know Kelly's point was that
um you know we rarely have credible ideas uh from the president and you know
that was a point in the administration shortly before Kelly left and and he was growing immensely frustrated at his
inability to sort of hem Donald Trump in uh you know year one I think we were
able to keep a lot of the bad ideas in the Box you know his plans to pull out of NATO or shoot migrants at the border
uh or you know weaponize America's spy Powers against his political opponents
you know those things were put back in the box but by year two you know Trump was resisting these people who had a
conscience around him and if you can give him credit for anything it's that he had this finely tuned radar for
people with a conscience and he found them and he systematically eliminated them from the administration and that's
one of my warnings about a second Trump term or a copycat is there will not be these John Kelly's and Jim mattises that
come into the administration with the goal of trying to help the president govern and keeping him in check there
won't be it will be filled with political loyalty Loyalists and John Bolton said that to me and Mark esper
his former Defense secretary and on down the list it was actually the biggest thing I heard is people fearing the low
quality and character of the folks that will be running the federal government if we see a return of trumpism in the
white house when you talk with some of these Republican colleagues and or I
don't even know if they still identify with this modern day Republican party but you know one of the things that
shocks me is when I guess nothing could shock me anymore though when you see someone like the governor of Georgia
Brian Kemp and he says things like he recognizes that Donald Trump poses an
existential threat to our country that what he did on January 6 was traitorous it makes statements he tried to
overthrow the election in Georgia but then in the next breath he's asked a question well would you vote for him and
the response as well if he's the Republican nominee yeah I would I would vote for him i i i i i it's really inexplicable to me
and look Brian Kemp you can say a lot of things about him and I could be very critical of some of his policies but
in theory an intelligent person how does that how do you square that away when you see
that and do you see that when you speak with kind of former Republicans who are very critical of trump who who say well
I guess if he's not me I still got to vote for him I I think it's incredibly depressing and
and I hear that from a lot of folks and I I think that's why it's very plausible that Donald Trump becomes the next
president of the United States I think it's a very real possibility you know been a lot of our friends are sort of in
denial about that and folks don't want to think it can happen and and we keep fantasizing that the Justice
Department's going to take him down or this case or that case uh you know we've got it twice impeached twice indicted
you know potentially soon three-time indicted maybe more ex-president who's still not suffering in the polls because
of it we have to prepare ourselves for the prospect of a second term and that's
why I wrote this I mean no one wants to read another Trump retrospective or another Memoir and but what I was
frustrated by was that no one was out there detailing in a very clear-eyed way
what would happen if we make this Civic mistake again and we had great reporting
from The New York Times a few days ago uh that talked about how Trump has these
plans to use the powers of the presidency for revenge and that's just
the tip of the iceberg I mean blowback goes into detailed department by Department of exactly what they mean by
revenge and what they're going to try to do with those agencies I mean you know one of the ones that was really
disgusting to me is what I heard about America's veterans is there's plans on the Shelf in a second term to basically
destroy the social safety net for America's veterans the people who served
this country in uniform many of them wounded their families who sacrificed to pull that social safety net out from
under them why I mean why would anyone even consider that well it's because Donald Trump found out that the VA was
the second biggest department in the federal government with a 250 billion dollar budget and he wanted that money
spent somewhere else he wanted to spend it on political priorities again this isn't Miles Taylor saying this I mean
this is Trump's senior leaders at the Department of Veterans Affairs that he appoint painted they said that Trump
thought of Veterans as quote lazy malingerers and he didn't care if they were kicked out onto the street he was
just so frustrated that so much money was being spent on them and we know about Trump's long history of animosity
towards veterans how he went to France uh to Mark the anniversary of the Normandy invasion and said the guys in
the ground were suckers and losers because they didn't survive in the battle and look I'm not a psychologist
but I'm sure this has something to do with the fact that he was a draft Dodger that you know he used a false excuse
allegedly of bone spurs to avoid going into the draft and since then he's had this deeply vile view towards people who
serve this country and that's why he was so excited as president to bring the generals to serve under them he wanted
the generals under his thumb and I'll never forget standing in the Oval Office when John Kelly was sworn in as white
house chief of staff it was like a good man jumping on a grenade being thrown by
a bad one and the only person smiling in that room was Donald Trump is because he thought he was bringing Kelly in to keep
him in check and Kelly thought he was there to keep Trump in check and ultimately as much as I admire General
Kelly and I do Donald Trump ended up being the right one because it was clear that we were wrong that unelected
bureaucrats were never going to be able to protect this country from a wayward commander-in-chief and they certainly
won't be there if there's a second term
you also describe Donald Trump's treatment of female
staffers how he talked about his own daughter Ivanka can you speak to that
yeah you know this is something that I have told a couple of other people that I was unsure whether I even wanted to
put in the book because it's so disgusting um it doesn't have to do with public
policy on the surface but I included it anyway because when John
Kelly recounted that episode to me about Trump talking about ivanka's body and what it might like be like to have sex
with her his comment after that is Miles Trump is a very very evil man and
there's not a lot of things that can persuade his voters Maga voters really
hardcore ones to break from the former president but I've got to think they draw a line somewhere and I've got to
think they would draw the line at incest and it's not just John Kelly saying this
there's this rap sheet that goes on and on of Trump's sexualizing his own
children I mean you've got Trump going out there talking about how Democrats are are pedophiles and perverts this guy
acts in a way that's you know makes pedophiles look like you know innocent
people he is a consummate pervert and that deficient moral character can't
somehow be compartmentalized from the full-time job he brings that same lack
of character uh and disgusting attitude towards his work to towards relations
with other countries towards democracies guard rails he's a man without a moral
compass whatsoever and what worries me Ben is for the longest time I made the
mistake of thinking that Trump was an aberration and just a uniquely disturbing human being and that we only
needed to get past him but his views and his ethos have infused the Republican
party and now we are seeing them fall all over themselves to try to become the
next Trump and that's what I try to warn about here is that even if Trump doesn't win a lot of the candidates in this
field are trying to outdo him and take the policies that even he walked back
from and take them further and Implement them if the Maga movement retakes the White House and and it pains me to say
it but I genuinely think uh if we put another manga president in the white house it is the end of our democracy and
there's other people in this book uh quoted one of them Sue Gordon who was deputy director of National Intelligence
under Trump I asked her and her comment was I have low confidence that America
reaches its 300th birthday in any recognizable form if we put another
person like that in the White House and that's pretty damning coming from it's someone that Trump hand-picked to run
his intelligence community so in 2020 a lot of people who may have been on
opposite sides of the political Spectrum United in a common goal for democracy
there was a lot of passion a lot of energy out there from the ads that were
being made to whistleblowers coming forward to there was a lot a lot of
energy at that time as we approached the 2024 election what do you think is the
solution we know the warning but what has to be done now you know we're less
than 500 days away from election what has to be done well a couple things need to be done and
you point to one of the really important ones which is what I call Coalition campaigning it's really really vital
that this time around we make sure that concerned conservatives and independents
Coalition with Democrats to make sure that this doesn't happen again My worry
is I'm not entirely sure that that's the case I mean when I look at the polling
and I look every week at these new polls that drop about the attitudes of the GOP base you see a lot of these Republicans
who defected in 2020 and voted for Joe Biden you see him going back home you
see them going back to the GOP tribe and that worries me because we need those
voters as a firewall to prevent someone like Trump from coming back but they
aren't and part of the reason they aren't is because Republican leaders have continued to stand by Trump at
every opportunity they've had to break with him whether it was the Insurrection whether it was the unlawful retention of
classified documents indictment after indictment largely Republican leaders have stood by them which basically
signals to voters hey he's a good guy this is all politicized and it
perpetuates this conspiracy theory of a justice department that's out to get him for political retribution most of these
people in Jack Smith's team and otherwise they're all public servants a political public servants and they have
no reporting line to the president of the United States that's actively used to run these cases but that narrative
has taken hold so I worry about that Coalition staying together and the only way we can make it work is to get more
of these prominent Republicans to speak out luckily in the primaries we've seen people like Chris Christie and ASA
Hutchinson and will Hurd go out there and speak the truth but these guys are a minority I mean they've got single
digits in the polls what we need are people who know better like Kevin McCarthy the speaker of the house to
come out and say the things he used to say privately about Donald Trump I mean I witnessed him complain about Donald Trump all the time not just when I was
working in the house when I was at the Department of Homeland Security as Chief of Staff I mean you know Kevin McCarthy would call us when we would enlist his
help in trying to fix Trump problems and say you know he one time this quoted in the book he said you know why the [ __ ]
am I having to do this you know essentially like why is this guy so out of control like why do I have to keep intervening from Capitol Hill to keep
him from making stupid decisions Kevin needs to say those things publicly Kevin needs to stop keeping those opinions
private and the same with his lieutenants and the same with his caucus I mean I've got a lot of friends who are still in Congress I've got Republican
members of Congress that are friends of mine that are peers of mine that we came up together we'll go out for beers and
they'll say the same thing Trump's a danger to democracy but their mistake is in thinking he will just go away no he
will not go away unless they have the courage from within the tribe to start attacking him and diminishing his
political support and if they don't do that we are going to Zombie Walk Off The Democratic Cliff you know one of the
reasons I took a detour in the career trajectory I was on to build this
pro-democracy media network is I just felt when I was clicking through the
channels or searching online that a lot of I'm not saying all I don't want to
cast it with such a broad brush but a lot of Legacy Media is also normalizing
the behavior and every single day Donald Trump's on his social media platform
posting Q Anon memes threatening prosecutors yet the story that's
presented to the public outside of this network and a number of other uh and
some small few other networks is yeah just Democrats Republicans we are in a
situation where there's lots of polarization Americans are very divide did and they just fail to meet the
moment and do we just have to Recon my my answer
was I just got to rebuild the thing and create a new one and and do it but but
what do you see there I mean they over intellectualize it what's going on there
I think it's going to be really hard because people are exhausted and and you
know this well Ben it's one of the ironies of being in this space is you know the the other side the Maga side
tries to say well any of these never trumpers or former Republicans or rhinos or you know these these you know
Democrats you know they're all coming at us because they're grifters and I find that allegation remarkably funny because
like doing this you know being on this podcast talking to you writing this book has been literally the opposite of
financially lucrative like when I was working in the private sector and working in the tech sector I was finally
making very good money you know what's not a really good thing for business you know what's [ __ ] the stupidest thing
for business it's the dumbest thing I mean if people want to know if they want to see my
salary for the past two years my salary for the past two years has been less than it was when I was in government and
we don't pay government servants well so no you know I'm not getting rich off of talking about Trump if anything it is
deeply suppressed my financial situation and and again no one has to have sympathy for me I'm doing this because
it has to be done but you know when I came out against Trump yeah I say this all the time I did lose my home I did
lose my job I did lose relationships I did lose my life savings I was on unemployment for months so you know I
want those people who accuse folks like us being grifters come say that to my things because we are in this because
our country is literally on the cusp of potential what I call Civic suicidal
ideation it's essentially as a country where uh we're looking down the barrel of a gun and about to make a horrible
mistake that we cannot walk back from and we have to wake up to that and I'm so frustrated with a lot of the the
mentors I had coming up in Washington who I thought would have the courage to go sound that alarm and they didn't and
I'm just a kid from a middle class town in Indiana a small farm town and I grew
up thinking if someone's bad and if there's a bully you call it out and a lot of these people apparently weren't
raised that way and rather than acting like adults they've act like children
hiding under the bed from the Boogeyman and if they continue to do that we will
lose this we will lose this thing that we call our democracy and you know
Reagan said we were you know Freedom was always a generation away from Extinction and the founders thought that right the
famous quote from Ben Franklin when they asked him after he walked out of the Constitutional Convention well what have
we and he said a republic if you can keep it and there was a worry even then that we were always a few steps away
from throwing this away and I think that right now we're at Graver risk of that
than we were in 2016 than we were in 2020 I hate to sound like the broken record but I do think the 2024
presidential election will be the decisive referendum on the survival of American democracy really who are we as
a country I mean and I think it goes in two extremes right it either becomes
this fascist dystopia that looks like Russia or I think a pro-democracy
coalition can unite and you know there could be actual progress made and you
know yeah you and I probably disagree on a bunch of issues we probably agree on a
bunch of issues but ultimately we could have a very civil conversation and ultimately we want to make sure that
Americans can find a great job we want to make sure that they've got great working conditions right we want to make
sure that people can get health care now you and I in the past may have had disagreements or agreements I I don't
know about what's the best delivery method but we all agree that people should get health care and people should
not be spending huge amounts of money because big Pharma is jacking up rates
and like like we should protect our veterans like we we should and and you and I talk about those issues issues if
you were to watch what the podcast is going on on the other side of of the war
of the country they're talking about how the Barbie movie is a communist plot and
Mr Potato had this and you know I I just think that's what's that's what's on the
line ultimately I give you the final and and those things used to be Fringe conspiracy theories and what alarms me
is my former party has mainstreamed those conspiracy theories and a vast
majority of the the base now believes them that is changing their voting behavior and it's leading to some very
dangerous things and and I'll Echo your sentiment Ben which is you and I probably have tons of policy disagreements you know and and for
listeners I'm no liberal I'm a Libertarian conservative I'm that evil guy that you think wants to make
government so small and Destroy social services and blah blah blah blah I mean it's My Views are much more Humane than
that but I'm a hardcore libertarian that doesn't matter if the American experiment itself is on the line I am
more than happy to go team up with a Bernie Sanders you know Democrat that's the antithesis of my world view if it
means protecting our country and we all need to be doing that because I would love next time I come on the podcast Ben
that that the world's better our politics are better and you and I are just getting in a scrappy debate about welfare reform or you know taxes or
something like that that's what we need to go back to but we're not in that moment because democracy is on the line so if there's one exhortation I would
make to people again I'm not making a bunch of money off this book but what I want you to do is share this with
someone who needs to read it because almost all the voices in blowback are
from Republicans and Republicans that were appointed by Trump or served under Trump painting a picture of what he or a
copycat would do back in office people need to be clear-eyed about this before they enter the voting booth uh so I hope
they spread the message well we appreciate you you're spreading the message on the Meidas touch Network
everybody gets your copy of blowback a warning to save democracy from the next
Trump I've read it hopefully all of you will read it and share in the comments your thoughts about the book share in
the comments if you are purchasing this and make sure to recommend it to a family member friend co-worker colleague
or neighbor as well Miles Taylor thanks for joining us as always Ben you're a patriot I appreciate you
thank you for everything you guys do this has been the Ben micellis from the Midas touch Network interview with Miles
Taylor have a great day everybody