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'Joe Biden will protect the country': Former senior Trump administration official

WION Web Team
Washington, United States of AmericaUpdated: Aug 18, 2020, 10:13 AM IST
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Photograph:(Reuters)

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Taylor claimed that if anyone in the White House protested against Trump's illegal actions, Trump reminded them of the 'magical authorities' that a President can exercise

A former senior Trump administration official, Miles Taylor, has accused the US President Donald Trump of not taking national security issues seriously.

"What we saw week in and week out, for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying. We would go in to try to talk to him about a pressing national security issue -- cyberattack, terrorism threat -- he wasn't interested in those things. To him, they weren't priorities," Taylor says in a video produced by the group Republican Voters Against Trump.

Taylor, a longtime Republican, served as the chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

In the video, he endorsed Joe Biden, who is contesting in the US Presidential elections 2020 against Donald Trump, and claimed the only reason behind his change of heart is that he thinks Biden will be able to protect the country, unlike Trump who, he claims, is "dangerous" for the country. 

"Given what I have experienced in the administration, I have to support Joe Biden for president and even though I am not a Democrat, even though I disagree on key issues, I'm confident that Joe Biden will protect the country and I'm confident that he won't make the same mistakes as this President," he said.

In the video, Taylor accused trump of bias against California as it was not a "political base" for him. He claims Trump ordered FEMA to withhold the disaster funding for California, simply because the California-residents did not vote for him.

"He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn't support him and that politically it wasn't a base for him," Taylor said in the video.

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He further accused Trump of planning to implement a 'zero-tolerance' immigration policy which laid down plans of separating migrant families. "He said he wanted to go further and have a deliberate policy of ripping children away from their parents to show those parents that they shouldn't come to the border in the first place."

He also claimed that if anyone in the White House protested against Trump's illegal actions, Trump simply reminded them of the "magical authorities" that a President can exercise.

"He was one of the most unfocused and undisciplined senior executives I have ever encountered," Taylor said. "I came away completely equipped based on firsthand experience that the President was ill-equipped and wouldn't become equipped to do his job effectively -- and what's worse, was actively doing damage to our national security."

However, White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is also Trump's son-in-law, dismissed all accusation by Taylor and said, "It makes a lot of sense to me that he's endorsing Joe Biden because when he was working at the Department of Homeland Security, no wall was built and the border was wide open. That's why the President changed up the team there."