This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what You
here weekday afternoons on the Drive. Miles Taylor is a former Department of Homeland
Security Chief of staff and he's composed a new book that's getting a lot of
attention called Blowback, A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, and
he's joining us now, Good greetings, Miles, Lee, it's great to
be with you. Well, let's start with the motivation to write this book
in the first place. Yeah, the motivation was immense frustration about the fact
that most people who left the Trump administration were just writing self serving memoirs about
how great they were and how they protected the country, and no one was
talking about how the danger is still real and painting a very vivid, honest
picture of what would happen if Donald Trump took office again. So that's what
I set out to do, is paint that picture and spoke to dozens and
dozens of my former colleagues to say, you know, good, bad,
or ugly, tell me what a second term of Donald Trump will look like.
Now you realize that out here in the middle of the country, we
are got used to opening up our four o one case statements and saying wow,
thank you President Trump. Yeah, well and rightfully. So. I
mean, look, I'm a lifelong Republican, and there were a lot of
policies that we implemented during the Trump administration. Frankly that I'm proud of.
There's a lot that I'm not proud of. But my bigger concern is the
character of the person in the Oval Office, and what I saw from Air
Force One to you know, the White House situation room was a guy who
just couldn't focus on the job. And what was worrying to me at Homeland
Security is when it came to issues of life and death, protecting US troops,
protecting American lives, we could not get him to focus on the job
and take it seriously. That was really alarming. So I'd much rather see
a different Republican take the White House. But I don't think we can afford
a second term of this guy. Miles Taylor's with us. So I'm glad
that you're going in this direction because you know, there's a lot of people
that would look at this book and look at what you're saying in this book
and say, ah, sour grapes. Yeah, no, no, no,
and rightfully, you know, I mean rightfully, they would say,
I'll look at this guy, he's just well, as Trump said, he's
just a disgruntled employee. Well, really, I'm a Republican that wants to
see a real Republican in office. And my frustration with Trump is, you
know, as conservatives, we've always believed in limited government, but Donald Trump
wanted a government so big that it was inside your head every single day.
And now he's out there on the campaign trail saying crazy things about how he's
going to have unlimited executive power. He fantasizes about being like Vladimir Putin in
Russia and jij and Ping in China. These aren't our friends. These are
America's enemies, and Republicans have always known that. And I don't even think
this guy's a Republican. I mean that was the frustration is Trump just doesn't
represent you know, GOP values. So you know, that's why I think
we got to move on, and in our country depends on it. The
name of the book is Blowback. It's so written by Miles Taylor, former
Apartment of Homeland Security Chief of Staff. Correct me if I'm wrong, Miles,
because I've worked for people like what I think Donald Trump is, I
don't know, haven't sat down with him, but type of guy that would
call you at three am on Christmas morning with a brilliant idea and expect you
to get up out of bed and go into the office and immediately implement that
idea. And if you don't do it, well, then you're he resents
you for it. Is he that type of guy he is? And that's
probably fine if you're working at a home depot. But when you're leading the
Department of Homeland Security and you're managing two hundred and fifty thousand employees and a
sixty billion dollar budget and Donald Trump calls you in the middle of the night
and wants to build a moat at the border with snakes and alligators in it,
it's a little bit more than just a distraction. And by the way,
Lee, that's not even a made up story. That's quite literally what
happened. It wasn't three am. I think it was ten thirty am on
a Tuesday when we got that phone call. But it was those sort of
wacky ideas that through your Department of Homeland Security completely off track in moments where
you the taxpayer probably wanted us to be paying attention to the real threats.
I do have my problems with Donald Trump and his stream of consciousness way of
doing things. And it's the time I've said this on this program many times.
He's the type of person I've worked for people like that before, and
I can't stand working with him because they don't seem to have any respect for
your time or your space or any of that. And they never give you
any time to implement anything because they're always onto the next thing. Yeah,
the distracted nature was what was really tough. I mean, look again,
I will say I wanted nothing more than him to rise to the moment and
be good at his job. But the plain fact is he was not.
I mean, you know, one example that I would give you a lee
is when we were giving the president options on what to do next and Afghanist
the beginning of the administration, his chief staff John Kelly called me and said,
the fifty page memo that any other president in the United States would read,
because we're again we're talking about life and death US troops. He said
it's too long for him. I need you to boil it down to one
page. And we had to boil it down to one page, and we
had to write it in Trump's voice, And so the memo literally was called
Afghanistan, how to put America first? And when we don't want to look
like losers and the terrorists are trying to make us look like losers. I
mean it was like a comedy, yeah, I mean we had to write
a comic strip. He needed to read a full long classified document to understand
the severity. Instead, he wanted us to sketch him a picture. We're
talking to Miles Taylor. He wants to renew the American movement as well as
his new book called Blowback, a Warning to Save Democracy from the next Trump.
Now in the book, you say that the MAGA movement has paved away
for political intelligence community to be kind of weaponized. I mean, I don't
know that it can be any more weaponized than it already is. Rich Nixon
would be wedding as pants for a Justice Department like this. Well, you
know, I will tell you right now, my biggest worry is the Justice
Department and the intelligence community overall being politicized, whether it's by the left or
the right. These are institutions that need to be independent because you know,
whether you're a Republican or Democrat, you need to know the other side is
going to be in power at some point, and when they are, you
want those institutions to remain independent. Now, my self criticism as a conservative
of our side is when Donald Trump started to say he wanted to take a
wrecking ball to the FBI and cleanse it, that was a little too extreme.
Could there have been reform over there, certainly, But now I worry
that people want to go too far. We can't detonate these institutions. We
should reform these institutions. But by the way, most of the time we
rely on these people to break up child smuggling rings, go after drug cartels,
and protect us in most FBI agents I ever worked with are nonpartisan civil
servants that love this country. And and that's the one thing I would urge
fellow conservatives is our motto has been back the Blue, and Donald Trump has
proposed a lot of ways to hurt the blue and wreck the blue and destroy
the agencies where you know, law enforcement work and operate. I think there's
a lot better candidates out there to lead the party to make sure we get
the reforms we need, but also to protect our frontline defenders, Miles Taylor,
and I will I will say for me, bottom line is I did
agree with his Supreme Court choices when he was in office, and do thank
god that he was the one making those choices at the time. Yeah.
You know, like I said, we ended up with some good things from
the Trump era if you're a conservative. But what we didn't end up with
was a man with the mental faculties of handling the job. And and and
you don't have to even take it from me firsthand. I mean the folks
that I spoke to for this book, Blowback and my podcast, the whistleblowers
are people who were Trump's cabinet secretaries and top confidants, and they've said very
clearly, it's time to move on. This guy doesn't have what it takes
to do the job, and his desire to use the powers of the presidency
for personal purposes is not what we want in a commander in chief. So
you know, my message is to fellow Republicans conservatives, it's time for us
to move on. Glad you mentioned the podcast, because I forgot to mention
it earlier. Miles Taylor. The name of the book Blowback, and you
can hear the podcast Whistleblowers on the iHeartRadio Appen anywhere you get podcast blowback,
a warning to save democracy from the next Trump challenge. You're thinking by reading
it, and I thank you for joining us. Miles Taylor, Lee Matthews,
thank you, my friend. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday
afternoons from five to seven and I Hearts Media presentation