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This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what You

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here weekday afternoons on the Drive.
Miles Taylor is a former Department of Homeland

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Security Chief of staff and he's composed
a new book that's getting a lot of

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attention called Blowback, A Warning to
Save Democracy from the Next Trump, and

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he's joining us now, Good greetings, Miles, Lee, it's great to

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be with you. Well, let's
start with the motivation to write this book

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in the first place. Yeah,
the motivation was immense frustration about the fact

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that most people who left the Trump
administration were just writing self serving memoirs about

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how great they were and how they
protected the country, and no one was

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talking about how the danger is still
real and painting a very vivid, honest

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picture of what would happen if Donald
Trump took office again. So that's what

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I set out to do, is
paint that picture and spoke to dozens and

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dozens of my former colleagues to say, you know, good, bad,

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or ugly, tell me what a
second term of Donald Trump will look like.

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Now you realize that out here in
the middle of the country, we

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are got used to opening up our
four o one case statements and saying wow,

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thank you President Trump. Yeah,
well and rightfully. So. I

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mean, look, I'm a lifelong
Republican, and there were a lot of

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policies that we implemented during the Trump
administration. Frankly that I'm proud of.

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There's a lot that I'm not proud
of. But my bigger concern is the

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character of the person in the Oval
Office, and what I saw from Air

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Force One to you know, the
White House situation room was a guy who

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just couldn't focus on the job.
And what was worrying to me at Homeland

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Security is when it came to issues
of life and death, protecting US troops,

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protecting American lives, we could not
get him to focus on the job

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and take it seriously. That was
really alarming. So I'd much rather see

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a different Republican take the White House. But I don't think we can afford

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a second term of this guy.
Miles Taylor's with us. So I'm glad

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that you're going in this direction because
you know, there's a lot of people

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that would look at this book and
look at what you're saying in this book

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and say, ah, sour grapes. Yeah, no, no, no,

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and rightfully, you know, I
mean rightfully, they would say,

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I'll look at this guy, he's
just well, as Trump said, he's

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just a disgruntled employee. Well,
really, I'm a Republican that wants to

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see a real Republican in office.
And my frustration with Trump is, you

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know, as conservatives, we've always
believed in limited government, but Donald Trump

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wanted a government so big that it
was inside your head every single day.

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And now he's out there on the
campaign trail saying crazy things about how he's

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going to have unlimited executive power.
He fantasizes about being like Vladimir Putin in

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Russia and jij and Ping in China. These aren't our friends. These are

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America's enemies, and Republicans have always
known that. And I don't even think

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this guy's a Republican. I mean
that was the frustration is Trump just doesn't

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represent you know, GOP values.
So you know, that's why I think

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we got to move on, and
in our country depends on it. The

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name of the book is Blowback.
It's so written by Miles Taylor, former

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Apartment of Homeland Security Chief of Staff. Correct me if I'm wrong, Miles,

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because I've worked for people like what
I think Donald Trump is, I

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don't know, haven't sat down with
him, but type of guy that would

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call you at three am on Christmas
morning with a brilliant idea and expect you

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to get up out of bed and
go into the office and immediately implement that

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idea. And if you don't do
it, well, then you're he resents

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you for it. Is he that
type of guy he is? And that's

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probably fine if you're working at a
home depot. But when you're leading the

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Department of Homeland Security and you're managing
two hundred and fifty thousand employees and a

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sixty billion dollar budget and Donald Trump
calls you in the middle of the night

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and wants to build a moat at
the border with snakes and alligators in it,

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it's a little bit more than just
a distraction. And by the way,

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Lee, that's not even a made
up story. That's quite literally what

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happened. It wasn't three am.
I think it was ten thirty am on

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a Tuesday when we got that phone
call. But it was those sort of

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wacky ideas that through your Department of
Homeland Security completely off track in moments where

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you the taxpayer probably wanted us to
be paying attention to the real threats.

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I do have my problems with Donald
Trump and his stream of consciousness way of

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doing things. And it's the time
I've said this on this program many times.

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He's the type of person I've worked
for people like that before, and

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I can't stand working with him because
they don't seem to have any respect for

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your time or your space or any
of that. And they never give you

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any time to implement anything because they're
always onto the next thing. Yeah,

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the distracted nature was what was really
tough. I mean, look again,

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I will say I wanted nothing more
than him to rise to the moment and

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be good at his job. But
the plain fact is he was not.

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I mean, you know, one
example that I would give you a lee

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is when we were giving the president
options on what to do next and Afghanist

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the beginning of the administration, his
chief staff John Kelly called me and said,

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the fifty page memo that any other
president in the United States would read,

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because we're again we're talking about life
and death US troops. He said

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it's too long for him. I
need you to boil it down to one

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page. And we had to boil
it down to one page, and we

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had to write it in Trump's voice, And so the memo literally was called

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Afghanistan, how to put America first? And when we don't want to look

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like losers and the terrorists are trying
to make us look like losers. I

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mean it was like a comedy,
yeah, I mean we had to write

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a comic strip. He needed to
read a full long classified document to understand

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the severity. Instead, he wanted
us to sketch him a picture. We're

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talking to Miles Taylor. He wants
to renew the American movement as well as

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his new book called Blowback, a
Warning to Save Democracy from the next Trump.

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Now in the book, you say
that the MAGA movement has paved away

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for political intelligence community to be kind
of weaponized. I mean, I don't

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know that it can be any more
weaponized than it already is. Rich Nixon

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would be wedding as pants for a
Justice Department like this. Well, you

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know, I will tell you right
now, my biggest worry is the Justice

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Department and the intelligence community overall being
politicized, whether it's by the left or

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the right. These are institutions that
need to be independent because you know,

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whether you're a Republican or Democrat,
you need to know the other side is

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going to be in power at some
point, and when they are, you

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want those institutions to remain independent.
Now, my self criticism as a conservative

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of our side is when Donald Trump
started to say he wanted to take a

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wrecking ball to the FBI and cleanse
it, that was a little too extreme.

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Could there have been reform over there, certainly, But now I worry

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that people want to go too far. We can't detonate these institutions. We

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should reform these institutions. But by
the way, most of the time we

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rely on these people to break up
child smuggling rings, go after drug cartels,

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and protect us in most FBI agents
I ever worked with are nonpartisan civil

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servants that love this country. And
and that's the one thing I would urge

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fellow conservatives is our motto has been
back the Blue, and Donald Trump has

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proposed a lot of ways to hurt
the blue and wreck the blue and destroy

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the agencies where you know, law
enforcement work and operate. I think there's

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a lot better candidates out there to
lead the party to make sure we get

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the reforms we need, but also
to protect our frontline defenders, Miles Taylor,

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and I will I will say for
me, bottom line is I did

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agree with his Supreme Court choices when
he was in office, and do thank

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god that he was the one making
those choices at the time. Yeah.

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You know, like I said,
we ended up with some good things from

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the Trump era if you're a conservative. But what we didn't end up with

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was a man with the mental faculties
of handling the job. And and and

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you don't have to even take it
from me firsthand. I mean the folks

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that I spoke to for this book, Blowback and my podcast, the whistleblowers

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are people who were Trump's cabinet secretaries
and top confidants, and they've said very

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clearly, it's time to move on. This guy doesn't have what it takes

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to do the job, and his
desire to use the powers of the presidency

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for personal purposes is not what we
want in a commander in chief. So

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you know, my message is to
fellow Republicans conservatives, it's time for us

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to move on. Glad you mentioned
the podcast, because I forgot to mention

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it earlier. Miles Taylor. The
name of the book Blowback, and you

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can hear the podcast Whistleblowers on the
iHeartRadio Appen anywhere you get podcast blowback,

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a warning to save democracy from the
next Trump challenge. You're thinking by reading

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it, and I thank you for
joining us. Miles Taylor, Lee Matthews,

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thank you, my friend. Thanks
for listening to Later with Lee Matthews,

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the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember
to listen to The Drive Live weekday

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afternoons from five to seven and I
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