Former Trump Insider Drops Bombshell, Republicans Are Done But Too Cowardly to Say It

Summary

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IHIP News Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode: Former Trump Insider Drops Bombshell, Republicans Are Done But Too Cowardly to Say It
Hosts: Jennifer Welch & Angie “Pumps” Sullivan
Guest: Miles Taylor, Founder of Defiance.org, former Trump DHS Chief of Staff, author of "A Warning"
Date: May 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of IHIP News features a candid and impassioned conversation between Jennifer Welch and guest Miles Taylor (with co-host Angie in the background). The main theme centers around the internal collapse of Republican support for Donald Trump, the ongoing war in Iran, complicity, and cowardice within the GOP, and the warning signs of authoritarianism. Taylor, a former Trump administration insider, shares bombshell insights from private conversations with high-level Republicans, critiques the current state of the party, and explores the psychological, economic, and moral factors that keep the Trump movement alive.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The State of Trump’s War in Iran & Administration Grandstanding

• Jennifer opens by contextualizing the podcast: Trump's war in Iran, fuel prices, and the political theater on Capitol Hill ([00:51]).
• They play a clip of Trump ally Pete Hegseth deflecting blame from the administration and attacking dissenters ([01:10]).

Miles Taylor’s Take:

• Hegseth’s “passionate” lies signal deep awareness inside the administration of the war's unpopularity.
• “That rhetoric, Jennifer, it legitimately belongs in a 20th century autocracy…The American people now, according to polling yesterday, say this is least popular war since Vietnam and more unpopular than Vietnam. Okay. That just happened yesterday…” ([02:15])
• The MAGA movement is panicking as polling worsens, with grave implications for national security.

2. Trump Loyalists—Autocracy and the Hive Mind

• Jennifer expresses embarrassment and frustration over the obligatory loyalty from Trump’s inner circle ([03:53]).

Miles Taylor:

• References Friedrich Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”: “When you have a leader whose only criteria is loyalty, then you have to be willing to do literally anything to succeed in that orbit... the people with no morals, the people with no limits…are the ones who most quickly rise to the top.” ([04:16])
• Taylor describes witnessing people becoming “bootlickers” around Trump—any sign of conscience resulted in expulsion from his inner circle.

3. Private GOP Dissent and Public Cowardice

• Jennifer brings up Taylor’s recent article: in private, Trump allies admit they're “done”—but won’t say it publicly ([06:22]).

Taylor tells the inside story:

• He pressed congressional Republicans to speak out after Trump threatened “nuclear genocide” in Iran.
• All privately expressed horror—none acted publicly.
  • “They are scared for their lives, of this man, and they’re scared of getting kicked out of the tribe. And that’s how this has happened in the first place.” ([06:55])
• Praises Marjorie Taylor Greene as an example of a defector encouraging others to break away.

4. The GOP's Economic Red Line

• Jennifer hypothesizes that economic collapse—not moral outrage—will be the catalyst for Republican breakaway ([09:20]).
• The AI-driven stock market bubble protects Trump; only a crash will trigger elite Republican dissent.

Taylor’s Analysis:

• Agrees recession would be the “final wake up call,” describing Trump’s chokehold as “Darth Vader-like” ([11:14]).
• Warns that automation and AI will make a Trump-triggered recession “worse than any recession we’ve seen,” as companies will permanently replace jobs with machines instead of rehiring ([11:14–14:39]).

5. Trump’s Obsession With Power and the “Ballroom”

• Jennifer zeros in on Trump’s fixation with White House renovations—specifically, a new underground ballroom/bunker ([14:39]).
• She questions whether Trump ever imagines leaving office, sharing a theory that he’s psychologically incapable of relinquishing power.

Taylor’s Inside Perspective:

• Recounts a conversation with ex-Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, who said Trump would “have to be dragged out in a straight jacket for people to realize how crazy he actually is” ([16:13]).
• Suggests Trump is already plotting to circumvent constitutional limits—via role-swapping, running as VP, or even seeking the Speakership if forced from the presidency.
• Trump’s plans to renovate the White House bunker are signs he intends to hold onto power at all costs.

6. The Culture of Enabling and the Price of Dissent

• Jennifer laments that former Trump officials who bravely spoke out were demonized, while much of the public refuses to believe their warnings ([20:23]).
• She asks Taylor to reflect on why permission structures for authoritarianism persist and why honesty is so often punished.

Taylor’s Historical View:

• “This is a phenomenon you run into so consistently, you wonder if it’s somehow been pre-planned by some higher power…again and again you see this remarkable theme of people seeing the freight train of fascism coming, denying it...then experiencing its consequences and waking up what seems a little too late.” ([22:45])
• Explains, via Adam Kinzinger, that, for many Republicans, fear of being ostracized from the tribe is even stronger than fear for their lives.
• Quotes a Jerry Seinfeld joke to highlight Americans’ greater fear of public speaking than death: “...your average American would rather be sitting in the casket than delivering the eulogy.” ([22:45])
• “You’ve got to increase the supply of people speaking out to lower that price of dissent...that is happening in this country...there is a tidal shift toward defiance in the US, and that has meant the price of dissent is getting lower.” ([22:45–27:17])

7. Defiance.org: Pushing Back

• In closing, Taylor details his nonprofit Defiance.org—a club focused on resisting Trump’s abuses.
• Supporting lawsuits, protecting whistleblowers, funding journalists’ legal defense, and initiating real-world actions.
• Jennifer commits to signing up: “We have to come together. We have to unite. We have to support each other, and only we can save us.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “That rhetoric, Jennifer, it legitimately belongs in a 20th century autocracy...” – Miles Taylor ([02:15])
• “If the leader says, I want you to do something illegal, loyalty means a willingness to do something illegal.” – Miles Taylor ([04:16])
• “This cowardice is, you know, it’s, it’s like a virus, you know, more contagious than Covid.” – Miles Taylor ([06:55])
• “It is like a Death Star… Donald Trump has a Darth Vader like choke hold on people.” – Miles Taylor ([11:14])
• “Companies are dabbling in this right now, Jennifer. If there is a recession, expect mass long term layoffs… robots take them and never get them back.” – Miles Taylor ([11:14])
• “I think the guy is going to chain himself to the Resolute desk and they are going to have to drag him out in a straight jacket…” – John Kelly via Miles Taylor ([16:13])
• “People would rather be caught laying down in the casket than up there at the podium speaking out telling the truth.” – Miles Taylor ([22:45])
• “The only way to make that price lower is to increase the supply and then the price goes down. And I will say...that is happening in this country. There is a tidal shift towards the defiance…” – Miles Taylor ([22:45])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:51] – Introduction of show theme and today’s topics
• [01:36] – Introduction of Miles Taylor
• [02:15] – Taylor critiques administration loyalty and war narrative
• [04:16] – Hayek’s “Why the Worst Rise to the Top” explained
• [06:55] – Taylor reveals private GOP dissent
• [09:20] – Jennifer’s theory on when the GOP will break from Trump
• [11:14] – Taylor on the coming recession, automation, and MAGA
• [14:39] – Discussion about Trump’s “ballroom”/bunker obsession
• [16:13] – John Kelly quote, Trump’s refusal to leave office
• [20:23] – Jennifer on enablers, public denial, and risk-taking
• [22:45–27:17] – Taylor’s historical perspective, tribe loyalty, and the price of dissent
• [27:22] – Defiance.org mission and call to action for listeners

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Tone & Closing Remarks

The episode is a mix of comedic exasperation, political outrage, dark humor, and urgent warning. Jennifer is blunt, sarcastic, and passionate; Miles Taylor is measured but unsparing in his insider critique and forthright with his warnings, historical analogies, and calls for action. Both underscore the vital need for ordinary people to speak out and the inevitability—and hope—of eventual change through collective action.

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For more on resisting authoritarianism and supporting political dissent, visit defiance.org.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

Was she brave?

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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[A]

Was it scary?

[B]

Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be.

[A]

Did the car have a sunroof?

[B]

It did, actually.

[C]

Okay, good story.

[B]

Car buying you'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.

[A]

Oh, no, my coffee.

[C]

Bronnie here. New brawny 3 ply is now more absorbent. Wow.

[A]

Got a clean shirt.

[C]

Do you wear plaid? Some of the strongest.

[A]

All right. Trump's illegal war in Iran is dragging on with absolutely no end in sight. And Pete Hagseth, who was wholly unqualified, a Fox News narcissist, went to Capitol Hill for a second day and made very clear who he thinks the real enemy is. This is breathtaking play.

[D]

The clip adversary we face at this point are the reckless naysayers and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans. Defeatists from the cheap seats who two months in seek to undermine the incredible efforts that have been undertaken and the historic nature of taking on a 47 year threat with the courage no other president has had.

[A]

Okay, to unpack this. Joining me today is Miles Taylor. He is the founder of defiance.org and former DHS chief of staff under Trump 1.0 who quit during the first administration in protest. He is the author of New York Times number one bestseller A Warning about the dangers of a Second Trump turn. Miles, how are you?

[C]

I'm great. Fantastic to be with you.

[A]

What do you make of Pete Hegseth grandstanding and lying and saying that the the real enemy are Democrats and some Republicans.

[C]

When you see Pete Hegseth talk, you know how bad he's lying by how passionate he gets. Right? The guy only tells the truth when it's like close to a whisper and there's very little gesticulation like there. That's when he's tell the truth. This was one of those moments where he was clearly lying through his teeth about the extraordinary gains of this war and the defeatism of the adversaries. I mean, that, that rhetoric, Jennifer, it legitimately belongs in a 20th century autocracy. It feels so weird in this moment to see people talk in those terms when they know it's not true. This isn't any victory for anyone. And forget what you say about it, or what I have to say about it. The American people now, according to polling yesterday, say this is least popular war since Vietnam and more unpopular than Vietnam. Okay. That just happened yesterday. And I wonder why. Because gas hit $4.68 a gallon. This war is a catastrophe that no one asked for. And the more grandiose this administration gets, the more you realize that they are cowering because they know that this thing has to end or it's going to collapse. The entire MAGA movement and the Republican Party, you can see that in the way they react. To say nothing of the national security implications here, which I really sincerely think are quite grave. I mean, this war has set the United States back in a lot of ways. From a conventional preparedness perspective to a geopolitical perspective, to an alliance perspective, there's almost no way you can cut this that is favorable towards US national security.

[A]

What do you make of. At the end of that and all. Everybody in Trump's orbit always has to say, this is the only. Only president who's had the courage to do that. Is all of that blustering, which is just. It's so embarrass. I'm so secondhand embarrassed for them to do that. Are they so locked in that loyalty to this man is the number one objective and they're always speaking for an audience of one?

[C]

Yeah, they are. I mean, there's. You know, a long time ago, there was a. A scholar that put this in terms that are easy to understand today. It was. Friedrich Hayek wrote something, a book that. That conservatives used to love for a long time called the Road to Serfdom. And in that book, there is a chapter called why the Worst Rise to the Top. And in the 40s, he was trying to explain this exact phenomenon that you just pointed to, because back then, even though there was no cable news or social media, it was still obvious from the papers to so many people that there were just dozens and dozens and dozens of public servants in Nazi Germany and Allied countries who spoke this way, who were clearly educated, clearly knew better, but were just obsequious in their pleasure remarks towards the leader. Just how grateful they were, how pleased they were to have this incredible leader. And his explanation, Friedrich Hayek's explanation on why the worst rise to the top was pretty straightforward. He said, when you have a leader whose only criteria is loyalty, then you have to be willing to. To do literally anything to succeed in that orbit. So if the leader says, I want you to do something illegal, loyalty means a willingness to do something illegal. And As a result, the people with no centering values, the people with no morals, the people with no limits on what they're willing to do, are the ones who most quickly rise to the top. Because the moment someone has a moral thought or a moment of conscience, they either self select out of that orbit or they get kicked out of that orbit. This is exactly what happened in the first term. I witnessed it. It was like a PhD in cowardice studies. I saw people around Donald Trump who the moment that light bulb went off and their conscience lit up, he could see it. If he's got a radar for anything, it's for the human conscience. He would see it. He would get them out of his orbit. And now we are left with the actual bootlickers, the people who would literally be willing to put their tongues on his floor, shine shoes in order to stay in that orbit.

[A]

It's true. It is the biggest collection of bottom feeders. It's really breathtaking. It's absolutely breathtaking. But I always think when we all witnessed January 6, it was so horrific. And we all. I never thought he would be in power again. And then after he won, I thought, oh, the people who want to go work for him after this, these are going to be the worst among us. And you wrote a piece this week titled In Private. Trump Allies tell me that they're done. I know why they're scared to speak up. What are they saying? And tell us about this article.

[C]

This is a hard one. This is a hard one, Jennifer, because it's been so many, it's been so many years of this. It's been so many years of these Republicans behind the scenes bashing Trump and still being unwilling to do it publicly. And I'll tell you, the reason I wrote the piece is the thing that motivated me to reach out to a number of these members of Congress was the other week when Donald Trump said, you know, tonight a civilization will die and talking about bombing Iran. And I thought, you know, some of these Republicans that I still talk to that I used to work with in the House or work with in the Trump administration, they've got to draw the line at nuclear genocide. Right. Because that's obviously what the tweet was. As a practical matter, you can't kill 90 million people with conventional weapons. So if it's a threat you're going to make good on, you're going to, you must be threatening nuclear war, nuclear genocide against a population. That's got to be where they draw the line. Right. And so I reached out to some of These members of Congress that I'm still kind of friendly with and over the course of several days nudged them with a hey, the water's warm. This is the moment to come out. If you're ever going to define yourself against what happened in this moment in the eyes of history, now is the time with a lot of them. Jennifer, messaging me back, oh my God, this is unbelievable. Do you think this guy's crazy? Is he off his rocker? Has he lost, lost it? Because you know, all the things that we all say, all the things that any American who watches this would say. But guess what? You didn't hear from a single one of those people I was messaging with. They didn't come forward. And I always say it's never too late to do the right thing. I get the inclination to say, screw these guys for spending years and years and years on the inside saying one thing in private and another in public. I always want to give them the off ramp and the opportunity to come forward. I'm no Marjorie Taylor Greene fan, but I am awed at the extent to which her coming forward has brought so many other people in the MAGA movement forward. It can make a difference. But this cowardice is, you know, it's, it's like a virus, you know, more contagious than Covid. And you know, that's why I felt like I needed to write this piece is it's keeping these people silent. They are scared of for their lives, of this man and they're scared of getting kicked out of the tribe. And that's how this has happened in the first place. That's how any authoritarian movement is enabled is by people like that who know better.

[A]

So Miles, here's what I think, because it's so like you, I'm so frustrated they with Republicans, MAGA supporters and I think there's degrees like I grew up around country club Republicans in Oklahoma. And then you have just like the full blown maga, you know, cultist rural voters that have been overlooked that felt senior by him. And it seems to me like Donald Trump can move with impunity on anything listed a million times in the Epstein files, floating that he might pardon Ghislaine Maxwell posting himself as Jesus Christ, threatening nuclear holocaust. Nobody moves the needle at all. And I have this theory that the magnificent Seven, these AI tech companies have kept the stock market up like a Ponzi scheme and they're trading it to keep the S&P 500 and keep the Dow up. It is inevitably going to burst. The bubble will burst. And when the Stocks start tanking the North Star. To all of these country club Republicans that will start calling up Republican senators, that will start calling Republican congressmen, all of a sudden they will say enough is enough. And I think it's going to be money. I think our worship, particularly maga's worship of money is so important to this component. It's gross. But that it is what it is. And I think when that happens, then you're going to see more people jump over to Marjorie Taylor Green's camp and start using this. Oh, he lost his way. This isn't the guy we voted for. You know, that's what she's telling herself now, which, whatever, I'm with you. Like, I had no idea he was crazy and a con man. And so I think we're going to start hearing that, but I think the stock market is going to have to crash first. You were inside the Death Star. What is your take on all of this and what will ultimately unravel this entire sickening, horrible, abusive cult we're all living in?

[C]

Well, it is like a Death Star. I mean I, I've said for years, in fact, I'm glad you used that terminology. For years I've said it's like Donald Trump has a Darth Vader like choke hold on people. It's, you can't, you know how Darth Vader can choke people from afar. You're like, I don't understand why is this person acting the way they're acting? Something else must be happening here. Oh, it's the hand of Vader on their necks. And that's really what this is. And you're right. I mean at the end of the day, and I think the insight goes beyond MAGA when it comes to the economic component. I mean, you know, we need to find a way to refer to the James Carville quote. It's the economy, stupid. I mean it's the Carville thesis. But look, that drives politics, pocketbooks drive politics on both sides of the aisle. And I do think a catastrophic recession is the final wake up call for some of these holdouts. Now I am seen the numbers shift because of these MAGA influencers break. Whether you think it's transactional or moral, the Megyn Kelly's and the Alex Joneses and the Tim Pools and the Marjorie Taylor Greene's breaking are impacting Donald Trump's floor. The polling is devastating. He's basically lost 10 points in the polls because these people are allowing for MAGA grassroots to break away from him. So that's, that's A good thing for democracy. It's a very bad thing for Donald Trump. But on the recession piece, this is how his numbers could go even further south and how our democracy could endure more damage if there is a recession from all of this. And really, I should say when there is a recession, Jennifer, because it is inevitable. Okay? History tells us that we're going to hit another recession and Donald Trump is doing everything possible to trigger it. Here is why, and no one's talking about this, here is why. That recession is going to be worse than any recession we've seen. And I can't predict how far the market tanks because of oil. But what I can tell you is right now, we are playing with fire by tempting fate on a recession. Because companies all around the world that have to lay off their employees in a recession now can avail themselves of the worst type of scabbard in world history, which is an automated one, which is a machine that can take the job and never give it back. See, we're used to in recessions battening down the hatches and waiting for hiring to start again. But right now, companies are flirting with the idea of replacing employees with AI agents. It's happening all over the place. I just had a lovely phone call with a car rental service that was AI generated and I will admit it was way better than waiting for a half hour. I got everything fixed in three minutes. It was great. But those employees are never coming back. Companies are dabbling in this right now, Jennifer. If there is a recession, expect mass long term layoffs, not 1, 2, 3, 4 years like we experienced after 2008. Companies will use this as the opportunity to replace their workforces for good. There will not be the bounce back people think. That's why Donald Trump is playing with fire. If he wasn't goading a recession, this process might happen semi naturally where companies are experimenting with this. Workers are pushing back, people are defending their rights. They're somehow reaching a chord. It's not what's going to happen if Donald Trump triggers this recession. Millions of people lose their jobs. Robots take them and never get them back.

[A]

I think, I think you're right. I mean, I tell my listeners all the time it was never the immigrants or the LGBTQ plus people that are taking your jobs. It's always been the billionaires in AI. That's who is taking jobs. That's who's taking jobs from working class Americans. All right, let's talk about Donald Trump's myopic focus on the ballroom. He turned this shooting incident at the White House correspondents dinner with a millisecond with laser focus, and then all the sycophants jumping on. This is why we have to have a ballroom. I mean, we clearly have to have the ballroom. What do you think the psychology is behind his desire to have this ballroom? And do you think if there is a blue tsunami, if we are able to get past all of the rigging, all of the threats of ice and military at the polls, because they're going to roll all of that out. And then also another part of this question is, Fast forward to 28 and he's not able to go around the amendment. Do you think he ever visualizes himself leaving that White House? Because I think the narcissistic wound that he took when Marine One came and picked him up after Joe Biden kicked his ass in 2020, I don't think he's ever fully recovered. And he was broken to begin with from that. And I just don't think he has any idea of leaving. And I think he thinks I'm going down in that bunker and I'm going to stay there with all of my things and my cell phone and McDonald's and a diet Coke.

[C]

Well, I'm, I'm looking at my phone right now because I'm trying to look up this, trying to look up this note. I can't find it. But I'll paraphrase it for you. One, I think you're right. Two, I think people have seen this about Donald Trump for years. The quote I was looking up was my former boss in the first Trump administration, John Kelly, had warned to me before 2020. I could tell you where I was because I remember this conversation so vividly. We were on the phone. I was parked outside the Department of Homeland Security's former headquarters. We have both since left the administration. I was just in that part of town and we were talking about the coming election, and Kelly said, you know, here's what I think is going to happen. I think the guy is going to chain himself to the Resolute desk and they are going to have to drag him out in a straight jacket for people to realize how crazy he actually is. Okay? This is like a year before January 6th, and Kelly was not that far off from what actually wasn't. I think he was just a few years behind on the reality of that image, because that is what I feel like we are trending toward in 2028. Donald Trump sees whatever life he's got left in him, if the man even is alive, is. It's totally dependent on his remaining in office, his life, his legacy, his personal freedom. And, Jennifer, he's probably right. A man who has committed so many obvious crimes is right to project that if he leaves office, he probably trades it for a jail cell. It's really hard to imagine, given the volume of crimes that have already been committed in his first year back in office. I don't mean that hyperbolically. I mean that very literally obvious criminal conduct. How does he stay out of jail? Well, he stays in power. That's how he stays out of jail in his own mind. And so I do sincerely think that Donald Trump is continuing to consider ways to cede the public narrative to allow for his continuance in office. They're going to look at the loopholes in the constitutional amendment. They're going to try to. I think they're going to try to play this game where it's Vance Trump on the ticket. They flip tickets. He's running as vice president. They try to do something along those lines, or they do a Vladimir Putin, which, you know, Putin, of course, before he was able to change their constitution in Russia, became the equivalent of our speaker of the House, while Dmitry Medvedev took over his job. You could very much see a scenario where Trump's successor becomes president and he tries to get named speaker of the House by a Republican majority, where he's still pulling the strings. Very possible. You don't have to be an elected member of Congress to be named the speaker of the House. And guess what? When Donald Trump was out of office after 20, this idea was actively considered by his core team and he himself, they had conversations with people. I can validate that. They had conversations about whether he might seek to be named speaker of the House. He's going to be looking at ways to stay in power. And this is as fascist as it gets. And so, yeah, I think the bunker factors into all of this. Long way of saying the bunker is something that has stayed in his mind since the protests in 2020. For a lot of people don't remember this. The first time Donald Trump ever experienced the Presidential Emergency Operations center, the piac, is when he was pulled from the White House during these protests and taken down there. And in classic Trump fashion, he was like, I don't like the digs down here. I don't like the setup. We've got to renovate this thing. Why would you renovate a bunker if you don't expect to spend time in that bunker? The man expects to spend time in that bunker. It's the only reason he would dig up his own yard. And to do it, Donald Trump is digging up that yard because he expects to spend time there. That's what I'm worried about. This is not hyperbole. This is real. We have to think about the psychology of a man who wants to do something like this.

[A]

You're so spot on. I mean, he, he's all about aesthetics, he's all about optics. I mean, he has terrible taste, but I mean, what he's done with the Oval, he is, he is renovating everything because he believes that house and that property is personally his final question. Miles and I could talk to you for hours and I want have you back on again very soon because I think your insight is so helpful. Something that really bothers me is that so many people from Trump 1.0, and I'm a Democrat, I'm a progressive. So many people from Trump 1.0 that worked with him that were, are loyal to the Constitution, more conservative than me, but not bad. People came out of that administration saying, you know, he has no respect for the military, he is a fascist through and through. He asked, I think it was Mark Esper, can I shoot protesters in the legs? And we heard, Americans heard all of this. We hurt. We saw January 6th with our own eyes. We saw all of these experts, Republicans, neocons, telling the world this about a man that they worked with. You telling the world about a man that you worked with in this party that you were devoted to, they are demonizing you for being honest, where honesty is being demonized and people are not believing their eyes and ears or adjusting reality to suit the ego, the fragile ego of the senior citizen toddler nutcase. And it's just not that deep. So I'm not going to use deep words about what he is. And it really bothers me that people like you and other people with whom I disagree with politically, but I believe the veracity of their claims, and I knew they took great risk, great risk to come out of that regime and say, we have a problem. This is very, very problematic. This man is bad, he is dangerous, and he doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself. And the people didn't listen.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it really. Will you speak to that in our closing words? Because that's the part that really bothers me about all of this. I get a crazy person, I get Trump in solitude. It's the people that put up the permission structure to excuse evil that really bother me. Miles.

[C]

Well, if it's. This is probably cold comfort, but, you know, as a Student of history. This is a phenomenon you run into so consistently, you wonder if it's somehow been pre. Planned by. By some kind of higher power. You know, regardless of what your faith or view of the universe is, you're like, wow, this is remarkable that this lesson happens all the time, from antiquity to the Dark ages to the early years of the Republic. I mean, again and again you see this remarkable theme of people seeing the freight train of fascism coming, Denying it, denying it, denying it, then experiencing its consequences and waking up what seems a little too late. But again, it's never too late to do the right thing. I mean, you may suffer extraordinary consequences in doing it, but, I mean, you know, I was just finishing a. A book about the. The early years of the Roman Empire, just at the end of the Republic, as the Republic fell. It's not like there was just one or two voices sounding the alarm. I mean, it was a cacophony of warnings, and yet they still barreled forward towards Caesar's reign and the destruction of the world's really early experiment in. In human freedom. This happens. What you tend to see, Jennifer, is that people, at the end of the day, it's not even death that they fear the most. It's being kicked out of their tribe. And I had a conversation years ago with my buddy Adam Kinzinger about this. We were down in Savannah, Georgia, and we've all had this conversation a million times over coffees and barbecues and. But I said to Adam, why are these friends of ours, these Republican members of Congress, and other people that I had served with in the administration before I quit, why are they still saying. Staying silent? And at the time, I had speculated it's because they saw the death threats Adam and I were facing. You know, his newborn baby at that time was being threatened. I had had to leave my home, my job. I had an armed security detail because of the threats. It was. It got really, really ugly. And Adam said, you know, I don't even think it's the death threats. I think they've built their lives and their identities so much around this tribe, this Republican tribe, that they worry that if they publicly break with it, that's it. Their future prospects, their career, their life, everything, their internal identity is destroyed. And I talk about this sometimes when I speak to student groups, but it made me think of a Jerry Seinfeld joke. And unfortunately, when I say that student groups are like, who's Jerry Seinfeld? I'm like, okay, well, but Jerry Seinfeld used to make this joke. He would Open sets. And he would say, you know, a survey came out of Americans top 10 fears and number one on the list is public speaking and number two is death. So your average American would rather be sitting in the casket than delivering the eulogy. And you know, Jerry Seinfeld would get laughs when he would do that joke. But there's a truth truth there. People would rather be caught laying down in the casket than up there at the podium speaking out telling the truth. That has been consistent throughout history. And there's one way to get over it, Jennifer. There is only one way, which is you got to increase the supply of people speaking out to lower that price of dissent. It's econ 101. In econ, anytime something's too expensive in a marketplace. So if the price of dissent is too high, if dissenting like I did means your wife and your 18 month old daughter are going to get threatened with shooting in a firing squad and hanging which members of my family have been threatened with, the only way to make that price lower so that doesn't happen to more people is you got to increase the supply and then the price goes down. And I will say, closing on an optimistic note, that is happening in this country. A year ago, I would not have said there was a defiance with a backbone in the United States of America. Left and right institutions and people were capitulating, cowering and bowing down to the leader. That is not happening. Now it is the reverse. There is a tidal shift towards the defiance in the United States of America and that has meant the price of dissent is getting lower and lower. You'll see, though, that the people who join at the very end will only join when the price is near rock bottom. And you'll know a lot about their character when that happens.

[A]

Miles, thank you. Tell my listeners how they can find you and about your organization, Defiance.

[C]

Yeah, if they just head over to defiance.org a nonprofit club focused on countering Donald Trump's abuses of power. So every single week we announce real actions we are taking to push back. That includes funding some of the lawsuits against his unconstitutional policies. We are funding journalists who get arrested and their legal fees. We are supporting whistleblowers. Literally every week we announce something new. And last week, Jennifer, it was, we announced an effort called gtfo ice. Get the facilities out. Ice. That sounds like a different gtfo. We did that on purpose. And it's a, it's a rapid response network to notify people if an ICE prison is going to open in their community so they can go cancel it. So Anyway, people should go check out defiance.org come join the club. This is all I'm doing until the guy is gone. And it's not what I wanted to be doing, Jennifer. I built a private life away from politics out in the woods. I wanted to be done with this. But I am going to fight every single day until this guy is gone. And we've restored the rule of law in this country. So if folks want to come join me in that, we would welcome them.

[A]

Well, I am going to start and I'm leaving here shortly and I'm taking a taxi to an event and I'm going to sign up. I'm going to donate money to defiance.org we have to come together. We have to unite. We have to support each other, and only we can save us. And so I cannot thank you enough, Miles, for joining me. I'm a huge fan of yours and your courage for speaking out. And this has been so insightful. I know my listeners and viewers will love it and I would love to have you back on soon.

[C]

Well, right back at you. And I'll just say to those listeners and viewers, stick with this gal because she's a badass protecting democracy. And I said to her in the green room beforehand, I love, love, love watching her out there. She's like the voice of conscience for this country right now, and she just does not let the enablers get away with it. So, Jennifer, I'm so grateful for you and everything you do.

[A]

Thank you, Miles.

[C]

Sam.