Trump’s Long Game and Miles Taylor’s Warning

Summary

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The Gist: “Trump’s Long Game and Miles Taylor’s Warning”

Date: August 23, 2025
Host: Mike Pesca
Guest: Miles Taylor (fmr. DHS Chief of Staff, author, once “Anonymous”)

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Overview

In this episode, Mike Pesca explores the enduring risks posed by a potential second Trump presidency. He lays out his immediate concerns about Trump’s policy goals which stretch well beyond a single term—and the threats inherent if democracy’s safeguards fail. Most of the episode features an in-depth conversation with Miles Taylor, the former Homeland Security official who famously authored the 2018 “Anonymous” op-ed and whose new book, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump, expands on the internal dangers faced during Trump’s first term and warns of even more calculated efforts should Trump return to the White House.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Mike Pesca’s Opening Reflections on Trump’s "Long Game"

Timestamps: 03:50–09:47

• Pesca unpacks his unease about Trump’s second-term ambitions:
  • Many Trump policies, especially around tariffs, civil service purges, and international alliances (like NATO), are designed for long-term impact—years after a single term is over.
  • Trump’s strategy: “He’s not the sort of person … to say my successor will carry my mantle and that will be fine with me because I care about my legacy ... Not that kind of guy.” (05:55)
  • Pesca believes there’s a “decent chance” (35-40%) that Trump is devising ways for his agenda to outlive his time in office—through successors, refusal to accept future election results, or even rerunning for office.
  • Worries about fair and honest elections in 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential cycle: “If we don’t have those actual elections … it’s a disaster. We need to take that extremely seriously.” (09:37)

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Interview with Miles Taylor

Timestamps: 10:48–33:00

The “Anonymous” Op-Ed and the Risks of Anonymity

Timestamps: 12:19–17:09

• Taylor reflects on choosing anonymity to draw attention to the internal resistance and provoke real debate within the administration, citing the Federalist Papers as an inspiration.
• Quote:

  “I naively thought I could kick start that kind of conversation by writing this piece from within the administration anonymously.” (14:40 – Taylor)

• Taylor admits anonymity was a double-edged sword:
  • It fueled Trump’s paranoia about the “deep state.”
  • Stephanie Grisham (Trump’s comms director) told him Trump would search rooms, asking, “Do you know who Anonymous is?” (16:00)
  • This intensified Trump’s suspicion and conspiracy thinking, but also helped publicize concerns about his fitness for office.

On the “Axis of Adults” and Internal Guardrails

Timestamps: 17:09–20:23

• Pesca references Tim Wu’s NYT op-ed about informal institutional norms saving the Republic.
• Taylor’s hard-earned conclusion:

  “That thesis was completely bogus ... Trump systematically identified and eliminated those people.” (17:46 – Taylor)

• He believes “the American people should not depend on unelected bureaucrats; that’s not their role. It’s the role of voters.”
• Taylor regrets not unmasking himself sooner, as doing so empowered others to speak out.

Moral Choices and Regrets inside the Trump Administration

Timestamps: 22:58–24:41

• Taylor recounts the “moral choose your own adventure” faced by insiders: oppose, stay, quit, speak out, or not.
• A revealing anecdote: When Taylor finally told John Kelly (former Chief of Staff) he was “Anonymous,” Kelly replied:

  “I’m so f***ing proud of you and thank you.” (20:33)

• On broader reflection: “I'm unafraid at this point in my life to be a cautionary tale.” (23:06)
  He labels the notion of re-electing Trump as “civic suicidal ideation.”

Second-Term Dangers: Staff, Civil Service, and Autocracy

Timestamps: 24:41–30:21

• Pesca asks how Trump could staff his government with loyalists without Senate approval.
• Taylor notes there is a plan to circumvent the Senate:
  • Trump could install acting officials, challenge limits in court, and simply ignore rulings if uncooperative.
  • Quote:

    "They’re prepared to go to war with the courts because they know the courts cannot enforce these decisions ..." (25:00)

• Trump and allies have built legal frameworks (e.g., “Schedule F”) for mass purges of civil servants, further politicizing nonpartisan federal jobs.
• Taylor details attempts to use federal aid as political leverage, especially to punish Democratic states:

  “He was always looking for some kind of leverage, especially if it was in a blue state ... He asked DHS and FEMA to withhold the aid.” (29:00)

Why the Warning Might Fail—and the Prospect of a Worse Successor

Timestamps: 30:21–32:42

• Taylor points out: Trump’s allies are openly promising, not warning, about these plans.

  “The things that I’m warning about in Blowback are the things they are openly claiming they're going to do...” (31:23)

• His hope is for a “coalition of the sane"—moderate Republicans, independents, and centrists who can reject this path before it’s too late.
• Taylor worries Trump’s actions have “tilled the fertile soil for someone worse than him,” enabling future copycats.

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Notable Moments & Quotes

• Pesca’s skepticism about Trumpism as “conservatism”:

  “Donald Trump is not a conservative ... he wants a government and a presidency that has so much power … That’s what we call autocracy.” (24:00 – Taylor)

• Taylor on regret and warning the country:

  “I probably made every wrong moral choice along that line and eventually got to the right choices ... I’m unafraid at this point in my life to be a cautionary tale ...” (23:06)

• The chilling prospect of ignored checks and balances:

  “What authority does the Supreme Court have to enforce that decision? There is none.” (25:22 – Taylor)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 03:50–09:47: Pesca’s analysis of Trump’s “long-term” policy horizon and electoral worries
• 10:48–17:09: Taylor’s account of anonymity, resistance, and “deep state” paranoia
• 17:09–20:23: Internal administration “guardrails” and the myth of bureaucratic protection
• 20:23–24:41: Taylor’s coming-out, John Kelly’s response, and moral quandaries
• 24:41–30:21: Threats of Senate circumvention and mass politicization of the civil service
• 30:21–32:42: Messaging wars: warning vs. promise, the risk of “Trumpism” outliving Trump

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Tone & Takeaways

• The conversation is candid, often self-critical, and marked by a palpable sense of urgency and responsibility.
• Taylor repeatedly emphasizes systemic risks and moral choices, while Pesca tempers the discussion with his trademark skepticism and wordplay.
• Both urge listeners not to depend on internal “heroes” but to take civic action before democratic norms are pushed past a point of no return.

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For those who haven't listened:
This episode offers an insider’s unvarnished view of how fragile America’s institutional norms proved under Trump, why a second term (or a future copycat) could be even more dangerous, and what citizens must do to protect what’s left of U.S. democracy.

Transcript

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[Mike Pesca]

Hi, it's Mike. It's a Saturday. It's a Saturday show. I should add another word. It's a Saturday show. Yay. We do one from the vault and one from the week. And the one from the week is what I started the show. Just a little bit of a freeform worry. Wanted to put my marker down saying there was like, I don't know, 35, 40% chance that this Trump guy might not just shuffle off the stage if he doesn't first do that same verb via the mortal coil.

[Miles Taylor]

But.

[Mike Pesca]

But you just look at all these initiatives, all these plans, plans that won't come to fruition for a few years and you ask yourself, is he the kind of guy to let someone else get the credit or just let the plans expire based on arrival, beaten them all fair and square? Anyway, I put my thoughts together. You know who else has been having these thoughts and these worries? Well, his name is Anonymous or was back in 2018 and then we booked him on the show. He's a guy named Miles Taylor and I'm not here to give you a homework, but he will be coming on the show in the next week or two. I know this because I taped the interview already. Little peek behind the curtain. I don't like when they say under the kimono. I think it's wrong. I think it's both lascivious and strangely, a little ethnically insensitive. I can't explain why, but that was the peak behind the very Western, very non gendered curtain that we already taped an interview with Miles Taylor, a new interview based on his new worries and his newly ruined life. But I'm going to play you an old interview we did from years ago when he was experiencing a newly ruined life, having come out as Anonymous. Turns out that going up against Trump when you're trying to live and work in Washington D.C. is not the growth industry we had thought. I don't know, because maybe if you've got a substack or if you're a former Washington Post person claiming martyrdom, which may or may not be true, maybe they're in good stead. But not poor Miles Taylor. So an old interview with him maybe to get you oriented for the interview we're going to air soon. And some general worries about this Trump guy. Not entirely on the up and up. There's a chance. I'm saying there's a chance.

[Miles Taylor]

Foreign.

[Mike Pesca]

Let'S map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.

[Will (T-Mobile Customer)]

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[Mike Pesca]

That's not the itinerary we're following.

[Will (T-Mobile Customer)]

Well, I'm departing from ATT and embarking on a new journey with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the house.

[Mike Pesca]

Bon voyage.

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[Mike Pesca]

You know what I'm worried about as concerns Donald Trump? Well, you know, besides the venality, the lawlessness, the total disregard for the Constitution, really not even understanding it or knowing it exists. It's this many of his plans have a timeframe for implementation far beyond the three more years, three and a half years, three and a quarter years that he's going to be in office. And I worry about this given the nature of Donald Trump, the sui generis nature, not generous, but sui generis guys, one of a kind, not in a good way when it comes to this analysis. I mean tariffs insofar as he understands them, his theory of the case and even the best case scenario on tariffs, which is to say a contradiction. What all of the economists say is that the pain is immediate. The pain in 2567 when he's president will be felt higher consumer prices, retaliation from Canada and China. His whole theory of tariffs with decent enough trading partners like Canada, like the European Union, is I'm going to impose them and they will hurt us both. But I can outlast you on this. And then we'll be bringing manufacturing to America. This isn't going to take place. I could stop the sentence there, but this isn't going to take place in one or two or even three years. We're not really going to see the relief. The deals will still be in dispute. The short term growth will be negative. Now, I know he will try to spin all that, but it is also true. And I do think he understands that. I think even if Trump's theory is right, it's going to take eight to 11 years. For Trump and his tariffs, his signature issue that caused short term pain to be felt in any sort of positive way. And he knows that he could finagle and lie, but he does know that this is true. He's not stupid. I know many haters of Donald Trump say he's stupid. He's a lot of things and he's impulsive and he's illogical and he's a bullshit artist, but he's really not stupid. There are two other policies that are very much like this. The whole civil service purge, it's not going to be, I mean, he and his people will find it satisfying, but it's not going to yield any sort of good things for society or the economy. And the near term, it's disruptive if there is a good benefit, not just the savings, but the flourishing of the economy under diminishing of regulations that will occur in the medium to long term. And so does Naito's realignment. You're not going to see a whole new world for the better in the near term if Naito is realigned. So I do really worry about the payoff horizon going past 2029. And so you got to worry that Donald Trump, who is not the sort of person a to say my successor will carry my mantle and that will be fine with me because I care about my legacy and other people getting credit. Not that kind of guy. And the other kind of guy that he is not is to say, and if my enemies, if they win and if my rivals get their way, well, that is the process and that is democracy. He's not that kind of guy who also. So I think that there is a decent chance, given how much effort he's put into programs that will not pay off until after his term of office ends, that one of three things will happen. One, the Republicans win fair and square or somewhat fair and square is trying to do away with, say, mail in ballots. He can't do it. Congress does it. But I understand that he's trying to touch the levers of the electoral process in ways that are within the electoral process, if unprecedented. And that is to try to get a successor who carries out his agenda in office. That's one that's the best case scenario. Some other Republican does the same things and he gets some reflected glory and, you know, probably has invested in some of these industries. The other one is a Democrat wins and he does not accept the election results. We've been there. We'll see what he does. And the third thing is sort of a 2A he runs again. So I don't think these things are likely to happen. They're hard to execute. And so out of keeping with everything that came before, though not out of keeping, I think, with what Donald Trump would try, but I think there's some chance, 35, 40% chance. And so this is why when I just look at not his bluster, not his disregard for norms or civic institutions or the Constitution, when I look at his policies and where he's putting his chips and how long the payoff is, I think we're right to be worried. All along I've said there are really two thresholds. Will we have fair and honest midterms? Will we have a fair and honest presidential election in 2028? I don't mean completely fair and honest as defined by Stacey Abrams. I mean within the bounds of trying to gain an advantage, January six being a bit outside those bounds, but even going further would bother me. So if we have those fair elections, everything else Donald Trump would have accomplished within his and I put accomplish in quotes within his tenure, I think can be countenanced and gotten over. But if we don't have those actual elections in a year and a third and then ultimately in 2028, it's a disaster. We need to take that extremely seriously. I am not sanguine about the possibilities as I look more and more as to tariffs and the other economic and other programs he's fighting for. Just want you to know, wanted to let you in on my thinking about that.

[Miles Taylor]

Foreign.

[Mike Pesca]

Let'S map out this week's amazing destinations and travel tips.

[Will (T-Mobile Customer)]

Honestly, Will, I didn't plan any trips, but I did switch to T Mobile with their new family freedom offer.

[Mike Pesca]

That's not the itinerary we're following.

[Will (T-Mobile Customer)]

Well, I'm departing from AT&T and embarking on a new journey with T Mobile. They paid off my family's four phones up to $3200 and gave us four new phones on the house.

[Mike Pesca]

Bon voyage.

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[Mike Pesca]

Faced with news that an indictment is looming, Donald Trump posted on Wednesday to Truth Social, which is neither truthful nor very social that they are getting, quote, big blowback. What an excellent act of branding for my next guest. His name is Miles Taylor, although by saying the name, I somewhat hurt his brand because you might know him as Anonymous, the staffer who claimed in 2018 that he was part of the resistance within the Trump administration. Miles Taylor was in fact a top staffer at the Department of Homeland Security and his new book Blowback is, as per the subtitle, a Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump. Miles, welcome to the gist, Mike.

[Miles Taylor]

You had so much good wordplay in that intro, you've left me with scarcely anything to say. But I do have to note I saw that before I went to bed last night, Trump's comment. And I just, I couldn't get clever enough before I fell asleep to figure out how to say he's promoting the book. So I just gave up and went to bed.

[Mike Pesca]

And you'd have to screenshot it because if you did it within the Truth Social ecosphere, probably a, you wouldn't want to put yourself out there and B, it probably wouldn't boost sales that much.

[Miles Taylor]

Oh no, Mike, you're totally wrong there because of course I'm in the Truth Social ecosystem because in addition to being Anonymous, I, I am the pseudonym behind QAnon, the far right conspiracy theory. So I'm, yeah, I'm Both Anonymous and QAnon and so I'm obviously active in those circles.

[Mike Pesca]

So I literally, I want, I have one question written down and it was in that vein. So I want to talk a little bit about the Anonymous essay and then I want to get to the warning. Do you think that your anonymity, which was necessary to preserve your job and your safety to some extent, to a large extent. Do you think the anonymity in a couple of ways led, gave attention, maybe credence but more just the veneer of mystery. And it allowed people's brains to tell them whatever story they wanted to about the depth of the resistance in the same way that QAnon does that for adherence of that, let us call it philosophy.

[Miles Taylor]

The answer I think is yes, is it was a double edged sword using the device of anonymity. And it's not like I did this by accident using the device of anonymity I knew would draw attention to the message. And that was my point. Who the hell is Miles Taylor? Yes. The White House, when they would put me on background with reporters, would say he's a senior administration official. And of course, Trump later tried to say, no, no, no, he was a staff assistant. You know, I don't care about that. That doesn't hurt my feelings. Of course that's what they're going to.

[Mike Pesca]

But so to explain to the audience, you are identified by the Times as a senior administration official and then which of course, people's, people's minds go to Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, you know, as senior get. But then it comes out that you were the chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security. There was some debate. Is that really senior administration official, some journalists would say. I wouldn't define him as that. But then I've read stories where they literally identified people who were later known to be chiefs of staff of cabinet departments. And that is how they're identified.

[Miles Taylor]

Well, sure, and that wasn't my job, but I didn't self identify that. I left that to the New York Times, who had been told many times by the White House, we're going to let you speak to Miles Taylor, one of our senior administration officials. So, you know, again, neither here nor there in my mind. But to the question on anonymity, I mean, look, make no mistake when I say this, I'm not comparing myself to the Founding Fathers, but my example here was the Federalist Papers, probably the book that had the biggest impact on my political awakening, which was the series of essays that the Founding Fathers wrote to sell the Constitution to the public. And they made a very deliberate decision when they wrote these essays. They did them anonymously because these guys were worried that if they did it in their own names, it would become a food fight about them individually and their various backgrounds and all the politics at the time. And so they wrote these essays anonymously. And guess what? It freaking worked. It led to this remarkable philosophical debate of the merits of the Constitution. And in another anonymous pseudonym cropped up the ant Antifederalist Papers to oppose the people arguing for the Constitution led to a really interesting debate. I somewhat naively thought I could kick start that kind of conversation by writing this piece from within the administration anonymously. I actually said at the time to the very small handful of people who knew at the times that I hoped that it would provoke a rejoinder from within the administration and we could have a real debate on the fitness of, of the president to hold his office because his own cabinet, I mean, the point of me writing this at the time was his own Cabinet. We were having conversations about if it got any worse, that the 25th Amendment might need to be invoked to replace the president. Now, when you go into an administration, there's a duty of confidentiality, but when the cabinet is talking about the president being so unhinged that he might need to be removed by his own team, that's the type of thing that in my mind, the American public needed to know about and have an open discussion about. That's not the type of thing that needs to be in private anymore. We are in five alarm fire territory for democracy Now. That said, you make a great point, Mike. Did that lend, did that give oxygen to the fire of a deep state? Unfortunately, it did. And I later found out from Stephanie Grisham, who was Trump's communications director, that it made the president so insanely paranoid that it actually amplified all the things I was talking about. His conspiracy about a deep state, his worry about a deep state. And her comment to me, which I wrote about in the book Blowback, is that she said, you know, every meeting she was in with Trump, she would sit there looking at him, scanning the room, trying to find out who was anonymous. And she said they'd be in the middle of meetings long after I'd left the administration. And he would say, do you know who Anonymous is? Do you know who it is? So, again, double edged sword. I think it brought more attention to the message, but I also think it's fed some of these conspiracies about an evil deep state out to overturn the president. Which, of course, you know, the folks that were resisting Trump were not a deep state trying to defy the lawful orders of a commander in chief. It was folks trying to get him to not do things that were illegal.

[Mike Pesca]

One way to put it is Tim Wu put it this way in an op ed in the New York Times that he put his name to. Looking back, what really saved the republic from Mr. Trump was a different set of limits on the executive, an informal and unofficial set of institutional norms. Upheld by federal prosecutors, military officers, and state election officials to that list, would you say? And the occasional senior administration official who wouldn't disclose so publicly, but was operating to preserve the norms.

[Miles Taylor]

Yeah, look, I mean, I think that the. I was, I'm probably at least one of the top 10 guiltiest people alive of propagating this notion that there was a so called axis of adults protecting the American people from a wayward chief executive. And my conclusion was long and fraught and hard. But I came to the conclusion that that thesis was completely bogus. That maybe in the first year there were guardrails around Trump in the form of really good people, in fact, that were appointed to his cabinet. I mean, there were some people in that cabinet that may have even been chosen by Hillary Clinton to be in her cabinet, some really, really good folks. But our ability to keep the commander in chief in check was disproven by the fact that Trump systematically identified and eliminated those people. But a more broader philosophical conclusion, which was the American people really should not depend on unelected bureaucrats to protect them. That is neither our role nor, nor is it their role. It's the role of the voters to decide whether to fire someone or rehire them into the job of chief executive. And it's ultimately why I quit and unmasked myself is I felt like the anonymity wasn't serving its purpose. In fact, it was serving an opposite purpose. And if I have any regret about that, period, it's that I didn't unmask myself even sooner. Because the thing I found out, Mike, is once I came forward, to my surprise, it provided air cover for other people like me to quit the administration and also come forward with their concerns. And, you know, a lot of us were able to do that before the 2020 election. But I wish I'd done it way sooner. In fact, I wish I'd waited maybe a month to let the message sink in and then quit, you know, a month later and unmasked myself and just started from then on trying to recruit as many of my colleagues as humanly possible to quit and do the same thing, because almost all of them felt the same way. I mean, sincerely. There's only a handful of people I can think of that were mega maga that were genuinely, you know, committed to Trump's view of weaponizing federal power for political purposes. Everyone else felt the same way. They felt the President was unhinged. And some of those people still today are in his orbit pretending to be hardcore Trumpers, when in fact, in private they spent years, like working alongside me saying, this guy's a psychopath. We just have to wait him out. And, you know, I wish that people would step forward and, and claim those statements, but that's one of the reasons I wrote this book, is to say, look, you can't count on people in a second term to try to keep Donald Trump in check. And that's why we need to be really clear eyed about what would happen in that second term or in the White House of a copycat.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, I want to, I definitely want to get to that. When did your boss, who went on to be Chief of staff, John Kelly, when did he find out you were anonymous?

[Miles Taylor]

I don't think the chief knew until about 30 minutes before it became public in 2020. And I'm almost completely positive of that because I called him. He was one of the first people I wanted to notify that I was going to unmask myself. And I'll be uncharacteristically candid with you here, Mike. I don't think I've shared this before. I was extremely nervous to make that phone call because he's one of the last people I respect in Washington. And people still don't know the extent to which they can criticize John Kelly, and some do on fair grounds. They don't know the extent to which he protected the country against this guy Donald Trump while he was in office. But I called him, I was very nervous to tell him this. And when I got him on the line and I told him I'd written the op ed and the book anonymously, a warning, he said, I'm so fucking proud of you and thank you. And I, it definitely, you know, I teared up and I rarely tear up about anything. Maybe, maybe a real good sappy film. And, and that meant a lot to me, is that I.

[Mike Pesca]

Did you ever, did you ever suspect that he suspected it?

[Miles Taylor]

Yeah. Well, there was one moment very shortly after, maybe a few hours after the op ed dropped. I didn't expect the New York Times to be able to preserve my identity. I didn't, I mean, in all credit to the folks at the Times, they did a damn good job of. But I expected like anything in Washington, it would leak. And so I had prepared a statement claiming ownership for when it inevitably would leak. And I see on my phone that the White House phone number was calling me a couple hours after it dropped. And I thought, well, you know, here we go. They found out. And I answered, it's John Kelly. And he says, miles, I hate to have to do this. And, you know, my heart sank. It was like, wow, that was fast. You know, they're going to fire me now. And. And so now I've got to be out there in public on this, and I'm not quite ready. And he said, the president wants every cabinet secretary to write him a personal note saying that they're not anonymous. And he said, I don't want to bother the Secretary of Homeland Security with this, so can you just write this for her and sign her name and just say, I, Kirstjen Nielsen, am not anonymous. I had to let out a laugh, Mike, you know, because the irony was that the chief was on the phone with anonymous. And so I did. I wrote out a handwritten note.

[Mike Pesca]

I could do that.

[Miles Taylor]

I, Kirstjen Nielsen, am not anonymous.

[Mike Pesca]

I, in fact, am the only person in the federal firmament who could say that and be 100% sure that it is true.

[Miles Taylor]

That's right. And look, I hated to have to do that at the time, genuinely. And people are completely within their rights to judge the decision of sounding the alarm anonymously. I mean, I like to say the whole experience of the Trump administration was sort of a moral choose your own adventure, or perhaps more importantly, like, choose your own nightmare. You know, it's, you know, the question of, you know, oppose him or not before the election, go into the administration and try to keep it on the rails or oppose it from the outside. Once you're on the inside, you know, can. If. If saying no is no longer enough, do you quit and go public, or do you quit and go quietly? When you go public, do you do it in your own name and not. I mean, there was a million branches of moral decision making. I probably made every wrong moral choice along that line and eventually got to the right choices. But I'm unafraid at this point in my life to be a cautionary tale, because I think it's really important for people to go out there and own their mistakes so other people don't make the same mistakes. And here we are as a country preparing for what I have been calling civic suicidal ideation, which is considering making the same stupid mistake again by nominating this guy and potentially putting him back in the White House. And I'm still a conservative, by the way. I'm a small L Libertarian, and I would like to see a conservative in the White House. Donald Trump is not a conservative, in my view. In fact, he wants a government and a presidency that has so much power that it's in your mind every day. And can take over your community at the push of a button. That's not conservatism. That's what we call autocracy.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, I want to get into a little bit of the details about why the second administration might be worse. You pointed out the guardrails, but what about Senate confirmation? How's he going to be able to get his handpicked toadies in to run these, admit to run these federal agencies?

[Miles Taylor]

Well, he won't, unfortunately. And what do I mean by that? Spoke to a lot of Republican members of Congress who said to me on the record that they didn't think that Trump would respect the Senate's advice and consent function in a second term, that he would merely install the people he wants to to run departments and agencies. And when he does that, sure, it might go to the courts. Someone might sue and say the Secretary of Homeland Security is someone who's been unlawfully appointed and not confirmed by the Senate. And let's say that goes up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agrees and says that person shouldn't be in that job. What authority does the Supreme Court have to enforce that decision? There is none. And that was really scary to me to hear multiple people play out that scenario and say they're prepared to go to war with the courts because they know the courts cannot enforce these decisions and that Trump will install acting cabinet secretaries across the administration who are unconfirmable. In fact, it's something he started to do towards the end. In fact, few people know this story, but at the very end of the Trump administration, this happened at the Department of Homeland Security. My former colleague, Chad Wolf, who was the acting secretary for more than a year, was determined by the courts to unlawfully have been put in that position. What are the consequences? None. There were no consequences. So there was an illegitimate Secretary of Homeland Security for more than a year, and there was little more than a wrist slap against the government. The Trump team has learned that that was the case, that there aren't really consequences and will subvert the Senate's advice and consent function in a second term.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes, but that Chad Wolf ruling, I think was the proper ruling, as I understand it, but little bit based on technicality. It's different from Donald Trump just appointing people and saying, well, she's now head of the agency. Everyone in the federal government, or almost everyone disagreeing with that, and then Donald Trump saying, well, too bad.

[Miles Taylor]

Well, you know, in the case of Chad Wolf, it was a violation of the Vacancies Act. So there was a period of time in which, as I understand it, you know, he would have been allowed to temporarily serve as an acting secretary. And that shot clock is usually around 180 days. And it far exceeded that shot clock. That's what they'll try to do. I mean, I don't imagine in a second Trump term that they would be so foolish to be that flagrant about it, especially if there's a Republican Senate to just say, screw you guys. But slow gradations of violating the Vacancies act is how you can make that happen. And then to tie it up in the courts for as long as you want. It's how someone like a Stephen Miller could be put in at the beginning to temporarily run a Department of Homeland Security and then through endless litigation, be left in the job for an extended period by arming the Republican side with arguments about why that appointment should continue. That's the type of thing that I worry about. But go beyond the Senate confirmed positions. I think the real worry is there's a concerted legal effort right now to create the justifications to do widespread purges across the government. I mean, folks have heard of a thing called Schedule F that was considered at the end of the Trump administration, which would have allowed the president to fire tens of thousands of civil servants, non political appointees, you know, people who are supposed to be able to serve across administrations regardless of politics. But there's been legal work to go much further than Schedule F. And in fact, Donald Trump's personnel chief, one of his personnel chiefs, is now the head of one of the top think tanks in Washington. One of the top Republican think tanks in Washington, the Heritage foundation, where they've been working on policies for a second administration to make sure they can root out the so called deep state by giving the president the authorities to fire civil servants and install political operatives in more positions across the government. It's alarming for the obvious reasons, but there's a lot of functions that you just don't want a political operative doing. Social Security checks don't need to be dispersed by a campaign aid. You know, tornadoes and natural disasters. You don't need FEMA officials that are ideological loyalists determining whether or not to disperse aid to Americans. But the reason Trump wants people in jobs like that is because he sees leverage in those federal powers. So take disaster aid, for instance. We saw this with almost every major catastrophe I can remember that we talked to the President about. He was always looking for some kind of leverage, especially if it was in a blue state. So when there were wildfires in California he told us to hold off on giving money to the wildfire victims because he was mad because Jerry Brown, who was then the Democratic governor of California, had made a really bad speech about him. I'm sorry, Mr. President, we're not going to withhold aid to people whose houses just burned down because you're pissed off at the governor. It was the same thing in Puerto Rico after the hurricanes came through and ravaged the island. He didn't like it that Democratic leaders were speaking out against him on tv. And so he asked DHS and FEMA to withhold the aid. Again, that would have been illegal, but this happened again and again and again. The attempt to weaponize federal aid against blue states that he didn't like, we of course, said no. That never happened in the Trump administration. In a second term, would there people, Would there be people who would carry those orders out? I absolutely think there would be.

[Mike Pesca]

Here's an interesting wrinkle to the issues you're raising. You're raising them as a warning. You're telling people, watch out. This is what the Trump administration can do. The Trump loyalists, former members of administration, people who are working at exact opposite ends of your goals, which is they want to get Trump elected, are saying the same thing. They're not saying it's a warning. They're saying it's a promise. The New York Times quoted, quoted Russell Vogt, who ran the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, as saying, we're talking openly about this. Yeah. We're trying to entirely overhaul the federal government as a paradigm. Talk about paradigm shifting ideas, to plant a flag, to shift debate, and later to be able to claim a mandate. Do you worry that if this is out there and the public understands this and Trump still wins, that he will say, you guys knew about this, that, yeah, this is what I'm going to do?

[Miles Taylor]

Yeah, I do, Mike. I've not heard anyone say that yet. You are the first I have heard say it that clearly. And obviously I'm having this conversation every hour of every day lately. Couldn't have put it better that the things that I'm warning about in blowback are the things they are openly claiming they're going to do and actually are saying this is a good thing. And the point here, I think, is not really to try to persuade the most hardcore loyalists that this is going to happen, because I've actually received that feedback from them. My hope is that if, as we talked about earlier, if you're going to create a coalition of the sane in the American political system, you got to get those rational Republicans who privately have reservations to have a little bit of air cover and say, you know what? Yeah, that isn't conservatism, that isn't the GOP I signed up for and get them to bandwagon with other independents and maybe folks on the center left to stop someone so extreme from entering the White House again. But the reason I say there might be a copycat is I think Trump has really created, he's tilled the fertile soil for someone worse than him to rise up. And we have seen a number of his acolytes take policies that even Trump walked back from and take them further.

[Mike Pesca]

Miles Taylor is the author of First A Warning and now Blowback. Wait, have we gone so far afield from warnings? No, it's the second word of the subtitle, blowback. A warning to save democracy from the next Trump. Excellent to talk with you, Miles.

[Miles Taylor]

Mike Pesca, you're a patriot. Thank you for having me.

[Mike Pesca]

Thank you. That's what Sean Hannity used to say to all his callers, though. So it's like, you know, double edged sword.

[Miles Taylor]

Sean and I, we're very similar, very similar guys. We really, we think you're the greatest, Mike. You're one of the best that there's ever been.

[Mike Pesca]

And for more of me talking to Miles Taylor and him talking back to me with our names, we're putting our names to it. You can subscribe to the Pesca podcast plus [e-mail] there. You can also get an ad free version of our podcast and extra bonus interviews like this very good chat I did with miles. Subscribe.mikepaska.com and that's it for the show that was produced by Cory Wara. And we'll talk to you on Monday.

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