A former Homeland Security official in the Trump administration who later turned into one of the former president’s critics has quit the Republican Party, saying the GOP can’t be saved.
Miles Taylor, who was the agency’s deputy chief of staff and then chief of staff from 2017 to 2019, wrote on Twitter:
Taylor also linked to an editorial he wrote for NBC News:
“In the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday, it’s become glaringly obvious that my party no longer represents conservative values but in fact poses a threat to them — and to America,” he wrote.
Taylor was referring to the white supremacist who shot and killed 10 at a Buffalo grocery store and specifically targeted Black people. The alleged shooter reportedly wrote a manifesto referencing “great replacement theory,” a conspiracy theory that claims Democrats are trying to replace white Americans with people of color. That theory has been shared in Republican circles, and embraced by figures such as Fox News host ― and self-confessed liar ― Tucker Carlson.
Taylor noted that a poll last year found nearly half of Republicans agreed with sentiments of the “great replacement theory.”
“The Republican Party — which branded a violent insurrection in the nation’s capital as ‘legitimate political discourse’ — is poisoning Americans’ minds and supplanting respectful disagreement with loaded-gun rhetoric,” he wrote.
Although good people remained in the party, Taylor urged them to quit, too, “until it is rehabilitated or a suitable alternative is created.”
Taylor’s time in the DHS involved Donald Trump’s infamous policy of separating migrant children from their families. Taylor later told Telemundo that he regretted not denouncing it at the time.
He publicly came out against Trump in 2020 and said he would vote for Joe Biden. He has also admitted to writing the 2018 “Anonymous” op-ed in The New York Times that claimed there were people within the Trump administration who were working against the then-president.