A former top Trump Department of Homeland Security official is warning that he fears the president could get the U.S. into a nuclear war for which it is not prepared — because he saw the president’s response in his first term, when fears ran high after North Korea launched a missile that could have reached the U.S.

“Few Americans realize how close the president took us to the brink of nuclear war in his first term before aides talked him down,” writes Miles Taylor, the DHS chief of staff during Trump’s first term. “What the public didn’t know at the time — and until years later — was that the president’s team was worried he might start a nuclear war.”

“Today, there’s no one prepared to stop him,” warns Taylor, who writes that Trump “has an eerie fascination with nukes.”

“My fear about this man has always been about his finger on the nuclear button. That’s usually just symbolism when we talk about the presidency. The ‘nuclear button’ is a stand-in for the concept of presidential power and the risks of instability,” says Taylor. “When we’re talking about Trump, it’s not a metaphor.”

READ MORE: ‘What Was the Plan?’: White House Faces Fury Over Claim Trump Knew Hormuz Closure Risk

During Trump’s first year in office, “the United States came closer to a nuclear conflict than most people realize,” Taylor says. He chastised the president for his “mishandling” of a confrontation with North Korea that “was so serious” that the team at DHS “was forced to do real-life, defensive planning for the possibility of a nuclear strike against the homeland — a situation DHS had never been in since its creation.”

Detailing the events that day, Taylor notes that “North Korea had launched an intercontinental ballistic missile,” its “most powerful weapon yet — the first North Korean missile capable of hitting anywhere in the world, including Washington, D.C.”

As the crisis grew, Trump called acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke.

“But Trump wasn’t calling to ask about the missile — or even whether his defensive team at DHS was ready to protect the homeland against such a strike had it been the real thing,” Taylor writes. In an “angry” phone call, Trump “wanted to talk about deportations.”

“As Elaine recounted the call to me, her eyes began to well up. A nuclear-capable missile had just ripped through the skies over the Pacific, and the president of the United States was oblivious. All he cared about was getting foreigners off his land.”

DHS had to prepare for the “genuine possibility” that Trump “might stumble us into a nuclear confrontation with North Korea.”

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Taylor detailed Trump’s “angry tweets,” in which he “threatened North Korea with ‘fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.’ National security officials woke up to these messages on their phones. Stunned. The president almost seemed to welcome the prospect of a global conflagration.”

As the months wore on, whenever DHS “got alerts that the North Koreans were preparing a missile launch, those of us working inside the administration worried it could be the real thing,” says Taylor, “or that the president might say something so stupid that he’d manifest it… or that he would be too distracted to care.”

Now, Trump has not changed, but what has is that “everything that kept him in check” is gone.

Taylor recounts how last year, Trump took to Truth Social to declare that, “Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.”

“That process will begin immediately,” Trump wrote.

“As the president barrels forward with the Iran war, I’m getting the same sense of dread that I had then,” Taylor warns.

Summing up his concerns, he says that, “Regardless of what happens with the Iran war, I want you to remember this. I want you to remember what we’ve learned about how Donald Trump sees his gravest responsibilities as commander-in-chief, how he was gamified war, and how he has flirted with nuclear catastrophe.”

“It is, perhaps, the most urgent reason for Americans to demand the other branches of government do more to keep him in check. Our president is unstable, and there are no longer sensible people around him to send up a flare if he’s ready to do something deadly.”

READ MORE: ‘Key Indicator’: Expert Warns US Could Be Planning ‘Potential Ground Operation’

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The Pentagon’s reported decision to send a Marine expeditionary unit and additional warships to the Middle East is being called a “key indicator” of a “possible ground operation,” according to a national security and defense expert.

“The Pentagon is moving a Marine expeditionary unit and more warships to the Middle East, as Iran steps up its attacks in the Strait of Hormuz,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved a request from Centcom for an element of an amphibious ready group and attached Marine expeditionary unit, typically consisting of several warships and 5,000 Marines, according to three U.S. officials.”

The Economist’s defense editor, Shashank Joshi, responded to the Journal’s reporting, calling it a “key indicator of a potential ground operation.”

Joshi, who has given lectures to the UK Defence Academy and NATO, according to his bio, added: “Many potential uses for [a Marine expeditionary unit,] of course. Some related to ground operations … but many not. Things like de-mining capacity, escort capacity, evacuation of civilians.”

READ MORE: ‘What Was the Plan?’: White House Faces Fury Over Claim Trump Knew Hormuz Closure Risk

CBS News national security analyst Aaron MacLean wrote: “If I were considering a special operations mission targeting Iran–perhaps a raid on nuclear sites, or even the seizure of critical energy infrastructure–this is just the sort of capability I would want on hand in the region.”

Retired Washington Post editor Robert McCartney called the move a “sign we could soon see U.S. boots on ground.”

“If modern war history shows us anything it’s once you start sending troops the number keeps going up especially when the war is a debacle,” warned Mike Prysner, Executive Director of the Center on Conscience & War. “And leaders would rather pass off the problem to the next administration rather than be the one to admit defeat.”

Just days ago, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) warned of a potential deployment of U.S. troops “on the ground in Iran,” after attending a briefing.

READ MORE: ‘Quiet Part Out Loud’: Hegseth Slammed for Lashing Out at CNN’s War Reporting

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The White House is coming under fire after attacking as “fake news” a CNN report that indicated the administration failed to plan for Iran shutting down the economically critical Strait of Hormuz, which has now been deemed impassable amid Iranian threats of bombing which have helped push the price of oil at times over $100 per barrel despite despite emergency reserve releases.

“The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter,” CNN reported on Friday.

Calling the report “garbage,” Leavitt specifically pointed to this portion of CNN’s report in her harsh criticism:

“Top Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers during recent classified briefings that they did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes, according to three sources familiar with the closed-door session.”

READ MORE: ‘Quiet Part Out Loud’: Hegseth Slammed for Lashing Out at CNN’s War Reporting

Leavitt insisted that President Donald Trump had been briefed on the possibility that Iran could effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, and noted that the Pentagon had been planning for that possibility for decades.

“The Pentagon has been planning for Iran’s desperate and reckless closure of the Strait of Hormuz for DECADES, and it has been part of the Trump Administration’s planning well before Operation Epic Fury was ever launched,” Leavitt wrote on social media.

She went on to suggest that it is not Iran that has shut down the strait, but rather, “rogue Iranian terrorists.”

“The President was fully briefed on it, and a goal of the Operation itself, to annihilate the terrorist Iranian regime’s navy, missiles, drone production infrastructure, and other threat capabilities is quite literally intended to deprive them of their ability to close the Strait,” she wrote, despite the Strait is now effectively closed as little commercial traffic is crossing it for fear of being attacked.

“President Trump will not allow rogue Iranian terrorists to stop the freedom of navigation and the free flow of energy,” Leavitt claimed.

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But some critics asked why, if President Trump had been briefed on the possibility that the Strait could be closed, he attacked Iran without an apparent plan to keep the Strait open.

Political commentator Dan Hodges wrote of Leavitt’s remarks: “Not sure why they continue to peddle this line when the whole world has just seen the US Defence Secretary state that he believes the Strait is open, save for the fact Iran keeps firing missiles at vessels trying to transit it…”

“So then what was the plan?” asked Navy veteran Jared Ryan Sears, who writes at The Progressive Capitalist. “Let it happen, let oil and gas prices soar, use up 40% of our oil reserves, help Russia sell their oil, and then tell the American people to suck it up and deal with it? Great plan…”

Award-winning investigative journalist Mike ‘Thomas Paine’ Moore remarked, “Thank you for admitting that you decided to proceed regardless. Thereby jacking up oil prices. You basically just admitted you did this on purpose.”

Some critics pointed to a Wall Street Journal article that noted, “U.S. officials said Wednesday that Iran had laid mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries 20% of the world’s oil exports from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. The U.S. Institute for the Study of War estimated that 10 mines had been laid, though President Trump cast doubt on such reports and encouraged shippers to traverse the strait.”

Earlier this week The New York Times reported that “In the lead-up to the U.S.-Israeli attack, President Trump downplayed the risks to the energy markets as a short-term concern that should not overshadow the mission to decapitate the Iranian regime.”

Political commentator Robert Elisberg remarked, “given the administration’s lack of credibility, even if others were briefed on your plans doesn’t mean those WERE the plans. And even if they were – man, were Trump/Hegseth’s plans terrible.”

Commenting on CNN’s report, foreign policy analyst Jimmy Rushton noted: “To my knowledge, every war-game that has ever attempted to simulate a full-scale war between Iran and the U.S. has assumed the Iranians would attempt to close Strait of Hormuz. It is amazing they didn’t understand or predict this.”

Also commenting on CNN’s report, Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) commented, “I worked at Pentagon, State and White House on Middle East and every assessment about possible conflict with Iran started with the real possibility of closing Strait of Hormuz. I guarantee Trump leaders were warned. They just thought they were better than the experts.”

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