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‘Sense of Dread’: Ex-Trump DHS Official Fears He Could Stumble Into a Nuclear War
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.”
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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’
Image via Reuters
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President Donald Trump is being criticized for his latest Truth Social post in which he describes himself as an “extraordinarily brilliant person” yet admits he cannot understand the language in Virginia’s redistricting referendum — which more than 1.5 million voters passed Tuesday night.
The president also claimed the election was “rigged,” while offering no evidence, and was frustrated because ballot counting went more heavily in Democrats’ favor (the “Yes” vote) as results were counted.
“A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” Trump declared.
“All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory!”
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“In addition to everything else,” he continued, “the language on the Referendum was purposefully unintelligible and deceptive.”
“As everyone knows, I am an extraordinarily brilliant person, and even I had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the Referendum, and neither do they! Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.'”
Critics blasted Trump’s remarks.
“I am begging for someone to explain to the President how election returns work,” wrote Sarah Longwell, the founder and editor of The Bulwark.
“You weren’t ‘winning all day,’ you were ahead before counting finished,” wrote progressive commentator Alex Cole. “Those are not the same thing. The real conspiracy is how MAGA convinces itself losing = cheating instead of… losing.”
READ MORE: Republicans Have to Make a Choice Between ‘Reality-Based Data’ and Trump: Benen
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President Donald Trump’s job approval stands at its lowest point of his second term, and since he won’t be on the ballot in November or in 2028, Republicans will have to ask themselves at what point do they accept “reality-based data” and distance themselves from him?
So asks Steve Benen at MS NOW, where he notes that the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll “found Trump’s approval rating at just 36%, which was roughly in line with the latest NBC News survey. For the White House, the Associated Press’ latest national poll was even worse” — coming in at 33%.
The AP reported that even Republicans are showing less faith in his leadership, and added their findings “show a president who is struggling with unfulfilled promises to tame inflation and testing Americans’ patience with a conflict in the Middle East that has dragged on longer than expected.”
Benen notes that it’s been widely assumed that there is a floor below which Trump cannot sink — his base will never leave him. But, he posits, “the AP poll suggests it’s time to reassess earlier assumptions about just how low his support can go.”
READ MORE: ‘Weak, Stupid, and Bad’: Trump Slams Conservative Supreme Court Justices in Wild Rant
Some believe that focusing on Trump’s approval rating is “misplaced,” since he is constitutionally prohibited from running again.
But the trouble with that argument is that congressional Republicans are indeed preparing for midterm elections “as the American electorate turns sharply against a GOP president — whom those same congressional Republicans have championed since his return to power.”
The lower Trump’s approval rating drops, the lower his support gets, “the more the party confronts a question about what to do with reality-based data,” says Benen. “Do they take new, sizable steps to distance themselves from a failing and woefully unpopular president, or do they continue to carry Trump’s water and take their chances with a dissatisfied electorate?”
READ MORE: How Trump’s Corruption Is Like a Thermonuclear Bomb: NYT Columnist
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After delivering dozens of Truth Social posts in a 24-hour period, President Donald Trump is now lashing out at the conservative justices on the Supreme Court — again.
The president appeared to suggest that the conservative jurists should be loyal to his positions, and lamented that liberal justices “stick together like glue, NEVER failing to wander from the warped and perverse policies, ideas, and cases put before them.”
He also attacked Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, although not by name but by calling her “that new, Low IQ person, that somehow found her way to the bench (Sleepy Joe!).”
Calling it “unexplainable” and a “travesty,” the president appeared furious, once again, after losing his tariffs case at the Supreme Court, and was angered at what he expects will be a ruling against his administration on birthright citizenship.
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He wrongly called birthright citizenship “something which virtually NO OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD IS STUPID ENOUGH TO ALLOW,” and claimed that it “was meant for the babies of slaves, not for the babies of Chinese Billionaires.”
“No,” he continued, “certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they ‘supposedly’ stood for.”
“If they rule against our Country on Birthright Citizenship,” Trump wrote, “which they probably will, it will be even worse, if that’s possible. It will cost America massive amounts of money but, more importantly, it will cost America its DIGNITY!”
Trump’s Wednesday remarks follow his Tuesday attack on the conservatives: “I put certain people on the United States Supreme Court who totally misrepresented who they were, and the true ideology for which they stand!”
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