Whistle Blower Miles Taylor and His Story

Miles Taylor

This frightening story is from Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the president’s Department of Homeland Security. It is from the Washington Post today:

“In a video for a Republican anti-Trump group on Tuesday afternoon, the former chief of staff at Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, Miles Taylor, confirmed reports that Trump had offered officials pardons in exchange for possibly illegal actions at the border. Legal experts have argued this would, in fact, be illegal.

In a video for a group called Republican Voters Against Trump released Tuesday, Taylor said he personally witnessed Trump in April 2019 offering officials pardons if they were criminally charged for their actions in stemming illegal immigration at the border.

“The president said to the senior leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, behind the scenes, ‘We should not let anyone else into the United States,’ ” Taylor says in the video. “And even though he’d been told on repeated occasions that the way he wanted to do it was illegal, his response was to say, ‘Do it. If you get in trouble, I’ll pardon you.’ ”

Taylor summed it up: “The president offered to pardon U.S. government officials for breaking the law to implement his immigration policy.” Taylor said he decided at that point to quit.

In a Washington Post op-ed last week, Taylor said that Trump routinely tried to use the department in which Taylor served for his “political benefit” — and often explicitly so: ‘He insisted on a near-total focus on issues that he said were central to his reelection — in particular building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Though he was often talked out of bad ideas at the last moment, the president would make obviously partisan requests of DHS, including when he told us to close the California-Mexico border during a March 28, 2019, Oval Office meeting — it would be better for him politically, he said, than closing long stretches of the Texas or Arizona border — or to “dump” illegal immigrants in Democratic-leaning sanctuary cities and states to overload their authorities, as he insisted on several times.’”

In a different video, Taylor claimed Trump that asked for withholding disaster aid when California was suffering from wildfires. California didn’t support him politically and thus needed to be punished. Taylor said: “On a phone call with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he told FEMA to cut off the money and to no longer give individual assistance to California. He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire, because he was so rageful that people in the state of California … didn’t support him and that, politically, it wasn’t a base for him. .... A lot of the time, the things he wanted to do not only were impossible, but in many cases illegal. He didn’t want us to tell them it was illegal anymore, because he knew that there were — and these were his words — he knew that he had ‘magical authorities.’ ”

If what Taylor is alleging, it is clear that the president is not president for all Americans. He is only interested in service to people in states that support him. That is the case even if it mean he screws his supporters in states that do not support him.

What a rotten, evil, failed leader. He has no magical authorities, just lies, hate, corruption and incompetence in service to himself.

GOP Arrogance and Disrespect for the Rule of Law

“Today's Republican Party...is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance.” ― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the Politics of Extremism

The New York Times is reporting that the White House is blowing off criticisms that the president's blatant use of government resources for his personal political gain is illegal under the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities while they are working in an official capacity. It also prohibits civil servants from running for political office or using their titles in political activities. The White House just does not care. The NYT writes:

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,” Mark Meadows, President Trump’s chief of staff, said in an interview with Politico. “This is a lot of hoopla that is being made about things mainly because the convention has been so unbelievably successful.”

Mr. Meadows made his comments the morning after the Republican National Convention aired two official ceremonies staged earlier on Tuesday on the White House grounds — a pardon performed by Mr. Trump and the naturalization of new citizens performed by Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, as Mr. Trump watched and chatted with them.

During the convention, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech from Jerusalem, in an apparent violation of separate State Department rules, and the first lady, Melania Trump, delivered a speech from the Rose Garden.

Arrogance, irrationality and untruthfulness

Meadows assertion that nobody outside of the Beltway really cares is arrogant, irrational and not true. Some people still do care about respect for the rule of law, even if the president and most of the GOP leadership does not. Clearly, the president and his administration do not. Meadows was also quoted as saying that “you can’t break the law — you shouldn’t do it,” but then suggested that the Hatch Act was outdated. That seems to imply that breaking the law somehow isn't breaking the law because it is allegedly outdated. The irrationality of the Meadows ‘rationale’ is obvious and undeniable.

Apparently, Meadows and the president are both unaware of the facts that (1) an outdated law is still the law, and (2) outdated laws need to be repealed or amended by congress, or invalidated by a court of competent jurisdiction. They just blow that off and break the law as if it no longer exists and pretend that breaking it is not breaking it.

The GOP Convention: A Promise vs Delivery Disconnect?

Republicans have promised a positive inspiring convention. So far, they have delivered a tidal wave of lies and hyperbole. And based on the bits of speeches in this 1 minute video, there seems to be a major disconnect between the promise and the delivered product.

The Cognitive Biology of Hate and Racist Speech

A Washington Post article includes a couple of comments on some research into the biological effects of hate and racist speech.[1] These are worth a mention, even if folks here are aware of these biological effects. The WaPo writes:

There is a wealth of research out there that frequent exposure to hate speech (what else would you call Trump’s racist appeals and personal attacks?) makes us, as one paper from 2017 put it, “less sensitive to hate speech and more prejudiced toward hate speech victims than their counterparts in the control condition.”

Richard A. Friedman, a psychiatrist, wrote in 2018 that “politicians like Mr. Trump who stoke anger and fear in their supporters provoke a surge of stress hormones, like cortisol and norepinephrine, and engage the amygdala, the brain center for threat.” He continued: “One study, for example, that focused on ‘the processing of danger’ showed that threatening language can directly activate the amygdala. This makes it hard for people to dial down their emotions and think before they act.” In layman’s terms: All that anger and fear can make you less rational.

From what I can tell, the main point of dark free speech is to make people less rational and more emotional, intuitive and negatively biased. That is how most (~96% ?) demagogues and tyrant wannabes rise to power.


Footnote:
1. I call speech like that dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

Regarding Voter Suppression

The president claims that there has been and will be massive voter fraud in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. If he wins in November, he might tone that rhetoric down some. All the evidence so far of voter fraud amounts to not much. Despite that, the radical right constantly but falsely claims that voter fraud is a major problem. So far, that is false.

On the flip side, what about evidence of voter suppression that results form false claims of trying to  stop massive voter fraud? The Washington Post writes:

“More than 534,000 mail ballots were rejected during primaries across 23 states this year — nearly a quarter in key battlegrounds for the fall — illustrating how missed delivery deadlines, inadvertent mistakes and uneven enforcement of the rules could disenfranchise voters and affect the outcome of the presidential election.

The rates of rejection, which in some states exceeded those of other recent elections, could make a difference in the fall if the White House contest is decided by a close margin, as it was in 2016, when Donald Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by roughly 80,000 votes. 

This year, according to a tally by The Washington Post, election officials in those three states tossed out more than 60,480 ballots just during primaries, which saw significantly lower voter turnout than what is expected in the general election. The rejection figures include ballots that arrived too late to be counted or were invalidated for another reason, including voter error. 

‘If the election is close, it doesn’t matter how well it was run — it will be a mess,’ said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who studies election data. ‘The two campaigns will be arguing over nonconforming ballots, which is going to run up against voters’ beliefs in fair play,’ he said.”

Nationwide, about 319,000 mail and absentee ballots were rejected in the 2016 general election. Given postal service sabotage and chaos and various voter restrictions and requirements in many red states, a lot more than 534,000 mail ballots could be rejected next November. Republicans will do their very best to see that the rejections hit likely democratic voters than likely republicans. If there is going to be massive voter fraud in November of 2020, it will come in the form of unjustified GOP voter suppression perpetrated in the name of preventing almost non-existent voter fraud.

One more time… because I’m kinda slow

 

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While I personally experience a sense of spirituality, real or not, I’ll admit that I’m not religious in any orthodox sense.  Still, I think I do comprehend the concept of “morality” and “moral code.”  My understanding is that holy books aim to provide high standards and guidance for such. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Attn: Politically active evangelicals who support Trump

Q1: From a morality standpoint, doesn’t Donald Trump continue to be pretty much everything the Bible tells humanity it shouldn’t be: vain, selfish, covetous, mendacious, adulterous, anti-“other-ness”/our neighbors”?  My understanding is that these types of questionable activities are high on the list of “Christian don'ts,” and that being a Christian is supposed to mean a continuous striving/aspiring to the highest of biblical moral standards. Is that not true?

Q2: Nevertheless, Donald Trump claims to be a Christian.  Based on his actions, am I wrong when I, a non-Christian, see Trump as a Christian in name only? Is being a CINO okay with your God?  Why/Why not?

Q3: As a Christian, does Donald Trump’s actions offend you?  If yes, how so?  If no, why not?

Q4: If I’m completely off base here, then please explain to me what I don’t get about the Trump / Christian / Bible “non-sequitur.”  Please help me understand the disconnect between what Christian Trump says, and what Christian Trump does, because I still (after all these many years) don’t get it. :(

Whether religious or not, all are invited to help me understand this personal conundrum.

Thank you.