The anonymous Trump admin official who wrote a scathing 2018 New York Times op-ed criticizing the president—and followed it with a whole book, A Warning—has revealed themselves. It’s…Miles Taylor.
Wait, what?
Miles Taylor served as chief of staff to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and the reason you know his name is because earlier this year he very publicly came out against Trump and starred in a series of videos for Republican Voters Against Trump.
Twist?
In 2018, Trump was reportedly apoplectic about the op-ed, even floating the possibility on Twitter that the suggested internal resistance constituted treason.
This is a sort of confusing twist. On the one hand, Taylor has already spoken out publicly, so he gets points for that, but on the other hand, why didn’t he just come out as the writer when he first started blasting Trump?
Taylor expanded on his reasoning in a Medium post published Wednesday:
Much has been made of the fact that these writings were published anonymously. The decision wasn’t easy, I wrestled with it, and I understand why some people consider it questionable to levy such serious charges against a sitting President under the cover of anonymity. But my reasoning was straightforward, and I stand by it. Issuing my critiques without attribution forced the President to answer them directly on their merits or not at all, rather than creating distractions through petty insults and name-calling. I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves. At the time I asked, “What will he do when there is no person to attack, only an idea?” We got the answer. He became unhinged. And the ideas stood on their own two feet.
One thing is for sure: He’s going to sell a lot of books.
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