A Former Senior Trump Official Just Endorsed Joe Biden

From 2017 to 2019, Miles Taylor served under President Trump at the Department of Homeland Security, including as its chief of staff under Kirstjen Nielsen. Now, in a Washington Post op-ed, Taylor is endorsing ... Joe Biden. "After serving for more than two years in the Department of Homeland Security’s leadership during the Trump administration, I can attest that the country is less secure as a direct result of the president’s actions," writes Taylor. He says Trump wielded DHS as "a tool used for his political benefit," focusing on things like building a border wall rather than allowing officials to deal with actual threats to national security.

The same can be said of Trump's impact on US security overseas, Taylor writes, and the POTUS "has also damaged the country in countless ways that don’t directly involve national security but, by stoking hatred and division, make Americans profoundly less safe." That includes his response to the coronavirus pandemic, Taylor says. At Axios, Rashaan Ayesh writes that Taylor, who has also released a video endorsing Biden, "adds to the chorus of former top administration officials who have spoken out against the president after leaving office." But Jared Kushner, in an interview with CNN, dismissed Taylor as simply a "nice kid" who wasn't up to his DHS job. (More Election 2020 stories.)