Donald Trump wanted to sell Puerto Rico for Greenland because, according to former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, “Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.” Trump allegedly made these remarks before a planned trip to the island in 2018, after Hurricane Maria had left most of the population without access to water, electricity and food. This was just one of the revelations made by Taylor, a Trump insider turned informant. Taylor was present in most of the meetings that saw controversial policies put in place, including the one to separate families at the US-Mexico border, and the one to tear-gas immigrants attempting to enter the country.
In this case, Taylor’s account confirms a report from last August that the president asked his lawyer to look into purchasing the autonomous territory. After Greenland preemptively rejected the offer—“If he is truly contemplating this, then this is final proof that he has gone mad,” a spokesman for the Danish People’s Party said at the time—the president abruptly canceled his planned trip to the country in a huff, though he claimed it had simply been rescheduled.
The timing of Taylor’s revelation is has raised some eyebrows, coming as it does in a pre-election news cycle that looks grim for Trump. The president himself implied that “former disgruntled employee” Taylor—“who I do not know (never heard of him)”—is being used by the “Fake News circuit” to make him look bad ahead of November. Speaking to MSNBC, Taylor defended himself: “If I had spoken out a year ago, he would have buried it. He is a master of distraction but right now voters are paying attention. They are reviewing the president’s resume.” Taylor also gave an interview to Politico, and wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post.
Taylor is just one of many ex-Trump staffers who have either left the fold or been fired and promptly attempted to re-assimilate. In June of 2017, six months after taking on the role of White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer unceremoniously quit after having drawn ridicule and criticism during his short tenure. (He called Nazi concentration camps “Holocaust centers” and falsely proclaimed that Trump’s inauguration had drawn “the largest audience ever, both in person and around the globe.”) Six months after his departure, Omarosa Manigault Newman, reality star, assistant to the president, and Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison was fired for undisclosed reasons. She later went on to write Unhinged, a book detailing her time in Trumpworld and rejecting her affiliation with the president.
On Wednesday, Taylor emphasized his 180, too. “A lot of people went into this Donald Trump presidency thinking that the president’s misguided impulses could be ameliorated. We were proved decisively wrong,” he said. “The president’s worst impulses can’t be ameliorated,” he added, “and I think what you did see is a lot of people resigned from the administration because of that.” Never mind that, before they resigned, they enabled a president who enacted countless cruel policies and is even now dismantling the inner workings of democracy. And that coming out now, as Trump appears to be on the downswing, is the safest bet for those afraid of his wrath.
Early this month, disbarred lawyer and former Trump attorney Michael Cohen released the foreword to his upcoming book titled, Disloyal: A Memoir. The true story of the former personal attorney to President Donald J. Trump, which is being touted as another bombshell from one of Trump’s closest allies turned foes. Like Taylor, Cohen has said he didn’t agree with everything the president wanted done, including allegedly hiding sexual infidelities, executing shoddy business deals, and lying to Congress. But unlike the newly repentant, Cohen owns up to what drew him into Trump’s orbit. In his foreword he writes, “My insatiable desire to please Trump to gain power for myself, the fatal flaw that led to my ruination, was a Faustian bargain: I would do anything to accumulate, wield, maintain, exert, exploit power. In this way, Donald Trump and I were the most alike….soulmates.”
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