IHIP News - Former Trump Insider Drops Bombshell, Republicans Are Done But Too Cowardly to Say It

Episode Date: May 2, 2026

We are joined by former Trump official Miles Taylor to discuss what getting him out of office will look like. Pre-order Jennifer’s new book Not Today, Fascists today: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcastAnd follow @MilesTaylorUSA See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All right, Trump's illegal war in Iran is dragging on with absolutely no end in sight. And Pete Heggseth, who was wholly unqualified, a Fox News narcissist, went to Capitol Hill for a second day and made very clear who he thinks the real enemy is. This is breathtaking. Play the clip. Adversary we face at this point are the reckless naysayers and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans. defeatists from the cheap seats who two months in seek to undermine the incredible efforts that have been undertaken and the historic nature of taking on a 47-year threat with the courage no other president has had. Okay. To unpack this, joining me today is Miles Taylor. He is the founder of defiance.org and former DHS chief of staff under Trump 1.0, who quit during the first administration,

in protest. He is the author of New York Times number one bestseller, a warning about the dangers of a second Trump turn. Miles. How are you? I'm great. Fantastic to be with you. What do you make of Pete Hagseth grandstanding and lying and saying that the real enemy are Democrats and some Republicans? When you see Pete Hegseth talk, you know how bad he's. he's lying by how passionate he gets, right? The guy only tells the truth when it's like close to a whisper and there's very little gesticulation. Like that's when he's telling the truth.

This was one of those moments where he was clearly lying through his teeth about the extraordinary gains of this war and the defeatism of the adversaries. I mean, that rhetoric, Jennifer, it legitimately belongs in a 20th century autocracy. It feels so weird in this moment to see people talk in those terms. when they know it's not true. This isn't any victory for anyone. And forget what you say about it or what I have to say about it. The American people now, according to polling yesterday, say this is the least popular war since Vietnam and more unpopular than Vietnam. Okay, that just happened yesterday. And I wonder why. Because gas hit $4.68 a gallon. This war is a catastrophe that no one asked for. And the more grandiose, this would be. the more you realize that they are cowering because they know that this thing has to end or it's going to collapse the entire Amaga movement and the Republican Party. You can see that in the way they react to say nothing of the national security implications here, which I really

sincerely think are quite grave. I mean, this war has set the United States back in a lot of ways from a conventional preparedness perspective to a geopolitical perspective to an alliance perspective, there's almost no way you can cut this that is favorable towards U.S. national security. What do you make of at the end of that? And all, everybody in Trump's orbit always has to say, this is the only president who's had the courage to do that. It's all of that blustering, which is just, it's so embarrassed. I'm so secondhand embarrassed for them to do that. Are they so locked in that loyalty to this man is the number one objective? And they're always speaking for an audience of one. Yeah, they are. I mean, there's, you know, a long time ago, there was a scholar that put this in terms that are easy to understand today. It was Friedrich Hayek wrote something, a book that that conservatives used to love for a long time called The Road to Surfdom. And in that book, there is a chapter called Why the Worst Rise to the Top. And in the 40s, he was trying to explain this exact phenomenon that you just pointed to because back then, even though there was,

no cable news or social media, it was still obvious from the papers to so many people that there were just dozens and dozens and dozens of public servants in Nazi Germany and allied countries who spoke this way, who were clearly educated, clearly knew better, but were just obsequious in their pleasure remarks towards the leader, just how grateful they were, how pleased they were to have this incredible leader. And his explanation, Friedrich Kuyak's explanation on why the worst rise to the top was pretty straightforward. He said, when you have a leader whose only criteria is loyalty, then you have to be willing to do literally anything to succeed in that orbit. So if the leader says, I want you to do something illegal, loyalty means a willingness to do

something illegal. And as a result, the people with no centering values, the people with no morals, the people with no limits on what they're willing to do are the ones who most quickly rise to the top. Because the moment someone has a moral thought or a moment of conscience, they either self-select out of that orbit or they get kicked out of that orbit. This is exactly what happened in the first term. I witnessed it. It was like a Ph.D. in cowardice studies. I saw people around Donald Trump who the moment that light bulb went off and their conscience lit up,

he could see it. If he's got a radar for anything, it's for the human conscience. would see it, he would get them out of his orbit, and now we are left with the actual boot liquors, the people who would literally be willing to put their tongues on his floor shim shoes in order to stay in that orbit. It's true. It is the biggest collection of bottom feeders. It's really breathtaking.

It's absolutely breathtaking. But I always think when we all witnessed January 6th, it was so horrific. And we all, I never thought he would be in power again. And then after he won, I thought, oh, the people who want. to go work for him after this. These are going to be the worst among us. And you wrote a piece this week titled, in private, Trump allies tell me that they're done. I know why they're scared to speak up. What are they saying and tell us about this article? This is a hard one. This is a hard one, Jennifer, because it's been so many, it's been so many years of this. It's been so many years of

these Republicans behind the scenes bashing Trump. and still being unwilling to do it publicly. And I'll tell you, the reason I wrote the piece is the thing that motivated me to reach out to a number of these members of Congress was the other week when Donald Trump said, you know, tonight a civilization will die and talking about bombing Iran. And I thought, you know, some of these Republicans that I still talk to that I used to work with in the House or work within the Trump administration, they've got to draw the line at nuclear genocide, right? Because that's obviously what the tweet was.

As a practical matter, you can't kill 90 million people with conventional weapons. So if it's a threat you're going to make good on, you must be threatening nuclear war, nuclear genocide against a population. That's got to be where they draw the line, right? And so I reached out to some of these members of Congress that I'm still kind of friendly with. And over the course of several days, nudged them with a, hey, the water's warm. This is the moment to come out. If you're ever going to define yourself against what happened in this moment in the eyes of history, Now is the time.

With a lot of them, Jennifer, messaging me back, oh, my God, this is unbelievable. Do you think this guy's crazy? Is he off his rocker? Has he lost it? All the things that we all say, all the things that any American who watches this would say. But guess what? You didn't hear from a single one of those people I was messaging with.

They didn't come full. And I always say it's never too late to do the right thing. I get the inclination to say, screw these guys for spending years and years and years on the inside, saying one thing in private and another in public. I always want to give them the off-ramp and the opportunity to come forward. I'm no Marjorie Taylor-Green fan, but I am awed at the extent to which her coming forward has brought so many other people in the MAGA movement forward. It can make a difference. But this cowardice is, you know, it's like a virus, you know, more contagious than COVID.

And, you know, that's why I felt like I needed to write this piece is it's keeping these people silent. They are scared for their lives of this man and they're scared of getting kicked out of the tribe. And that's how this has happened in the first place. That's how any authoritarian movement is enabled is by people like that who know better. So, Miles, here's what I think because it's so like you, I'm so frustrated with Republicans MAGA supporters. And I think there's degrees. Like I grew up around country club Republicans in Oklahoma. And then you have just like the full-blown MAGA, you know, cultist, rural voters that have been overlooked that felt seen by him.

And it seems to me like Donald Trump can move with impunity on anything, listed a million times in the Epstein files, floating that he might pardon Gilene Maxwell, posting himself as Jesus Christ, threatening nuclear Holocaust. Nobody moves the needle at all. And I have this theory that the magnificent seven, these AI tech companies, have kept the stock market up like a Ponzi scheme and they're trading it to keep the S&P 500 and keep the Dow up. It is inevitably going to burst. The bubble will burst. And when the stocks start tanking, the North Star to all of these country club Republicans that will start calling up Republican senators that will start calling Republican congressmen, all of a sudden they will say, enough is enough. And I think it's going to be money. I think our worship, particularly Maga's worship of money is so important to this component. It's gross, but that it is what it is. And I think when that happens, then you're going to see more people jump over to Marjorie Taylor Green's camp and start using this. Oh, he lost his way. This isn't the guy we voted for. You know, that's what

she's telling herself. Now, which whatever, I'm with you. I had no idea he was crazy in a con man. And so I think we're going to start hearing that, but I think the stock market is going to have to crash first. You were inside the Death Star. What is your take on all of this and what will ultimately unravel this entire sickening, horrible, abusive cult we're all living in? Well, it is like a Death Star.

I mean, I've said for years, in fact, I'm glad you used that terminology. For years, I've said, it's like Donald Trump has a Darth Vader-like choke hold on people. It's, you can't, you don't have Darth Vader can choke people from afar. You're like, I don't understand. Why is this person acting the way they're acting?

Something else must be happening here. Oh, it's the hand of Vader on their necks. And that's really what this is. And you're right. I mean, at the end of the day, and I think the insight goes beyond MAGA when it comes to the economic component. I mean, you know, we need to find a way to refer to the James Carville quote. It's the economy's too. I mean, it's the Carville thesis.

But look, that drives politics. Pocketbooks drive politics on both sides of the aisle. And I do think a catastrophic recession is the final wake-up call for some of these holdouts. Now, I am seeing the numbers shift because of these MAGA influencers break. Whether you think it's transactional or moral, the Megan Kelly's and the Alex Joneses and the Tim Pools and the Marjorie Taylor Green's breaking are impacting Donald Trump's floor. The polling is devastating. He's basically lost 10 points in the polls because these people are allowing for MAGA grassroots to break away from him. So that's a good thing for democracy.

It's a very bad thing for Donald Trump. But on the recession piece, this is how his numbers could go even further south and how our democracy could endure more damage if there is a recession from all of this. And really, I should say when there is a recession, Jennifer, because it is inevitable. Okay. History tells us that we're going to. hit another recession and Donald Trump is doing everything possible to trigger it. Here is why, and no one's talking about this, here is why that recession is going to be worse than any recession we've seen. And I can't predict how far the market tanks because of oil. But what I can tell you is right

now we are playing with fire by tempting fate on a recession because companies all around the world that have to lay off their employees in a recession now can avail themselves of the worst type of scab in world history, which is an automated one, which is a machine that can take the job and never give it back. See, we're used to in recessions, battening down the hatches and waiting for hiring to start again. But right now, companies are flirting with the idea of replacing employees with AI agents. It's happening all over the place. I just had a lovely phone call with a car rental service that was AI generated. And I will admit, it was way better than waiting for a half hour, I got everything fixed in three minutes. It was great. But those employees are never coming back.

Companies are dabbling in this right now, Jennifer. If there is a recession, expect mass long-term layoffs, not one, two, three, four years like we experienced after 2008. Companies will use this as the opportunity to replace their workforces for good. There will not be the bounce back people think. That's why Donald Trump is playing with fire. If he wasn't goading a recession, this process might happen semi-naturally where companies are experimenting with this workers are pushing back people are defending their rights they're somehow reaching a cord it's not what's going to happen if don't trump triggers this recession millions of people lose their jobs robots take them and never get them back i think i think you're right i mean i tell my listeners all the time it was never

the immigrants or the LGBTQ plus people that are taking your jobs it's always been the billionaires in a i that's who is taking jobs that's who's taking jobs from working class americans Americans. All right, let's talk about Donald Trump's myopic focus on the ballroom. And he turned this a shooting incident at the White House Correspondence Dinner with a millisecond, with laser focus and all the sycophants jumping on. This is why we have to have a ballroom. I mean, we clearly have to have the ballroom. What do you think the psychology is behind his desire to have this ballroom? And do you think if there is a blue tsunami, if we are able to get past all of the rigging, all of the threats of ice and military at the polls, because they're

going to roll all of that out. And then also another part of this question is fast forward to 28, and he's not able to go around the amendment. Do you think he ever visualizes himself leaving that White House? Because I think the narcissistic wound that he took when Marine One came and picked him up after Joe Biden kicked his ass in 2020. I don't think he's ever fully recovered and he was broken to begin with from that. And I just don't think he has any idea of leaving. And I think he thinks I'm going down in that bunker and I'm going to stay there with all of my things and my cell phone and McDonald's and a Diet Coke. Well, I'm, I'm looking at my phone right now because I'm trying to look up this, trying to look up this note.

I can't find it, but I'll, I'll paraphrase it. for you. One, I think you're right. Two, I think people have seen this about Donald Trump for years. The quote I was looking up was my former boss, the first Trump administration, John Kelly, had warned to me before 2020. I could tell you where I was because I remember this conversation so vividly. We were on the phone. I was parked outside the Department of Homeland Security's former headquarters. We had both since left the administration. I was just in that part of town. And we were talking about the coming of the coming. election and Kelly said, you know, here's what I think is going to happen. I think the guy is going to chain himself to the resolute desk and they are going to have to

drag him out in a straight jacket for people to realize how crazy he actually is. This is like a year before January 6th. And Kelly was not that far off from what actually happened. I think he was just a few years behind on the reality of that image because the That is what I feel like we are trending toward in 2028. Donald Trump sees whatever life he's got left in him, if the man even is alive, is it's totally dependent on his remaining in office. His life, his legacy, his personal freedom.

And Jennifer, he's probably right. A man who has committed so many obvious crimes is right to project that if he leaves office, he probably trades it for a jail cell. It's really hard to imagine, given the volume of crimes that have already been committed in his first year back in office. I don't mean that hyperphatically. I mean that very literally obvious criminal conduct. How does he stay out of jail? Well, he stays in power.

That's how he stays out of jail in his own mind. And so I do sincerely think that Donald Trump is continuing to consider ways to seed the public narrative, to allow for his continuance in office. They're going to look at the loopholes in the constitutional amendment. They're going to try to, I think they're going to try to play this game where it's Vance Trump on the ticket. They flip tickets. He's running as vice president. They try to do something along those lines. Or they do of Vladimir Putin, which, you know, Putin, of course, before he was able to change their constitution in Russia became the equivalent of our Speaker of the House while Dmitri Medvedev took over his job, you could very much see a scenario where Trump's successor becomes president and he tries to

get named Speaker of the House by a Republican majority where he's still pulling the strings. Very possible. You don't have to be an elected member of Congress to be named the Speaker of the House. And guess what? When Donald Trump was out of office after 2020, this idea was actively considered by his core team and he himself. They had conversations with people. I can validate that. They had conversations about whether he might seek to be named Speaker of the House. He's going to be looking at ways to stay in power. And this is as fascist as it gets. And so, yeah, I think the bunker factors into all of this.

Long way of saying the bunker is something that has stayed in his mind since the protests in 2020. A lot of people don't remember this. The first time Donald Trump ever experienced the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the Piaq, is when he was pulled. from the White House during these protests and taken down there. And in classic Trump fashion, he was like, I don't like the digs down here. I don't like the setup.

We've got to renovate this thing. Why would you renovate a bunker if you don't expect to spend time in that bunker? The man expects to spend time in that bunker. It's the only reason he would dig up his own yard to do it. Donald Trump is digging up that yard because he expects to spend time there. That's what I'm worried about. This is not hyperbole. This is real.

We have to think about the psychology of a man who wants to do something like this. You're so spot on. I mean, he's all about aesthetics. He's all about optics. I mean, he has terrible taste. But I mean, what he's done with the Oval, he is renovating everything because he believes that house and that property is personally his. Final question, Miles, and I could talk to you for hours and I want to have you back on again

very soon because I think your insight is so helpful. that really bothers me is that so many people from Trump 1.0, and I'm a Democrat, I'm a progressive, so many people from Trump 1.0 that worked with him that were, are loyal to the Constitution, more conservative than me, but not bad people, came out of that administration saying, you know, he has no respect for the military. He is a fascist through and through. He He asked, I think it was Mark Esper, can I shoot protesters in the legs? And we heard, Americans heard all of this. We saw January 6th with our own eyes.

We saw all of these experts, Republicans, neocons, telling the world this about a man that they worked with, you telling the world about a man that you worked with. And this party that you were devoted to, they are demonizing you for being. being honest, where honesty is being demonized. And people are not believing their eyes and ears are adjusting reality to suit the ego, the fragile ego of the senior citizen toddler nutcase. And it's just not that deep. So I'm not going to use deep words about what he is. And it really bothers me that people like you and other people with whom I disagree with politically, but I believe the veracity of their claims.

And I knew they took great risk, great risk to come out of that regime and say, we have a problem. This is very, very problematic. This man is bad. He is dangerous. And he doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself. And the people didn't listen. Yeah. And it really, will you speak to that in our closing words?

Because that's the part that really bothers me about all of this. I get a crazy person. I get Trump in solitude. It's the people that put up the permission structure to excuse evil shit that really bother me, Miles. Well, this is probably cold comfort, but as a student of history, this is a phenomenon you run into so consistently.

You wonder if it's somehow been pre-planned by some kind of higher power, regardless of what your faith or view of the universe is. You're like, wow, this is remarkable that this lesson happens all the time, from antiquity to the dark ages to the early years of the republic. I mean, again and again, you see this remarkable theme of people seeing the freight train of fascism coming, denying it, denying it, denying it, denying it, then experiencing its consequences and waking up.

What seems a little too late, but again, it's never too late to do the right thing. I mean, you may suffer extraordinary consequences in doing it. But I mean, you know, I was just finishing a book about the early years of the Roman Empire just at the end of the Republic as the Republic fell. It's not like there was just one or two voices sounding the alarm. I mean, it was a coughing of warnings. And yet they still barreled forward towards Caesar's reign and the destruction of the world's really early experiment in human freedom. this happens. What you tend to see, Jennifer, is that people at the end of the day, it's not even death that they fear the most. It's being kicked out of their truck. And I had a

conversation years ago with my buddy Adam Kinsinger about this. We were down in Savannah, Georgia, and we've all had this conversation a million times over coffees and barbecues. But I said to Adam, man, why are these friends of ours, these Republican members of Congress, and other people that I had served with in the administration before I quit, why are they still staying silent? And at the time I had speculated, it's because they saw the death threats Adam and I were facing. You know, his newborn baby at that time was being threatened. I had had to leave my home, my jobs. I had an armed security detail because of the threats.

It got really, really ugly. And Adam said, you know, I don't even think it's the death threats. I think they've built their lives and their identities. so much around this tribe, this Republican tribe, that they worry that if they publicly break with it, that's it. Their future prospects, their career, their life, everything, their internal identity is destroyed. And I talk about this sometimes when I speak to student groups, but it made me think of a Jerry Seinfeld joke. And unfortunately, when I say that, student groups are like, who's Jerry Seinfeld? I'm like, okay, well, what Jerry Seinfeld used to make this joke, he would open sets and he would say,

you know, a survey came out of Americans' top 10 fears, and number one on the list is public speaking, and number two is death. So your average American would rather be sitting in the casket than delivering the eulogy. And, you know, Jerry Seinfeld would get laughs when he would do that joke, but there's a truth thing. People would rather be caught laying down in the casket than up there at the podium, speaking out, telling the truth. That has been consistent throughout history. And there's one way to get over, Jennifer. There's only one way, which is you got to increase the supply of people speaking out to lower that price of dissent. It's Econ 101. And Econ, anytime something's too expensive in a marketplace, so if the price of dissent is too high,

if dissenting like I did means your wife and your 18-month-old daughter are going to get threatened with shooting in a firing squad and hanging, which members of my family have been threatened with. The only way to make that price lower so that doesn't happen to more people is you've got to increase the supply. And then the price goes down. And I will say, closing on an optimistic note, that is happening in this country. A year ago, I would not have said there was a defiance with a backbone in the United States of America. Left and right institutions and people were capitulating, cowering, and bowing down to the leader, that is not happening now. It is the reverse.

There is a title shift towards the defiance in the United States of America, and that has meant the price of dissent is getting lower and lower. You'll see that the people who join at the very end will only join when the price is near rock bottom. And you'll know a lot about their character when that happens. Miles, thank you.

Tell my listeners how they can find you and about your organization defiance. Yeah, if they just head over to defiance. We are a nonprofit club focused on countering Donald Trump's abuses of power. So every single week we announce real actions we are taking to push back. That includes funding some of the lawsuits against his unconstitutional policies. We are funding journalists who get arrested and their legal fees. We are supporting whistleblowers.

Literally every week we announce something new. And last week, Jennifer, it was we announced an effort called GTFO ICE. get the facilities out ice. That sounds like a different GTFO. We need that on purpose. And it's a rapid response network to notify people if an ICE prison is going to open in their community so they can go cancel it. So anyway, people should go check out Defiance.org. Come join the club.

This is all I'm doing until the guy is gone. And it's not what I wanted to be doing, Jennifer. I built a private life away from politics out in the woods. I wanted to be done with this. But I am going to fight every single day until this guy is gone. And we've restored the rule of law in this country. If folks want to come join me and that, we would welcome them. Well, I am going to start and I'm leaving here shortly and I'm taking a taxi to an event and I'm going to sign up.

I'm going to donate money to defiance.org. We have to come together. We have to unite. We have to support each other and only we can save us. And so I cannot thank you enough, Miles, for joining me. I'm a huge fan of yours and your courage for speaking out. And this has been so insightful. and I know my listeners and viewers will love it, and I would love to have you back on soon.

Well, right back at you. And I'll just say to those listeners and viewers, stick with this gal because she's a badass protecting democracy. And I said to her in the green room beforehand, I love, love, love watching her out there. She's like the voice of conscience for this country right now. And she just does not let the enablers get away with it. So, Jennifer, I'm so grateful for you and everything you do. Thank you, Miles.