Former Homeland Security chief of staff is joining the parade of high-profile Republicans urging members of their own party to vote for presumed Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Miles Taylor, who served at DHS between 2017 and 2019, said Monday, the first day of the Democratic National Convention, that he ‘witnessed the damning results firsthand’ of President Donald Trump’s ‘personal deficiencies.’
In an ad released Monday by advocacy group Republican Voters Against Trump, Taylor endorsed Biden.
‘Even though I’m not a Democrat, even though I disagree on key issues, I’m confident that Joe Biden will protect the country and I’m confident he won’t make the same mistakes as this president,’ Taylor said in the ad.
Taylor also said in the video that Trump directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to withhold disaster funds from California during devastating wildfires there because the state voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Donald Trump’s former Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylors endorsed presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden in an released Monday – the first day of the Democratic Convention
Taylor also claimed in the ad, released by Republican Voters Against Trump, that the president wanted to hold FEMA aid from California during the devastating wildfires there because the state voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and was not part of his base
‘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,’ Taylor claimed.
The former DHS employee also wrote in a Washington Post op-ed published Monday that America is so divided due to Trump’s presidency.
‘I can attest that the country is less secure as a direct result of the president’s actions,’ Taylor wrote. ‘Today the nation has fewer friends and stronger enemies than when Trump took office.’
The Anonymous author who wrote a 2018 op-ed and 2019 best-selling book trashing the president and who describes themself as a senior Trump administration official also endorsed Biden on Monday.
Anonymous is now in a new preface for the paperback version of the book ‘A Warning’ calling for voters to throw the president out of office this November. The new preface is part of the ‘2020 election edition’ of the book.
The new preface will be released Tuesday but was obtained early by Politico.
The author says a second term for Trump ‘unbound will mean a nation undone,’ and they claim it will result in ‘a continued downward slide into social acrimony, with the United States fading into the background of a world stage it once commanded, to say nothing of the damage to our democratic institutions.’
A quartet of Republicans are also prepared to endorse Biden on the opening night of the first-ever virtual Democratic Convention.
Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, who ran for president as a Republican in 2000 and again in 2016, will speak along with former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, former New York Representative Susan Molinari and former GOP California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard who now runs Quibi.
‘I call them the silent Biden voters, which are those Republicans who feel bullied, those Republicans that fear that they will be isolated if they support Biden and that they will be picked on. And so this will show them that they’re not alone,’ explained Biden campaign co-chair, Rep. Cedric Richmond, who spoke to reporters on a Zoom call Monday morning.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere told Reuters Monday that Taylor is just ‘another creature of the D.C. Swamp who never understood the importance of the President’s agenda or why the American people elected him and clearly just wants to cash-in.’
Taylor claimed in the op-ed that Trump’s ‘inappropriate and often absurd executive requests’ caused DHS staffers to regularly be taken away from dealing with genuine security concerns.
‘One morning it might be a demand to shut off congressionally appropriated funds to a foreign ally that had angered him, and that evening it might be a request to sharpen the spikes atop the border wall so they’d be more damaging to human flesh,’ he wrote.
Kasich is the only Republican who was previously announced to speak at the 2020 convention, which kicks off Monday and will conclude Thursday night with Biden’s acceptance speech, now taking place in his adopted hometown of Wilmington, Delaware due to the coronavirus crisis.
Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, is one of four Republicans who will address the Democratic National Convention on its opening night
The Democrats kick off their virtual convention Monday to nominate former Vice President Joe Biden (left) for president and Sen. Kamala Harris (right) for vice president. The opening night program includes speeches from four Republicans who’ve ditched Trump
The DNC was supposed to take place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a state President Donald Trump won over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The three GOP women speaking haven’t been politically active recently.
Meg Whitman ran and lost her California governor’s race in 2010.
Christine Todd Whitman left office in 2001 and then became President George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
Molinari ended her Congressional tenure in 1997 and went on to become a lobbyist for Google.
Sen. Mitt Romney, a more prominent Republican who has squared off with Trump, told The Daily Caller that ‘no,’ he will not be a surprise DNC speaker.
Conventions have featured endorsers from the opposing party in the past, most notably Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman’s 2008 endorsement of Republican Sen. John McCain, which came eight years after Lieberman was nominated to be vice president by the Democrats.
Progressive members of the party were already grumbling that Kasich was given more speaking time than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most prominent lawmakers with that ideology – and that was before the other three Republican speakers were announced.
Richmond pushed back and pointed out that every speech was condensed.
‘I would just say that this is a two hour convention. It is not the normal convention. It’s the complete opposite of it, it’s very concise and it’s abbreviated speaking roles,’ the Louisiana lawmaker said.
Sen. Mitt Romney, another Republican who has spoken out against President Donald Trump, will not be speaking as part of the Democratic National Convention, The Daily Caller reported Monday
The main program will take place between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. for the next four nights, with speakers livestreaming in from places all around the nation.
Richmond said that Bernie Sanders, the former progressive rival of Biden for the 2020 Democratic nomination, was getting eight minutes Monday night, ‘which is one of the longer speeches of the convention,’ Richmond explained.
‘AOC is doing the introduction of Bernie Sanders and I think that her time is consistent with that,’ Richmond said.
Ocasio-Cortez won’t technically be introducing Sanders, as she’s slated to address the convention Tuesday, a day after the Vermont senator and former 2020 hopeful.
Additionally, Richmond argued, the theme for Monday night’s virtual DNC is ‘We the People,’ which means a cross-section of Biden supporters should be heard from.
‘I would just say that we are making sure that every segment of this country that supports the Biden-Harris ticket has a chance to express why they’re supporting them, that includes GOP members,’ he said.
‘This is about winning an election,’ he added.