A former political appointee at the Department of Homeland Security has endorsed Joe Biden in a damning video produced by a Republican group against Donald Trump.
«What we saw week in and week out, and for me, after two and a half years in that administration, was terrifying,» he said in a video. «We would go in to try to talk to him about a pressing national security issue – cyberattack, terrorism threat – he wasn’t interested in those things. To him, they weren’t priorities.»
Mr Taylor, who had served as DHS chief of staff under former secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, is one of the highest-ranking former administration officials to endorse the president’s rival.
«Given what I have experienced in the administration, I have to support Joe Biden for president, and even though I am not a Democrat, even though I disagree on key issues, I’m confident that Joe Biden will protect the country and I’m confident that he won’t make the same mistakes as this president,» he said.
The president wanted to «restart» a practice of separating children from their families at the US-Mexico border following its dissolve in 2018, despite growing humanitarian crisis forcing thousands of children into federal custody while their migrant families were prosecuted, Mr Taylor has claimed.
«He wanted to go further and have a deliberate policy of ripping children away from their parents to show those parents they shouldn’t come to the border in the first place,» Mr Taylor said in the video. «He didn’t want us to tell him it was illegal anymore because he knew that there were, and these were his words, he knew he had ‘magical authorities’.»
Mr Taylor also claimed that the president had directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to «cut off the money and no longer give individual assistance» to people in California following deadly wildfires in the state.
«He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses have burned down in 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,» Mr Taylor said.
The president wanted to «exploit» the DHS «for his own political purposes to fuel his own agenda,» said Mr Taylor, alleging that officials who continue to serve in the administration have warned him that a second term – if the president is re-elected – would be «no-holds-barred» and «shock-and-awe».
