Former Trump DHS official: “At first jokingly” we called Fox host Lou Dobbs Trump’s “shadow chief of staff”
Also: QAnon isn’t real, and the president is “overtaken by these carnival barkers”
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From the August 21, 2020, edition of CNN’s CNN Newsroom
ANDERSON COOPER (ANCHOR): I was fascinated by the president when he was asked about QAnon, finally, because it's obviously been percolating for a long time. His first response was, “They say very nice things about me,” Which I thought was so telling, which is something he says a lot. That seems to be the — the lens through which he views anybody, any group or any individual. They say nice things about me, so therefore I'm not going to say terrible things about them, as long as they say nice things about me.
MILES TAYLOR (FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY): Sure. I mean, Anderson, look back at Charlottesville. I think that we just marked the third anniversary of Charlottesville, and at the time administration officials, myself included, were astounded that the president embraced some of these radical right-wing elements when he should have condemned them. But we all know now why he embraced them — because these are people who expressed support for President Trump. And he's so drawn to that, he doesn't really care what they say. I mean, this is not a one-time thing. We're at the point now where this is very, very emblematic of Donald Trump's character. And the QAnon episode is just one more example in a long line of episodes that extend before Charlottesville, and since then.
COOPER: Just one more thing on QAnon. They believe that President Trump is behind the scenes working to stop — you know, this cabal of global sex traffickers, Democratic officials — and that he is secretly working, you know, he used to be secretly working with the Mueller team to get subpoenas against Democrats, and there was going to be this widespread purge. Is — you worked at the Department of Homeland Security. Is President Trump involved in — you know, obviously the U.S. works on sex trafficking issues around the globe, thankfully, because it is an actual problem — but is he actually running, you know, to fight against this cabal, this alleged cabal of Satan-worshipping people who drink the blood of children?
TAYLOR: I mean, this is what's so surreal, Anderson. We're talking about this, and real Americans out there believe it because the president says it. I mean, that's why words matter, and that's why his use of words is extremely irresponsible. And the answer is no, OK. I helped run a department of 250,000 hard-working men and women that protect this country every day. DHS is the largest law-enforcement organization in America. I saw no indication whatsoever — not only of a QAnon cabal of sex traffickers — but I didn't see a deep state working against the president. I didn't see any of these things that he regularly reverts to, as conspiracy theories. It is not real. And we should recognize when the president of the United States — the leader of the free world — is overtaken by these carnival barkers, that it's probably going to have deleterious consequences for our nation's security. And certainly, I can tell you it had a huge impact on morale in our department and throughout the federal government.
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COOPER: We all know that the president watches a lot of television. You said that one host served as the de facto chief of staff.
TAYLOR: Yeah, this is really disheartening, but there was a period of time where, you know, at first jokingly we would say that Fox late-night host Lou Dobbs was the sort of shadow chief of staff of the Trump administration.
Why did we say that? Because the president would call us, and he would say — and pardon my language — he would say, “Why the hell didn't you watch Lou Dobbs last night? You need to listen to Lou, what Lou says is what I want to do.” So if Lou Dobbs peddled a conspiracy theory on late-night television, or made an erroneous claim about what should be done, either at the border or with some law enforcement operation, the president wanted us to be tuning in every night.
My response to that was, I don't have any time to watch Lou Dobbs in the evening. You've got us running a 250,000-person department, and we're trying to play — you know, we're trying to guard against some of the most severe threats to this country. We can't be watching Lou Dobbs and taking our orders from him. But this happened on a regular basis.