Former Trump administration DHS official Miles Taylor, the anonymous author of a New York Times op-ed article in 2018 criticizing President Donald Trump, said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that Donald Trump was behaving and talking in a “deranged” manner.
On Fox News Wednesday night, Trump said, “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it. Because you are sending it to Mar-a-Lago or where ever you are sending it. There doesn’t have to be a process.”
Taylor said, “Something strikes me – that critics of Donald Trump often get derided as people having Trump derangement syndrome. They’re obsessed with the former president. I think the label works a lot better for Trump himself. This is truly deranged behavior, to think the way he’s thinking and the way the ex-president is talking.”
He continued, “This is emblematic of what we saw during the Trump administration. His view that the presidency was all-powerful, and now, clearly, his view that those powers continue in the post-presidency. By the way, Donald Trump would use those words. You and I have talked about it before that he told us when I was in the Oval Office he wanted to use his magical powers to solve any number of different issues. That’s how he thought about it. And during the COVID response, Donald Trump said, ‘When you’re president of the United States, the authority is total. And that’s the way it’s got to be.’ That’s why he admired dictators.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN