Trump wages war on the "enemy within"

This is a Global Player original podcast. Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia. While America is under invasion from within, we're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways'cause they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform you can take'em out. These people don't have uniforms.

But we are under invasion from within. We're stopping it very quickly. How dark is that getting? The US President talking about an invasion from within. He said he wants to use American cities as training grounds for the military, and he's addressed his speech To a roomful of generals, military men and women, America's top brass, To order them to

to follow what he's going to ask them to do next. But the law of America is very clear. The military should not be used for domestic law enforcement purposes, a restriction that dates from eighteen seventy eight. And what Donald Trump seems to be saying is, you don't follow the Constitution, you follow me. Welcome to the NewsAgents USA. The News Agents USA.

John Sopor. It's John. It's Emily. And today you're going to be hearing a pretty extraordinary voice, a man who has become one of Trump's political enemies. His name is Marles Taylor. He worked in Trump's first administration and he's now been accused by the President

of treason. We're gonna hear just what it's done to Miles Taylor's life and just what it says about America's leanings towards authoritarianism right now and the rule of law. And we had fixed up to speak to Miles Before Donald Trump made that speech yesterday to the army generals at the Marine Headquarters in Quantico.

But it's all part of the same story in a sense, because what Donald Trump was announcing yesterday was that not that the military follow the Constitution and that their oath of loyalty is to the Constitution, it is to him and that he wants them to be used to fight on the streets of America? to this enemy that doesn't wear a uniform. I mean, you know, Antifa or whatever it is that he thinks are the enemy that need to be slain.

I mean this comes what two weeks Two and a half weeks after the murder of Charlie Kirk, after which Trump declared that there was a domestic terror network that he was gonna hunt down and find. And the jokes at the time were that he was gonna go after Antifa as if it was like a body, an organization, with a hotline, with, you know, a head or a chief. And actually what has emerged since then is just how totally serious

Trump is about pursuing his political enemies or anyone he even perceives to be a political enemy. He's talking about invading and disrupting US cities. Now there has been pushback, not least from the Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who's accusing Trump in that speech of using military troops and indeed the ICE, the immigration and customs enforcement guys. To act for him as a petty tyrant. In other words, there are people who can see clearly what is going on here. He's given up.

on the wars that he can't control. What he can control is what is happening in America's own backyard. Democratically elected America. What they've done to San Francisco, Chicago. New York, Los Angeles. They're very unsafe places and we're gonna straighten'em out one by one. And this is gonna be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within.

Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can't let these people in so again, telling his own military that they're where they've got to field. the the the theatre of war is in America itself. Of course the cities that he singled out there are all run by Democrat controlled administration. And you wonder what this means going forward for. The midterm elections or the presidential election in three years' time.

Are there gonna be troops on the streets putting off certain people to go and vote? I mean you don't need to cancel elections to win elections. You can keep power by just suppressing the turnout in certain key places. And you kind of start to wonder, is this what this is all about? This is just the warm up act for next November's midterm election.

Where you have enough troops and ICE officials on the streets that mean that people are scared to go to the polls and Donald Trump keeps control of the House and the Senate as a result of it. Maybe that is just going too far, too fast, too quickly. But why is he doing this?

that far for a plan. I think it's a very simple vindictiveness on the part of the president, who has never disguised the fact that, as he said at the Charlie Kurt Memorial, he hates his opponents. Over the weekend We saw the indictment, the charging of James Comey, the former FBI director, a man who, in our first interview seven years ago, told me that the thing that kept him up at night

was this threat by Donald Trump to pursue ordinary American citizens, his own political enemies. But remember that what lay at the heart of the falling out between Comey and Trump was that Trump demanded from Comey a swearing of loyalty to him. And Comey said, No, I will swear an oath of loyalty to the US Constitution. That is my servant.

not you. And that was the breach in the relationship where it became irreparable. So, with James Comey, There are others now who have criticized Donald Trump who find themselves in the legislative crosshairs where a weaponized Department of Justice is going after people who are on the list who have crossed Donald Trump, who have criticized him, and now they must face Vengeance.

This is the criminalization of dissent. And we're going to speak to somebody right now who's in those crosshairs, Miles Taylor, who was Chief of Staff at the Department of Home Security during Trump's first term, and is now the subject of an executive order I want to say to

a historic executive order by Trump, directing federal agencies to investigate him and accusing him of treason. Miles, I I cannot imagine what it's like to be in your shoes right now, so why don't you give us a sense of what that edict has meant to you and And done to your life? Well, I mean, it's been extraordinary, to be honest. I mean, I you know, I without overstating it, from the moment that the president signed this in the Oval Office.

It has detonated our lives. So, you know, just to bring you into the room, when the president signed this order, he, of course, as you noted. declared to the country that he thought I was guilty of treason, which is the highest crime in the United States, a crime punishable by death.

said that without evidence and said it because I have engaged in a multi-year of campaign of protected speech against the president, telling people he should not be elected, telling people about the dangers I saw in the first Trump administration. Then in his order, he of course directs his agencies to go find the evidence. Well, the process of that has resulted in the company that I built blowing up.

the financial security for my family. I'm the sole income earner in my household. I have a young one-year-old daughter and a wife who are dependent on me. We no longer have the business. that I was previously running because it was detonated in the wake of this. And I can remember that day the president signed this order standing at the kitchen counter in our house. And my wife looked at me and said, What are we gonna do? Are we even going to be able to afford to hire the lawyers?

to address this. And the answer for me was, I don't know. We might have to sell the house. Um, but it's not just our financial security. Our personal security has been massively affected by this. We now have. Restraining orders. against stalkers across this country, MAGA individuals who, even if the president doesn't take the term treason seriously, they do. They take it seriously and they want to carry out the president's edicts.

on his behalf. And so we've had violent threats from individuals who've sent horrific things to me, my wife, about our family members, pictures of our young daughter. It's gotten very, very ugly. And keep in mind, This is just from the stroke of a pen. The President decided he was mad at me for criticizing him, so with the stroke of a pen,

He signed this executive order and it's had all of these consequences. He hasn't indicted me yet, like James Comey. He hasn't put me in jail. This is just the beginning of the process and it's already been catastrophic.

Have your friends stuck by you? Have lawyers stuck by you? Uh we've lost some of the most important people in our lives. That's the bad news. I mean, I've had, you know, friends that were in my wedding say to me, we're gonna have to lay low and keep our distance from you and your wife.

until this blows over. Why? Because they either have security clearances and work in the US government, they have businesses that maybe do engagement with the government. That's devastating to have your social circle that you're dependent on. Scatter. That's intentional because what you've seen with this administration is when they put out these orders, they put language in them to restrict.

any security clearances for your associates. They know people like me who've come up in the national security community primarily have friends who are also government or ex-government employees. And if they say, If you are an associate of Miles Taylor, we can revoke your security clearances. They create an extraordinary act of intimidation to push away your social circle. So that's been a huge challenge. And of course, as you note on the legal front.

it's very hard to get legal representation in the United States right now if the president is coming after you because he has intimidated so many of the law firms. I am fortunate in that uh some of the best lawyers in the country who watched this happen stepped forward and said, We've got your back. That's so interesting because at the moment, as you say, James Comey has been indicted.

John Bolton has had the knock on the door from the FBI and r you know, I d presumably any time someone knocks on your door you think, is this it? You know what, I'm really glad that you put it that way because I'll be honest with you all about something that I haven't said as frequently. This becomes An absolutely daily anxiety for your whole family in the way that.

When the mailman, when the postman comes down the driveway, when an Uber driver comes down the driveway, when the Amazon delivery person arrives, every single time. You think it's a car full of government agents ready to arrest you in front of your wife and daughter and carry you away. That anxiety does not diminish. And we've of course have had to make

Extensive security upgrades to our property. We have layers and layers of sensors, cameras, and alerts. So at four in the morning, when the driveway alert goes off, when the perimeter alarm goes off. When the lights start going on, when all of that happens, yeah. I mean your adrenal glands are shot and then you look.

And it's not the FBI, it's a deer crossing the property and you're like, okay, we're fine. And you go back to sleep. But those are the little ways in which it consumes your life to be added to the president's blacklist.

I mean standing back, Miles, you said you've got the best lawyers in the country on this. You shouldn't need to have super brains on something like this. If In your case, the president has already accused you, I mean and literally accused you of treason or with comey. He's already, I think, showed what do they call it? Vindictive persecution. Doesn't that work against

Well, hopefully it does. I mean, you know, that's certainly something that Comey, myself, John Bolton, others have a great deal of evidence. that we could bring into legal proceedings of selective and vindictive prosecution. In other words, in the United States under the 14th Amendment, you are protected by the equal protections clause that says the law cannot be enforced against you.

For biased reasons of your political position or First Amendment protected speech, etc. Yet Comey and Bolton and myself have this long list. of tweets and statements and missives from Donald Trump over the past seven or eight years of him saying, we got to go after these guys. We're going to prosecute them. Hopefully that will be helpful in the courts. But here's the thing, they can destroy your life before you ever get that opportunity.

to go make that case in the courts. And they know that. The president and his team know that very well. And that's why they've made great use of this modern day blacklist.

Let's go back a bit because I think for a lot of our listeners they won't remember that you wrote a scathing op-ed piece. Anonymously for the New York Times. And I was in Washington as a correspondent at the time when it happened. I thought, wow, this is dynamite. I wonder who this person is.

The New York Times wouldn't have published it unless it was someone who was pretty damn well connected. You were the chief of staff to General John Kelly when he was at Homeland Security. And then you outed yourself. And you did write in very frank terms about Donald Trump that he has proved he is a man without character and his personal defects have resulted in leadership failures.

so significant that they can be measured in lost American lives. I witnessed Trump's inability to do his job over the course of two and a half years. Now of course you're going to incur the rot

Of the president. Could you have ever imagined that you would be having this conversation with us on the first of October 2025? Well here's the thing. Yes. And that's why I did it. I did it because My worry was if Americans reelected this man, he would be vindictive enough to create a federal government willing to accuse private citizens

of the highest crime in the United States merely for criticizing the president. That was my worry. My worry is if we put this guy back in, his most vindictive and unlawful and unconstitutional impulses would not be stopped. And ironically, I became an example of that. I mean, I spent a lot of my time after I quit the administration in protest. saying that Donald Trump was abusing his power for his own self-interest.

And ironically, what he has done in response to that is abuse his power for his own self-interest to go after me and his other enemies. So I very much did envision that I would have to be in conversations like this. If that happened. But I hope the American people would never put such an obvious want-to-be autocrat. back into the White House. And now that they have, I think people are seeing what kind of Donald Trump they are getting.

without the so called axis of adults that was around him in the first administration. And look, I'll be the first to admit That there was something almost obnoxious to American people about the notion that there was this group of unelected bureaucrats. around the president, keeping him from doing things he shouldn't do. And you had people on the political right say, well, how dare you? That's not your job.

Well, my rejoinder at the time was, look, I wasn't in that administration to keep the president of the United States from doing things he's lawfully allowed to do. I'm a lifelong Republican, okay? I want a successful, strong, conservative president. I was there to tell the president, you can't do illegal things.

You can't do unconstitutional things. That is the fundamental job of every public servant who swears an oath to the Constitution. You're supposed to speak truth to power. And there was a big group of those people around Donald Trump. who saw that he wanted to do illegal things and regularly pushed back against them. We'll hear more from Miles in a second.

The news agents USA. Do you feel now, Miles, that you have a choice? I mean, you are showing a kind of force of resistance. James Comey issued something over the weekend which was pretty similar. You know, we don't really have a choice. We have to fight this one. Is there a world in which you just roll over? Is there a world in which you just say Yeah. I I I can't stand living my life like this.

Yeah. I look, a lot of people have done that. I mean, you've seen that across industries in the United States, from people in media. to people in business, to people in educational institutions, you have seen folks unfairly and unlawfully put in the president's crosshairs who have said, and you almost can't blame them, I don't want to do this. If I fight back against this, they are going to come at me twice as hard and they're going to make it so much worse.

But when people do that, it enables the bully. Or to use another analogy, if you feed the alligator from the boat, the alligator doesn't go away. The alligator comes back until it eats you.

I will confess, my wife and I did not immediately come to the conclusion that we were going to fight this thing full throttle. We didn't. We actually spent about two months after this executive order was issued realizing That if I fought back against this hardened public, it would be worse and probably vastly increase the odds that they would ratchet up the pressure on us.

And like I said, we have a small family. We wanted to grow a family, lead a private life. We had built a very successful business. We were happy living off the grid and away from the public eye. But ultimately, we came to the conclusion that if we stayed quiet about this,

it would happen to more people. And the order the president issued against me was, as you noted at the top end, the first time in American history, the first time in 249 years a president of the United States has ordered an investigation into one of his critics.

for protected speech. That's never happened before in an executive order. And so our worry is if we don't fight this, and prove it's unconstitutional, it will become the tool of a president from any political party from here on forward to persecute their adversary.

So we spent the first half of this podcast talking about Hegseth and Trump yesterday at Quantico at the marine base and telling them, you know, this is what I expect of you. And I wonder whether you think this is part of a piece, because it's almost like Donald Trump is saying to the military, to the generals You answer to me, not the US Constitution, and if I want you to go after my enemies within America, you shall. Yes.

He is saying that. And and look, I always have to add this caveat. These things sound very hyperbolic. It sounds almost deranged to suggest that the president of the United States is making these claims and it's this dangerous And it's this bad. Look, I will tell you as someone who's spent his entire career since nine eleven working in the US national security community, the biggest threat I've ever seen to American democracy.

is now coming from inside the executive branch because we are seeing an extraordinary corruption and weaponization of U.S. government power to go after political adversaries. And that includes the president's remarks yesterday to military generals. And I will tell you, I spent time with this guy in the Oval Office, the White House Situation Room, Air Force One. He was very frustrated. that the military generals were so damn committed to their oaths to the Constitution.

It was a lot harder to get them to do the things that Donald Trump wanted if they were unlawful than it was to go get one of his random political appointees, some twenty five year old kid in a department or agency to do something illegal. It drove him crazy. I knew and General Kelly knew and General Mattis knew that when he came back for a second administration, Top of his list was going to be

How do I make the military more subservient to me, not the Constitution, to me? And Donald Trump started that process with alacrity yesterday when he signaled to those members of the military their career. him was going to be dependent on their loyalty to him, and that the enemy was not in Afghanistan or in Beijing. The enemy, as he said in his words, was within. What is the crunch now? I mean, with the generals, with the top brass who heard that message.

Do you think I mean do they go against their commander in chief? What where does this go? Well, the really important reminder to be issued to men and women in uniform. And I think they're getting this from a lot of corners, is that they do have an oath. And if you follow illegal orders, even if the president tells you. That does not absolve you of the crime. That's the way the law works in the United States. Now what I predict is going to happen over the next several years.

There are going to be a number of circumstances in which Donald Trump is trying to get the United States military to do things that are obviously unlawful. And people are going to face that choice because he will dangle things like presidential pardons in front of them and say, Yes, this may be illegal, but I'll pardon you.

That's not a fantasy. He literally did that to me and a group of my employees at the Department of Homeland Security in 2019. Wanted us to do something illegal, said, Don't worry, in his words, if you go to jail, I will pardon you. So he will dangle pardons. What was it? We were down at the border in 2019, in April of 2019, and Donald Trump wanted to fully seal the border to any asylum seeker. So anyone under the law who had a reasonable claim to say I'm fleeing violence and persecution.

Let me in. And we said, Mr. President, if we did that. that would break the law and the courts would find that we broke the law. And he said, I don't care. If you go to jail, I'll pardon you. That was the moment I decided to quit that administration. I said, okay, if the president of the United States is dangling get out of jail free cards to his own staff, to get them to do illegal things, there's no persuading this man.

To do what's right. That's over. Yeah, I just wonder but who is the sort of General Mark Milley who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs when Trump was There who is gonna say my oath is to the Constitution. Isn't it? I mean look, we've seen it everywhere. We've seen Congress roll over, we've seen the le law firms roll over, academia roll over, the museums and on and on and on it goes. Do you think the military are going to say no, Mr President? Uh do you want my honest answer?

Yeah. Because a lot of people out there look. I deeply respect men and women in uniform. I worked in the Pentagon during the first Bush administration. I have a lot of friends that serve in the United States military. I would like to tell you. No, they are going to push back. They are going to fight against this illegal conduct in the Trump administration.

Uh, I do not personally believe that's what's going to happen, at least at first. I think you are going to see a lot of the senior ranks of the military roll over. And we may not know about it because these are not folks.

who are used to vocally and publicly standing up to the President of the United States. It's just not in their DNA. I cannot tell you how hard it was to get even the very vocal generals In senior positions who worked in the first Trump administration to get their asses out there in 2020 and say what they were saying to people like me in private.

publicly. And my point to them was, I get it. You've spent a career, you got four stars on your shoulder. I'm just some punk kid. But you're telling me in private you think this man is a danger to the fabric of our republic. That's not something for dinner conversations. You need to go tell that to the voters.

who will decide whether to fire or rehire this man. Finally those people did. But I'm telling you, it is not bred into members of the military to go out there and dissent from the president. So I think he's going to be quite successful. In bringing the military to heal. And a quick example of that is what Donald Trump has already done off the coast of Venezuela in blowing up drug boats.

This is completely not authorized by the Congress. His missile strikes against drug dealers, while it may make us feel good, no one wants to have sympathy for the drug dealer. They are not lawful. And he's doing that with members of the military in full compliance.

Miles, why do you think it didn't make a difference ultimately to voters? I mean, you know, we heard John Kelly literally calling Trump a fascist. Why doesn't that resonate with America anymore. What's happened? Well, look, uh you know, maybe this is a dim view of human nature. I think most people are sheep and I think they have very short memories. And it made a difference in twenty twenty. just enough of a difference in twenty twenty.

to get lifelong Republicans who'd never voted for a Democrat in their lives to say, yeah. I am sick of him after these four years, fine. I'll vote for the Democrat. And just barely, Donald Trump was defeated. But after four years, people have such short memories. I think they got rose-colored glasses. I mean look, even people, even very, very well-informed, politically astute people, pick Jamie Diamond at Chase, right? Runs the biggest bank on the face of the planet.

Jamie Dimon knew who Trump was. Jamie Dimon couldn't stand Donald Trump. Jamie Dimon never wanted Trump to be president again. Then after four years, people like Jamie Diamond said, Well, maybe it's not gonna be that bad. You know, maybe he's gonna be a really business friendly guy. And then all of a sudden, Donald Trump went gangbusters on tariffs and Jamie Diamond said, Oh.

Oh yeah, that's the Donald Trump that we had before. Unfortunately, I think that is a symptom that has afflicted tens of millions of people, and now they're waking up to the mess that they've created. And and make no mistake, Donald Trump's not doing this to us. We did this to ourselves. 70 plus million Americans decided to do this, and we deserve every bit of it. But now we have to figure out how do we keep the worst of it.

from doing irreparable damage to the American Republic. And that matters not just for Americans, that matters for the world. Because I'm telling you right now, the leader of the free world is deeply unhinged. doesn't give a damn about his allies and is set on remaking the world order as we know it. That sounds very Orwellian and hyperbolic. It is the reality we are living right now. Will you flee? I mean, will you sit it out in America? Are you trying to move?

Uh, I'd I'd be lying if I said that people didn't come to us and suggest that that would be the safest course of action for our family, but I would not consider it because Look, over the course of the past seven years, this guy has taken from me a home, two jobs, a former marriage, my personal security, and my life savings. The last two things he can take from me are my country and my life. And I can't control the second one, but I think I can have a say on the first one.

So I'm going to spend, this was not my plan, this was not my hope at all, but I'm going to spend the next three and a half years absolutely every single day committed to shining a light on what is happening. I'm still a conservative. I'm not a liberal. But I'm working with the Democrats right now in general because they seem to be the only party in the United States that cares about not losing the Republic.

to an obvious autocrat. So that's gonna be my full time job until this is over one way or another. Thank you very much indeed. Thanks for talking to us. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you, friends.

The News Agents USA. If what we heard from Donald Trump at the top of the episode was the sort of darkness, the kind of comedy. came from Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. having gathered together eight hundred generals and admirals from around the world to be flown in for this high level summit with something obviously very serious that Defence Secretary or War Secretary had to say

Pete Hagseth, but listen to what it was that was concerning him. It's tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It's a bad look. It is bad, and it's not who we are. So whether you're an airborne ranger or a chairborne ranger.

A brand new private or a four-star general, you need to meet the height and weight standards and pass your PT test. Okay, let's not forget who Pete Heggseth is. He's a weekend Fox News host who's now found himself in charge of the first time. of one of the biggest departments in the world, the US Defence War. and he has pulled people in Top brass from all over the world. to tell them that they're fat.

Because that is what matters in America in 2025. He's also said that any race or gender-based promotion is over. Well you might say, fine, except there is no clear sign that people were ever being promoted for their race or their gender. And the signal he's sending out now is that hazing is back. And if you are black or female, you probably don't want to be part of the US military.

Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading. And we lost our way. We became the woke department. But not anymore. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. No more debris. As I've said before and will say again, we are done with that shit. Removing the distractions, clearing the way for leaders to be leaders. You might say we're ending the war on warriors.

I heard someone wrote a book about that. Yeah. He's also said no more beards, no more long hair. uh no more individual expression. We're going to cut our hair, shave our beards and adhere to standards. The standards that he is setting to America. by what? Sending out military instructions on a signal Chat?

whose kind of own family were saying there were things about him that he was put him near the US government. Exactly. And yet he's lecturing these generals as if the most important thing is that they get a haircut, they lose some weight. come back flown in from Iraq like, Oh, this is really important. I don't know what the US government's gonna tell us. I don't know what my Commander in Chief's gonna tell us but

I've got to leave everything, you know Drop everything now. Peacekeeping operations gotta leave security operations, gotta come back from Beijing, gotta come back from Afghanistan because this could be really vital to our national secur Oh wait. Yeah, but it's also like he's trying to kind of

cast some Hollywood movie about a war where everyone is ripped and there are bulging muscles and there are six packs and chiseled jaws. Can't even do a pull up. And uh you know exactly. And you just think, hang on, warfare is

fought you know, the people at Bletchley Park, I mean when they were deciphering in the Second World War They were ripped, John, you know they were you know, was the only qualification or was it the quality of their brains that mattered? No, I wasn't I it's just oh I I honestly I thought it was so Lame, low banal puerile

I could go on. But the best was yet to come. You know how how discipline is really pretty central to Yeah. Military operations. It's kinda key, you know. It's like do we understand the chain of command? Do we understand what we've been told to do? So the new rule is ignore the rules. It's kinda like the fight club. Have a listen. We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement.

We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. Well that all sounds sane. meaning of going over the top, which is what Warriors did. in the First World War and the Second World War when they emerged from their trenches to face the machine gun fire. That man has just gone over the top in every single meaning of that phrase. I think he exploded. We'll be back next week. We'll see you then. Bye bye. Bye for now.

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