Former DHS official: Trump wanted to withhold California wildfire money for political reasons
Source: Politico
President Donald Trump wanted to shut off emergency relief for California amid devastating wildfires because it was a blue state, and he tried to deliberately separate families to deter immigration, according to a scathing account given by a former administration official on Monday.
In a new ad by the group Republican Voters Against Trump, Miles Taylor, former chief of staff to former Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, said Trump was “actively doing damage to our security,” recounting a number of episodes that he said revealed Trump’s inability to lead. Taylor said Trump wanted to expand family separation at the border, withhold emergency funding because of partisan grudges and neglect pressing national security issues for the sake of his political objectives.
Taylor endorsed Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in the ad, saying he felt that the former vice president would protect the country despite their partisan differences. He also wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post that Trump tried to use the Department of Homeland Security to fulfill a political agenda, including shutting down the California-Mexico border. Taylor is among the most senior former members of the Trump administration to back Biden.
The White House denounced Taylor’s remarks, pointing out that during his tenure in the administration, from 2017 to 2019, he never publicly voiced concerns.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/17/trump-california-wildfire-money-397340
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