Colonel Moe Davis and David Wheeler engage in a lively discussion with Miles Taylor, a notable figure from the Trump administration who became famous for his anonymous New York Times op-ed entitled "I Am Part of the Resistance." Taylor, who served as a senior advisor and chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, shares his insights on the alarming trends in American politics, particularly focusing on the potential implications of a second Trump administration. As they navigate through Taylor's experiences and the ongoing threats to democracy, the conversation highlights the importance of standing up against autocratic tendencies and the harsh realities faced by dissenters. The trio shares a mix of humor and serious reflection, emphasizing the need for accountability and the courage to speak out against injustices—no matter the personal cost. With Taylor's recent book, "Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from Trump's Revenge," they underscore the critical moment America is in, urging listeners to remain vigilant and active in the preservation of democratic values.

In a riveting episode of their podcast, Colonel Moe Davis and David Wheeler sit down with Miles Taylor, a former government official known for his outspoken criticism of the Trump administration. The conversation opens with playful banter about relationships, setting a lighthearted tone before transitioning into a serious examination of the current political climate. Taylor shares his journey from being a key player in the Trump administration to becoming a vocal critic, particularly after his anonymous New York Times op-ed revealed his concerns about the administration's authoritarian tendencies.

Throughout the episode, the trio discusses the alarming normalization of political retribution and the chilling effect it has on dissenters within the Republican Party. Taylor offers a candid look at how fear has gripped many lawmakers, leading them to abandon long-held values in favor of loyalty to Trump. He highlights the hypocrisy of individuals who once championed justice but now turn a blind eye to the administration's abuses of power. The conversation is punctuated with humor and camaraderie, making the heavy topics more accessible while underscoring the seriousness of their implications.

As the discussion deepens, Taylor reflects on the personal toll of being a whistleblower, recounting experiences of threats and isolation. He emphasizes the importance of standing up against injustice, encouraging listeners to engage actively in the democratic process. The episode concludes with a poignant reminder of the stakes involved in safeguarding democracy, leaving audiences with both motivation and a sense of urgency to take action in their own communities.

Takeaways:

• Colonel Moe Davis emphasizes the importance of fighting against authoritarianism and protecting democracy, especially in the face of potential Trump re-election.
• Miles Taylor discusses the chilling effect of political persecution and how it silences dissenting voices, reflecting on his own experiences with threats and intimidation.
• The podcast highlights the hypocrisy within the Republican Party, showcasing how loyalty to Trump often overrides long-held conservative values and principles.
• Listeners are encouraged to support efforts to push back against the erosion of democratic norms, as both hosts and their guest stress the importance of collective resistance.

Links referenced in this episode:

• msnbc.com
• substack.com
• treason.substack.com
• newyorktimes.com
• americanmuckrakers.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• msnbc
• New York Times
• DHS
• Lincoln Project
• Google
• Substack
• Forward Party
• Andrew Yang

Hey, folks, David Wheeler here in Spruce Pine with my good friend Mo Davis, and his lovely wife Lisa is sure lucky to have him. You married up, Lisa? I changed it around this week. Mo, it is for you, so. All right, well, you take it. Introduce our guest, please.

Oh, yeah, great.

Hey, listen, my wife Lisa is a big fan of our guest today because every day at our house at 4 o', clock, the television comes on for Nicole Wallace's show on msnbc. And our guest today is a regular on there, but we're really happy to have Miles Taylor.

And like I said, he's a regular on msnbc. And, hey, Miles, thanks so much for taking time out to join us.

It's great to have you friends, but it sounds like I should be talking to Lisa instead, so I'm just gonna hop off now. She and I are gonna do a phone call and we'll catch up.

Mo hate it. Hates it when I tell him that he married up to Lisa.

I hear that every week. Every week.

I mean, I know the feeling. I know the feeling. Story of my life. The only reason I even have a spinal cord is because my wife has one that that's made out of adamantium.

So she's the strong one in the household. Yeah.

I think the second one would have been much more unbelievable to me. You know, IU has had just a historically terrible football team. And so, you know, I would have never expected success.

On the other hand, with Donald Trump, this is sort of what I had anticipated. And, you know, no one likes the kid who says, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. Especially when that kid says, see, I was right.

The sky is falling. But I'll happily take the disapprobation in saying, I was right, the sky is falling.

And, you know, it's why I spent the better part of the past seven years trying to scream into the void about what a second Donald Trump administration would look like.

Because it was obvious to me as far back as the early days of the first Trump administration that he was being held back from doing what he really wanted to do, which was a lot of things that were illegal and unconstitutional, and that if he won a second term, he would pursue those things with alacrity. And now, of course, he's done that.

And, you know, so I think at this point, it's incumbent upon all of us to think, well, once you're in a situation like that, what can you do to contain it and to preserve the republic? And our options from that standpoint are relatively limited.

And one of those is weaponizing the Justice Department.

And I guess Comey, James Comey, I've, you know, wasn't a huge fan of his to begin with, but, you know, it's just hard to believe in America that a president can weaponize the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. And, you know, he's going after Comey for lying, Letitia James for mortgage fraud, John Bolton for classified documents.

And I'm surprised the U.S. attorney in Maryland hadn't gotten fired because I guess I read where they don't think there's enough evidence to indict Adam Schiff. But what's the strategy here with. And why is the Republican Party just sitting on his hands and letting him do this with the perversion of justice?

Well, I would say it is, um, it's something that we've heard a good deal from folks on the other side of this whole thing. On the, on the Trump side, they accuse his critics of Trump derangement syndrome, but I would say that is what they are, in fact suffering is.

There is such a severe derangement on the right that they are willing to be the obsequious pleasers to Donald Trump no matter what he says or does.

And I sometimes talk to friends of mine who are maybe sort of at the periphery of our friendships who are still in the MAGA movement, working on Capitol Hill, some of them members of Congress. And I tease them and say, you know, if he walked in here right now and he asked you to lick his toes, would you lick his toes?

Just to see their reaction. You know, they roll their eyes, come on, I'm not gonna lick the man's toes. And then I just, I don't even laugh or smile.

I say, but I mean, really, if he did it, if he demanded it, you wouldn't do it if it was going to end your whole career.

Because they're willing to tie themselves into pretzel knots for things that are far more egregious and debasing and controversial than licking the man's toes.

And, you know, that to me is the, is the derangement syndrome when it comes to Donald Trump, that there is a cohort of people, millions in fact, so willing to jettison their long held values and beliefs for the tribal leader. And I think that is best explained by the intrinsic fear people have of being kicked out of their tribes. And I use this quote a lot.

But Jerry Seinfeld had a famous bit where he would go do stand up and he would say, you know, a study came out recently that shows what the top 10 fears are for your average American. And at the very top of the list, number one is public speaking, and number two is death.

So your average American is more afraid to deliver the eulogy than to be laying inside the casket.

And I think it's a great joke, but also one that highlights a truth, which is that people are very scared to speak, to speak out, to speak in front of others, to state their views. They are worried that it exposes them to, to being kicked out of the tribe. And they'd rather be caught dead than getting kicked out of the tribe.

And that's, I think, the best explanation for how so many of my former colleagues in the Republican Party ended up sticking by Donald Trump no matter what, including when he defied their most closely held policy positions and values. And the Republican Party today looks nothing at all like the conservative movement that I joined. And I remain a conservative.

I'm a hardcore libertarian conservative, a small government guy, a Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman economic conservative. But this party doesn't look at all like those things that we had championed in the years before Donald Trump came to power. So.

So ultimately, I think that's the answer. I mean, so many Republicans are doing this because they are deathly afraid of being kicked out of the tribe.

And their identities, their jobs, their futures are, are all tied up within that.

And, you know, back when I was chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, after the Supreme Court struck down the military commissions that Bush had created, I worked with Boomer.

Dean versus Bush, I think was the.

Decision, oh, Hamdan Salim Hamdan who?

Bin Laden's driver, Neil Catch all Boomedine was later.

Yep. But, you know, in that case, in that case, Congress, you had to reauthorize the commission.

So Lindsey's office called and I went over and met with him and in John McCain, and they asked, you know, for my help and with the legislation to reauthorize the military commissions. And one of the things I told him was, you know, the first year in the job, folks pretty much left me alone. I could kind of do whatever I wanted.

But then when President Bush transferred the high value detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others from the CIA down to Guantanamo, suddenly everybody was interested in what I was doing, had an opinion on how I should do my job as chief prosecutor.

So when we were working on the legislation, I told Graham and McCain that it'd be great if we could include a provision in there that would prohibit meddling in the prosecutorial process. And they agreed and put it in the statute that no one could attempt to influence the exercise of prosecutorial judgment.

And then now, I don't know if you saw, a couple weeks ago when Lindsey was on one of the Sunday morning shows, they asked him about Trump meddling in the Comey case. And he said, you know, I don't give a damn.

So I found it shocking that this guy I knew who went to extraordinary lengths to protect the rights of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who planned 9, 11, and then doesn't give a shit about the rights of an American like James Comey.

But, but I think it's a good example of what you're talking about, of people that are willing to, you know, contort themselves into pretzels to stay in the good graces of the President.

It's absolutely right. And that's such a great example of, frankly, the mind numbing hypocrisy we see all the time coming from these folks.

You know, another example that strikes me along those lines is what we've seen with Trump himself in the past two weeks on the issue of free speech.

You know, whether people agreed or disagreed with the message of protesters around the country in the no Kings event, which was the largest single day peaceful protest in American history, there was no denying that free speech was at best assailed in the days afterwards by the President, who posted a relatively grotesque AI generated video of him dumping human excrement from a fighter jet onto the protesters. So the symbol was very obvious. He was disdaining free speech.

In the same week, Mo the President and the White House signaled that they would be making changes to the US Refugee program to basically block people from almost all countries in the world, but to open up asylum in the United States to people in Europe who have protested illegal immigration there and who have been criticized for it.

So, you know, think, think some of these far out neo Nazis there who have, you know, fomented violent protests across Europe, including, you know, physically blocking Syrian refugees from across, coming across the border. Donald Trump wants to give them asylum in America because he says their, their free speech is being persecuted.

So in the same week, you've got the White House dumping human feces on American protesters, l on their right to free speech and saying, but by the way, we'll take neo Nazis from Europe and protect them and protect their rights to free speech. That's side by side is unlike anything I've ever seen from an American president. Right.

Well, you know, another one I see is his, you know, his alleged crackdown on crime and drugs that, you know, he's the one that he's got to, you know, send the troops into American cities to fight crime. He's got a bomb, you know, boats off the coast of Venezuela to prevent drugs. Yet he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the guy that created Silk Road.

The biggest online drug distribution channel who was serving, you know, life sentence without parole. And then was it Changping Zhao, the crypto king, who is, you know, helped the Trump family with their crypto empire.

He was convicted of money laundering. And then you got George Santos, the January 6th domestic terrorist.

So, you know, this claim that, you know, on crime and drugs, when he does the exact opposite, just seems hypocritical and nobody calls him out on it.

I couldn't agree with you more. And you know, on the, on the crime and drugs piece, there is another.

You know, there's another really very eerie aspect to what we are seeing in the Caribbean and off the coast of Venezuela, which is that the same legal and military justifications they are using to blow up these boats of alleged narco terrorists are the same legal authorities and use of force justifications that they are starting to deploy against people in the political opposition in the United States.

And I mean that very, very literally, and you know this better than anyone, but historically, the United States has only been able to designate groups as terrorist organizations if they are foreign based groups. There's a congressional architecture for designating what's called FTOs, Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

And once a group has been designated, it basically unlocks a series of extraordinary powers for the President to be able to sanction them financially, go after them militarily and on down the list.

Well, the administration, by fiat, a month ago, created their own domestic terrorism organization architecture, which is something that we had considered on Capitol Hill, something we had considered when I was last in the administration, and which Democrats and Republicans resoundingly said, we do not want this because it could be politicized too easily. So Congress never passed a domestic terrorism law.

Well, the administration last month created their own domestic terrorism system where they can designate groups as domestic terrorist organizations. And then they've decided they can just go mirror all the things that we do to foreign terrorist organizations.

Of course, the scary thing about this is now the President and his team, according to reports, are looking at just political opposition groups to designate. You know, groups like Indivisible have been mentioned in the headlines. It's the group that organized the no Kings protest.

It's not a terrorist organization.

You may disagree with that group even fervently if you're on the MAGA side, but, uh, it's, it's pretty extraordinary, logically to say, and by the way, they're a terrorist organization. Terrorism, by the way, under federal law, is targeted violence meant to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.

It would be impossible for someone to show that that that protests group that brought 7 million Americans out to peacefully protest is secretly trying to convince those Americans to conduct acts of violence. And if that's the case, they've done a really shitty job at it because of those 7 million people going out and not engaging in acts of.

Yet this administration has now designated groups like that, and they've designated antifa, quote, unquote, antifa as a terrorist organization. And they are pursuing prosecutions of associated groups.

And of course, a lot of analysts and observers are now worried that this is opening the door to the terrorist watch list being used and abused in a very significant way. But as you know, Mo, there's not a great deal of oversight of the watch list.

So it will be tough to know and probably will take a while to know if the administration is starting to use those types of counterterrorism tools to go after the political opposition. And then the worry is, do they at some point ratchet up direct action against the political opposition like we are seeing off the coast of Venezuela?

That sounds very outlandish. That sounds like a plot for a bad fiction novel. But this.

This is the same logical construct that they're using to go after dope runners, which also, you know, by the way, are not terrorist organizations.

Yeah. I find it interesting when I find myself in agreement with Rand Paul, because he's been one of the few that's actually spoke. It's the same, too.

Like with health care, when I'm. I'm agreeing with Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene, it makes me want to stop and figure out where I'm wrong if I'm in agreement with them.

But that's right. You check yourself in at that point, you're like, I don't know. I don't know. Something's not right.

Yep.

Well, that. Interesting segue, Miles, to something I got in the mail yesterday. A while back, I got a notice from Google that the government had asked for emails.

And I haven't talked to Mo about this. I haven't talked to anybody about it.

So I get this email from Google and I thought it was spam or something, saying, the government asked for your emails and we're under an obligation to tell you, but we can't tell you why. So I filed a motion in district court in Washington to unseal it.

And yesterday I did get a notice that the judge had approved that, and it's requiring the government to file a response within 28 days of restoration of funding. So I'm caught up in the government Shutdown. But you know, we're not exactly well funded. We're not exactly as high profile as Lincoln Project.

But the fact that the government's after our emails is very, very interesting and gave me pause, to be honest with you. Are you hearing anything like similar. Any other rumblings in Washington or folks that you know?

Well, David, there's a whole group of us who've been dying to read your emails for years. So, you know, I'm hoping to collaborate with the Trump administration just to get a peek at those if I can.

Well, I wondered if you had something to do with it because, you know, you come on our show, you're clearly obsessed with either Mo or me. So, yeah, no, I'll be. Actually, I would be happy to publish them. They're the biggest waste of times.

Although I do have some good responses when people like this woman on Monday said, go fuck yourself, and I said, or go fuck you, I said, when and where, honey?

There you go. Well, you know, David, not to make light of it, but, you know, I'm sure that that was a terrifying thing to receive.

And I suspect we are going to see a lot more Americans in a very similar circumstance in the not too distant future, if not already.

In fact, you know, a lot of journalists that I talk to, you know, people in, you know, a range of different media organizations, from corporate media to independent media, strongly suspect that their communications are being monitored because this administration came into office and signaled that there would be a crackdown on the free press.

And in fact, after I was targeted by the White House a couple weeks later, the Justice Department issued a memo rescinding protections for journalists, long standing protections for journalists. And they cited as part of the justification the President's investigative order against me.

And so, you know, you have a lot of folks, whether it's at CNN or MSNBC or like I said, just people, you know, reporting on substack or, you know, with podcasts now suspecting that the federal government is engaged in the pursuit of their records as an effort to root out their sources, as an effort to prove that by publishing, publishing or saying something, they've somehow violated the Espionage Act. And I think we are going to see a flurry of cases brought in the wake of that monitoring potentially as early as late this year.

And I cite as an example of that what happened to Barbara Starr when she was at cnn. CNN Pentagon CORRESPONDENT she published a story that the Trump administration didn't like.

She found out much later that the FBI got approval from the Justice Department to basically go up on her communications, you know, seize her records. And eventually, like you, David, she got, you know, something of a delayed notification that that had happened.

And I don't think there are any guardrails left on that at all.

I mean, there used to be, like I said, there's a policy at the Justice Department basically to handle the records of journalists, public figures, podcasters, et cetera, with kid gloves, because they might be engaged in First Amendment protected speech. And it had to go through a whole array of different approvals and lawyers. That's all gone now.

And, you know, and it's not just journalists, of course. I mean, like I was saying to Mo earlier, the.

The potential watch listing of ordinary Americans further increases the aperture of the type of person who might get caught up in the administration's dragnet.

Yeah, it was.

It was pretty disturbing to get it and realize it was real, especially to get the order in the mail from the judge that confirmed that they actually had asked for the records. I can't wait to get them because I'll. I'll publish them or publish at least the government's response and see what they were after.

I mean, we haven't. The only thing I could think was, you know, the Iranian. The purported Iranian organization sent us some emails, but that was.

That wasn't during the time frame that they requested. But moving on.

Well, David, I will say you've got us on pins and needles now.

So if people already were not tuning in frequently enough for the muck you podcast now, they need to be tuning in every single week, because we got to know how this story ends well, and we haven't.

Thank you for that, Miles. And we'll expect you to appear back with us at another time, but only.

To read the emails in, like, an exaggerated Trump voice. I would like to place an order for two pizzas at Domino's, the types of things that I suspect you're sending.

Yeah, well, you know, the other thing we. I did here was.

And we were talking about this a little bit off the air, but, you know, I took a proactive step of filing a civil lawsuit against Trump, assuming they would show up and get it tossed.

But I wanted to make him spend some money here in addition to all the emotional infliction of pain that he's put upon me because I got over 100 death threats. And you get the same crap on a regular basis, but it's directly tied.

He had 19 visits into North Carolina, and obviously, we're proud opponents of his. And, you know, I would get. On a regular basis, you know, we're going to come and blow your fucking house up.

And, and Donald Trump is going to send me there and he'll defend me kind of stuff. So I filed a civil lawsuit against Trump for a nuisance, public nuisance, which is a law here in North Carolina and a couple other areas.

And that's actually coming to a head because they denied that it existed for the longest time and then they, they're finally sending lawyers here. So that's another thing that we can update on in the near future. And my phone's going off, so I'm going to pause here.

It's got a great little. Well, what I will say, David, while we're waiting for you to jump back in, is I'm excited to hear the results of that one, too.

Another, another opportunity for accountability in the, in the courts. And so let's see what happens there.

Yeah, well, it's, it's going to be an interesting case because they're in default. He didn't, he didn't answer for 11 months. Another roaring DLA Piper lawyers in here, one from New York, one from D.C. and another one from Raleigh.

And our court has local rules here where they, they will not do continuances. So I think I've got them, but we'll see. And then that would, the next step would be a default judgment.

And I'm asking for three and a half million dollars. So we'll see whether it works or not.

But.

So that's another segue into your life. Miles, where are you? What are the lawyers saying that he could come after you with?

Well, I will just say this one thing, David. I mean, I think any opportunity there is to flag for people how vitriolic the environment has gotten, the better.

And, you know, things like, you know, you were just describing have happened to you consistently happen to our family.

You know, we're on the receiving end of, of death threats and doxing and attacks and creeps who send stuff in the mail and all sorts of things like that.

And you never know if it's just a Looney Tune trying to get a reaction, which is usually 99% of the time, or that 1% if it's something more nefarious.

In fact, I won't play the whole thing, but I mean, I did a supercut not too long ago of just a handful of the voicemails that I got the last time my phone was doxxed. And, you know, the MAGA movement goes out there and they'll say, here's his home address, here's his Phone number.

And you know it's happening because all of a sudden, when you get doxed and it goes out to one of their listservs, your phone just starts melting down. You're like, oh, that's funny. I don't know that 8 4, 0 number. That's funny. I don't know THAT 239 number.

And then your phone just keeps ringing and nonstop. You got to turn it off because it just melts down. And I just pulled it up on here.

I'm just going to play a few of these so people get a sense of what this feels like, because these people leave messages.

You are disgusting people. You're evil, and you're gonna go down. You, my friend, are a piece of. You are a traitor. You're pushing for anti Trump. You dumb.

We will squash you like a peanut.

You're done.

You're done. So eat a dick and die. Miles, we're gonna talk to you. You're not gonna be able to walk down the street. You're an anti American. Leave the country.

You're not welcome here anymore. You're anti American. You hate your country. Get out. Because you will deserve the laugh of hell.

And I think you will get what's coming to you, God willing. Miles Taylor, what the are you thinking going against Trump, you and your cronies?

I mean, it go. It goes on and on. But, you know, like I said, you get some of those and someone says, you know, I'll be at your house tonight.

And your wife hears those and says, well, I mean, do you think that's real? You want to be able to give a confident answer? No, it's just a crazy person. We're going to be all right at home.

But you don't know the answer to that question for sure. And that's the environment we are in, where the vitriol has jumped the tracks into violence.

Whether it's what we saw with Charlie Kirk, whether it's what we saw with the attempted assassination just last week of the top Democrat in Congress, Hakeem Jeffries. And a lot of that is driven from the top.

And so, in answer to your question, David, because it's related, as soon as Donald Trump put me back in the crosshairs in April of this year, we saw a sharp uptick in those sorts of threats. So on April 9, he issues an executive order in the Oval Office.

I'm just coming home, bringing the dog home from the dog groomer, and my wife was just coming home with our baby at the same time. And we pull into the driveway. It is a gorgeous spring day.

We both get out at the same time, and we're commenting on just how beautiful of a day it is. And I get a text message from a journalist who said, hey, the President is talking about you right now in the Oval Office. You might want to tune in.

And my heart just sunk because we had expected at some point to be on one of his lists of retribution. I didn't expect to be singled out so directly and personally.

And come to find out, as I pull up the live stream, that the President was signing an executive order directing me to be investigated by his agencies for, in his words, treason. The highest crime envisioned in the Constitution. A crime that is punishable by death in the United States.

And ironically, he has accused me of this high crime there in the Oval Office. But then his order is basically a direction to his agencies to go find the evidence. So think about that as the justice process flipped.

Rather than find evidence of a crime and build up to charging someone, the President effectively charges me in the Oval Office and says, okay, and my people are going to go find the evidence.

I was later told by legal scholars that that was the first time in American history in 249 years that an American President had issued an order to investigate one of his critics for First Amendment protected speech. No executive order like that had ever gone out.

So, look, as a consequence of that, as I noted, you know, even if Trump doesn't take the term treason seriously, his supporters do and have responded to me with the vitriol of someone who their leader deems as worthy of a death sentence.

That's scary enough, but the social fear of even being associated with me in the aftermath meant losing friends and family who we thought were going to be there to support us. It meant losing professional relationships and associations that my wife and I had.

And it also meant that the business that we started, the business upon which 50 people depended on paychecks every two weeks, was decimated, completely decimated, because the other two co founders of the business were scared that Trump would also come after them. And that's before Trump's administration did anything to go fulfill the order.

That's just the after effects of being named to the President's blacklist. Now, in terms of their investigation, you know, we don't know where we're at with it. We don't know when something will Drop.

We don't even know what I'm guilty of. I certainly know I'm not guilty of treason. I know I'm not guilty of removing classified information like Donald Trump left office with.

But we expect that their effort is to go find something. And that's what's so scary about this, is that if we can be selectively and vindictively prosecuted than anyone in American can be.

You know, the only thing holding the President back from that is whether he has time to sign his signature on a document. That is the world that we are entering into. And it's one of the reasons that my wife and I decided to fight back.

And that may sound like a no brainer to someone who's just listening like, well, you've been wrongly accused. Of course you're going to fight back.

But I will tell you, when something like that happens, like what happened in April, the majority of people in your life come to you and say, you should just lay low, just lay low. Don't say anything else. Hope that he just meant it to be mean and just protect your family and hope it blows over.

I'm telling you, that's the, that's what the majority of people in your life come to you and say. And they all have that opinion. Within the first 24 hours, you're deluged with folks saying, hey, just take a beat. And so we did.

We took a beat for a few weeks and then we realized this is wrong. Why are we hiding from this guy? We are innocent.

And even if punching back increases the likelihood of him prosecuting me, if we don't, more people are going to be on the receiving end of what we were. We have to make it hard for them.

And we have to, by the way, do this so that eventually our challenge against the administration makes its way up to the high court and they can determine that executive orders like that, as my lawyers believe, as constitutional law scholars believe, are unconstitutional on their face. So that's the process that we are in at the moment.

But we're also in a wait and see mode to see if the house gets raided, to see if they drop charges. And then if they do, you know, we're gonna fight it like hell.

Well, good. And have you, and I don't want you to disclose your legal strategy here, but have you thought about taking the offense?

You know, Mr. Wolf, Michael Wolf had filed a billion dollar lawsuit against Melania. What? Why wouldn't you guys go on the offense and file something against him?

I know they're going to claim it's executive action or whatever, but at least get something on the record and maybe get into some discovery that may, may help you down the road.

We are. Well, I'll take your exhortation not to disclose too much.

We have some more options on our list here of things to do, but one that we did a few months ago was we filed a formal legal complaint with two of the inspectors general in the US Government, the Department of Justice Inspector General and the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, to say we believe that people inside their agencies are on the receiving end of an inherently unconstitutional executive order meant to violate my civil rights and civil liberties.

And that's the order that Trump put out in April, and that accordingly, we would ask those inspectors general to investigate which agents and personnel of those departments are engaged in the execution of an unlawful order.

Now, we don't have a lot of insight into how the IGs are pursuing this, and I'm also, you know, cautiously pessimistic that the IGs across the government are performing their intended functions. A lot of these inspector generals are very scared, especially because Trump fired so many of them when he came into office.

But in normal times, this would be a guardrail, and we're going to know sooner or later here whether that guardrail even exists anymore, whether the watchmen that were placed by Congress inside these agencies for exactly this reason, we will know whether they are still functioning or not.

And like I said, I'm not terribly optimistic about where that one goes, but that's a first step in our escalatory process of engagement with this administration.

Well, I'm glad to hear that. And, you know, the other thing you might, you guys might want to consider is do what Trump did.

You know, he's asking for $230 million purportedly from the Justice Department. He filed a, what they call a Form 95, which you file before you actually initiate litigation. Why don't you guys do that?

File a billion dollar request for compensation based upon this, these faulty executive orders and get somebody on the record to say yes or no. Those weren't.

And I, I just think, again, I'm glad to hear you going on the offense, but I think, you know, he's going to do whatever he's going to do anyway. So take your own action, Miles, and, and get aggressive about it and move forward in a way that obviously your council has to sign off on all that.

But you would get a lot of support from a lot of people like myself. And I can't speak for mo, but I assume so. And, and a Lot of other folks on this side of the Trump fight to help fund it too.

And, and I'm sure there would be pro bono lawyers that would come out of the woodwork to help you take an offensive action against this because it's the only way he ever listens is when you take him to court.

And that's why I filed this action here in Mitchell county was, you know, I wanted to get their attention and hopefully maybe they wouldn't do it to other people. So anyway, I'm not a lawyer. I'm not very smart either, and I'm a little Pisces, so a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.

But you should, you know, think about it, think about it.

I appreciate that and I feel a little bit like it's, I think Taylor Swift went on a podcast years ago and someone said to her, hey, you know, to get out from under this terrible label you've got, you should go re record your masters and then you would own all of your music and they couldn't go sell your catalog. Talking to you guys is kind of like that. It's like, hey, here are a couple more ideas that you could go deploy against the guy. So I appreciate it.

We're fortunate to have a killer legal team. And my head lawyer, Abby Lowell, is currently representing a number of targets of Trump's revenge campaign.

And you know, hopefully we don't have to be on defense, but before that we will continue to ratchet up the offense. So grateful for you. And look, that's what's important for people to take away from that, is that they're not alone.

I mean, I'll tell you, in April, it felt very, very lonely.

And it was scary because even though institutions had been singled out, law firms, universities and others in presidential executive orders, there hadn't been any individuals, you know, singled out like that. And you know, we were concerned that we would be fighting this alone. Now.

Not that I'm happy to see the boat getting so big and so many people getting persecuted. I'm not.

But it makes it easier for other people to start pushing back when they realize, oh, David's in the boat and Miles is in the boat and hell, Jimmy Kimmel's in the boat, Stephen Colbert's in the boat. That gives people, people more courage to fight back when they otherwise would not.

And it's ultimately what is so self defeating about an autocrat is they cannot help themselves, that they punish and they punish and they continue to punish with the goal of deterring others. But over time, eventually all they do is make enough enemies to get themselves opposed and removed. And, you know, hopefully that's where we end up.

Just one quick thing, Mo.

Why did you ask for a meeting with the motherfucker, you know, go on Rachel's show or somebody's show and say, hey, listen, Mr. President, you know, I realize you've got feelings about me. Why don't we sit down and talk about it? You're the great negotiator. Let's negotiate something.

I'll give you a $20 million worth of my, you know, free advice over the next 10 years, which should be go to hell, go to hell, go to hell. But that. I just think people don't think that they can challenge the guy. And they can. He'll say something stupid. He'll get.

You'll get something on the record. But I maybe challenge him to a debate. Challenge him to a IQ test. I don't know, something.

Or challenge him to an MRI test. You know, they can do his again and they can do mine, and we can compare the health of those brains. You know, release the MRI scans.

I think should be up there with. Release the Epstein files. Well, look, I'll say this, David. If. If you guys can persuade him to come onto here, I'll gladly debate him on the show.

I think that would be a. You know, this would be a great thing for MUC U.

Well, listen, you know, from what you described, you know what you. It reminds me, you know, when I was the chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, I resigned with the issue of torture.

Then, you know, I had the Bush administration. You're trying to, you know, demonize me for. For doing that.

And you really do find out who your friends are because, you know, when things are going well, everybody's your buddy. But when the shit hits the fan, you really find out, you know, who your friends are and who they aren't. And like you said, it can be a lonely.

A lonely feeling. But, you know, I think you'll find in the end, you're not going to lose any sleep over. Over doing the right thing.

I mean, I had the same thing, like, you know, with me. You know, people are saying, keep your head down and your mouth shut and, you know, you can move up to bigger and better things.

But, you know, I've never lost a minute of sleep over. Over doing the right thing. So I admire you for sticking to your Guns and hanging in there.

But don't you think the whole purpose of all this, like with, you know, with you and Bolton and Comey and James and all those folks, I mean, those are all, I mean, I think any attorney would admit are frivolous cases. But that's not the point. The point is to harass.

I mean, it's going to take folks time and money and mental anguish and all that crap to have to go through this process. But I think that's what he wants.

I mean, I don't think he's expecting to win these cases, but he just wants to make an example of people to deter others from having the audacity to stand up to him.

Well, that's right. And if anyone doubted that, that was the motivation.

The day after the President issued his order against me, Rolling Stone published an article where the headline quoted senior White House officials who said we had to make an example out of Miles Taylor. The point they made clear was we had to go after him to deter others from criticizing the president.

And implicit in that is the notion that the process is the punishment, because they know it's a vindictive prosecution. They've known that the Comey case, the James case, the Bolton case, they've known that these are vindictive prosecutions.

And many of them will get thrown out because judges will determine that that is the case. But in the process, as you note, being on that blacklist can be devastating.

And I've been talking about that for months, not to have people generate sympathy for my family, but so that they can understand how serious it is.

I mean, there was a, you know, there was a lot of.

They know that the process is the punishment, and that's why we have to fight hard to get, you know, even those tools the President has curtailed by the courts.

Well, if you combine that you know, the weaponizing of the Justice Department. You've got, you know, the far right literally owns social media and most of traditional media.

And the part they don't own, they've kind of whipped into submission. You've got, you know, us.

You know, having been in the military for 25 years, I couldn't imagine having US troops deployed into US cities to patrol US streets and harass US citizens. But that's where we are.

And I think you've talked about before that you feel like this is a false flag deploying troops, and it's looking to provoke a response that would justify Trump exercising even greater authority. But what do you see as the end game, doing all these different things? What is the objective for Trump and for his supporters?

Well, those are two different things. Trump and his supporters. And for all of eternity, people in our shoes have asked the question, you know, why is an autocrat oppressing us?

You can go back to contemporaries in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. You can go back to Rome. And that question is always there when there's a wannabe autocrat rising the ranks. Why are they doing this?

You know, why do they want to. Why do they want to oppress people? And the answer, like most dictators through all of history, tends to be the same. It's just legacy.

You know, we're all driven by the same thing. I'm not saying that David would be a dictator or Mo would be a dictator, although you probably would both be benevolent dictators.

But we're all driven by legacy and the desire to survive after we've died. It's why a Donald Trump builds buildings with his name on it. It's why he wants to build a ballroom to sit next to the White House forever.

It's why he wants to build a monument across from the Lincoln Memorial that he says is for him. It's why he wants to consolidate power in the United States. He wants to build a legacy.

And if you doubt that, look to who he compares himself to most frequently. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

And, you know, when I was in the Trump administration, I thought this was, of course, absurd that Donald Trump so regularly, in private and in public, compared himself to. At the time, he didn't have Washington in the mix. It was often Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.

And I thought, this guy's insane to think he is as significant a figure in the Republican Party as Ronald Reagan, who defined an entire generation of conservatives. And now I realize I was wrong and he was right. He has made himself more significant than Reagan, and I would say Maybe double exponentially.

I mean, he is significantly more impactful now on the Republican Party and its future than Ronald Reagan ever was. And why would Donald Trump want that? Because he wants that legacy.

And in the meantime, if he can profit off of the presidency, he and his heirs can ensure that the Trump name exists in perpetuity and has control. I think that's what all of this is about.

And again, that's largely what it boils down to in world history, when you see dictators consolidating power. Now, I say that's different than Trump's followers, because what do they get out of Trump's enduring legacy?

Well, it's what they get by not turning against him, which is they get to stay in the tribe.

And back to the start of our conversation, that tribalism is what gets people to continue to follow leaders, even when those leaders light the values of the tribe on fire. It's more important to stay in the tribe than to be a purist ideologically. And so that's why you have so many people marching after him.

Where is he going with it? He wants to do what all autocrats do, which is consolidate power. Name the institution, name the sector of society.

He is on a quest to consolidate power.

But this time he is doing it systematically with, I hate to admit it, very intelligent and savvy lieutenants, some of them, many of them are exquisitely stupid.

But the, the Stephen Millers and the Russ Votes and others around Donald Trump are working very systematically to make sure these institutions, whether it's the media, whether it's education, whether it's the legal sector, are brought to heel so that he can advance his power. And it is bearing fruit. It is working.

As an example, at this point, in the First Trump administration, 75% of the lawsuits brought by the administration were brought by the major law firms in this country. Today, that number is 15%. Even though the courts have ruled that the executive orders punishing the law firms were unconstitutional.

It doesn't matter. These firms are self censoring and they are staying out of the fight. It has worked, and that's what he'll continue to do.

And if people think that this year was bad, they ain't seen nothing yet because this was the lay the foundation year. Next year for them is execution year.

Yeah. And we're almost out of time, but I just want to ask you real quickly.

You know, you talked about being a lifelong Republican, but a while back, you started the Renew America movement, which is now merged into the Forward Party. So can you tell listeners just a little bit about the Forward Party and what you're trying to do with it?

Yeah, I'm not currently a member of it. I mean, I did that, you know, look, to help their experiment get some legs.

But I had started Renew America Movement to try to rally concerned Republicans together to turn the tide of the GOP back the rational direction and to try to get concerned Americans around a. Not necessarily to change the party itself, but to bring conservatism back into a more moderate direction. I can say that I failed catastrophically.

And a lot of other Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who likewise built organizations with the same goal, have failed. And so one of the things at the time I thought was worth experimenting with was third party politics.

And so we folded our organization into an effort launched by Andrew Yang to go try to create a competitive third party in the United States.

You know, it's still struggling, I think, to get its sea legs, but I'm very convinced that Andrew's goal and the goal of others associated with the movement is a noble one and is actually starting to gain a little bit more steam and is one of the few pathways out of this crisis that we are in, because after Donald Trump leaves, I expect there will be ping pong politics. We are already hearing from the far left a desire to use the same tools Trump has used, but to reverse what he's done.

The term fight fire with fire, you know, has like, spiked in usage on social media, on the left. This is going to result in, you know, at some point, left wing leaders doing some of the same things that they decried.

And even if it's in the name of reversing Trump's decisions, then you've just got that, that seesaw of politics where the sides are going to get more vitriolic. And one of the few ways to break that is to introduce more competition back into our democracy, to introduce more choices on the ballot.

And one of those potential ways is a third party. And in fact, my friends who are still involved with Forward Party I think they're meeting right now at some summit and having conversations.

They've got folks on the ballot next year. It's exciting. The question always is, you know, can a third party succeed in America? I think the answer to that is, is yes. I think the.

The environment is ripe, but it's. It's always a question of timing. So, you know, we'll see.

In the meantime, I am a. I'm a humble independent who's focused on trying to limit the damage as much as humanly possible before in some way, shape or form, this guy is gone.

Well, it's a noble cause, and you're the right guy to do it. It's been such a pleasure to get to know you a little bit more, Miles.

It's really interesting that, you know, we try and get Democrats on this show if we end up with the moderate former Republicans as the majority of our guests, and they're always as informed and intelligent as you are. And so I want to thank you for coming on the show.

They took my party, but they can't take my brain away from me.

That's true. That's true. Well, one more question for you, and then we'll call it a day. But, I mean, when is too much for you?

I mean, if you thought about hitting the road to Canada, do you have an Xfield plan? I mean, I have an exfil plan. I mean, I know where I'm going to go and how I'm going to get there and what it's going to cost. But how about you?

Look, I'm staying here to fight this until it's over.

You know, it won't surprise you that a lot of folks came to me after April and said, look, you know, this guy's not going to rest until some of you are in prison.

You know, it may not be all of you because, you know, a lot of you, he just wants the punishment to be or the process to be the punishment, but he's going to try to lock people up.

And, you know, I had folks encourage me to flee, but, you know, I felt like especially being in the crosshairs is reason enough not to, because the last thing I want to do is be the first person to send the signal of this country is not redeemable, and the only option is to exit. And so I want to fight. I want to fight and win in the courts and make sure that we do what we can to preserve the last vestiges of the rule of law.

And, you know, I hope we're successful in that and on the back end of it, you can bet your ass I'm going to be looking for a vacation home in some, some foreign country at least to go to every now and again. But that won't be until this is over.

Well, and hopefully the government will pay for that house for you.

That's right. Amen.

Or the Trump Organization. It'd be better if I guess maybe Eric paid for it, but we'll see about that. Well, again, our guest today on MUCU has been Miles Taylor. Terrific guy.

Give folks a way to get a hold of you or follow you on the socials and the name of your latest book.

Yeah, they can follow me on most social media platforms, MilesTaylor USA or on substack@treason.substack.com the substack is so named because if Donald Trump thinks that dissent is treason, then I am a proud traitor. And my most recent book is called Blowback A Warning to Save Democracy from Trump's Revenge. And apparently Americans didn't heed that warning.

Well, heed the warning this time, folks. Mo, if I end up in Guantanamo, is there a special room that I should request or.

I think it's going to be interesting. I think the hurricane is maybe doing a number on Guantanamo right now. You may not have to worry about it.

Jail, jail, jailbreak down there, I guess. Yeah.

All right, Miles, thank you so much. Thank you, Mo, for joining this episode of Muck you. We'll see you next time.

Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, Miles.

This has been Muck you, co hosted by Colonel Mo Davis in Asheville and David Wheeler in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Did I mention that Mo married up? He's lucky Lisa puts up with him. Thanks to our guest today, Mr.

Miles Taylor, a national security expert and best selling author who served as Staff of the U.S. department of Homeland Security and anonymous author of the New York Times op ed. I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration has become a leading commentator on democracy reform.

Enjoy additional episodes with Mike Madrid, Errol Musk, Pamela Hemphill, Denver Riggleman, Anthony Scaramucci, David Jolly, Adam Kinzinger, Paul Bagala, Mark McKinnon and others@AmericanMokrakers.com Please subscribe and support our work on Substack. Thanks for listening and y' all come back for the next episode. Soda Muck you.