Reactions poured in across social media after Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, revealed himself as the anonymous “senior” official who identified himself as part of the resistance inside the Trump administration in a 2018 op-ed published in the New York Times.
“Donald Trump is a man without character. It’s why I wrote ‘A Warning’…and it’s why me & my colleagues have spoken out against him (in our own names) for months,” Taylor announced on Wednesday.
“It’s time for everyone to step out of the shadows,” he added, providing a link to his full statement:
His admission triggered a wave of mockery from high profile figures across social media, many of whom were disenchanted by the revelation and, perhaps more so, by the Times’ decision to describe Taylor as a “senior” official in a prelude to the op-ed.
“You have got to be kidding me. Miles Taylor? That’s who the New York Times granted an anonymous editorial article? I’ve seen more exciting reveals in Scooby-Doo episodes,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows remarked, calling the revelation a “monumental embarrassment”:
“I also didn’t realize the definition of ‘senior administration official’ could be *this* expansive. Wasn’t even an agency chief of staff at the time the op-ed ran,” Axios’ Johnathan Swan observed:
Susan Hennessey, national security and legal analyst for CNN, held a similar view.
“Leaving aside how one feels about Taylor’s actions, I’m not sure that the NY Times decision to grant a DHS chief of staff anonymity for that op-ed and to describe him as a ‘senior administration official’ holds up especially well,” she said, concluding that the high expectations suggest the Times “failed to provide its readership sufficient context.”
“Actually, was Taylor even Chief of Staff yet when he wrote the piece?” she followed:
Karen Tumulty, a columnist for the Washington Post, said that, based on the Times’ original description, she expected the official to be “someone at cabinet level, at least.” National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) senior advisor Matt Whitlock noted that Taylor’s name was absent from the DHS’s senior leadership page at the time the Times published the op-ed:
Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) added that the Times’ decision to describe Taylor as a “senior” administration official “shows we have every right to question their editorial standards and the credibility of other anonymous ‘sources'”:
Others expressed similar views:
“This is the least impressive, lamest political ‘reveal’ of all time,” Hogan Gidley, Trump 2020 national press secretary said in a statement. “I worked with DHS officials while I was in the White House, and even I had to research who Miles Taylor was.”
Gidley went on to describe Taylor as “just another standard-issue arrogant, Washington, DC swamp bro who loved President Trump until he figured out he could try to make money by attacking him”:
Taylor, a CNN contributor, lied during an appearance on the network in August, denying that he was “anonymous.”
“This is everything people hate about Washington — two-faced liars who push their own agendas at the expense of the People. This is the epitome of the swamp!” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany remarked:
The Times defended its decision to run the anonymous op-ed at the time of its publication.
“We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers,” the paper asserted at the time.
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