In a normal presidential administration, the kooks get corralled far away from the president’s ear so they can do the least damage and annoy the minimum amount of serious people. But that was in other more responsible administrations, said Miles Taylor, President Donald Trump’s first-term whistleblower.
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“In my two-and-a-half years inside the first Trump administration, I saw how ideas … traveled,” Taylor wrote on his Defiance website. “In a normal administration, layers of lawyers and advisors weed out wacky notions before they get to the president. In Trump world, it happens the other way around. He ‘mainlines’ recommendations from quacks — who go straight to him with their off-the-wall, unconstitutional, and impossible ideas — then dumps them onto his advisors.”
He added that “back then, a great deal of your government’s time was spent chasing those absurdities away, before they became reality. Now, his team chases them into reality.”
The latest nut pile on the menu appears to be a plan by 80-year-old Florida lawyer and Trump friend Peter Ticktin, who is pushing Trump to place the fall midterms under federal control. Taylor said Ticktin helped draft a 17-page executive order justifying the emergency on the grounds of foreign interference in electronic voting machines, despite that “interference” not being found credible by a joint Justice Department and Homeland Security review. Indeed, U.S. intelligence found that no foreign government altered a single vote.
Nevertheless, Taylor said the order is being taken seriously because that’s what happens in a Trump Quack Cabinet.
“I call it the Quack Cabinet. Donald Trump has always kept an informal shadow council of true believers, conspiracy peddlers, and grievance merchants who get his ear because they know how to work the man,” said Taylor. “Flattery. Sensationalism. And more flattery. Lou Dobbs was like this. The conservative commentator and Fox News anchor would fawn over Trump on his show and, simultaneously, churn out conspiracy theories knowing the president was watching and would gulp it all up. It got so bad that we dubbed Lou the White House ‘deputy chief of staff.’ Trump would see a kooky thing Lou said on television, call one of us up in the middle of the night, and demand that it be investigated or pursued.”
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The Quack Cabinet is not interested in the truth, Taylor said. It consists of “ill-informed people” interested in spectacle and power.
“For that reason, they don’t tell Trump what he needs to hear; they tell him what he wants to hear. That keeps them in the inner circle. And it also creates an echo chamber of country-wrecking ideas. Arrest the RINOs! Ignore the judges! Seize Greenland! Build the ballroom! Deport the Democrats! These ‘cabinet’ members hold no offices and pass no background checks, but they have a better legislative record than most U.S. senators, because their ideas keep becoming policy,” said Taylor.
“If you doubt the danger here, consider three facts: Ticktin was in the Oval Office last week, seated beside Tina Peters, the former Colorado county clerk who was convicted of breaching her own voting systems and who walked free after Trump pressured Colorado’s governor into a commutation,” Taylor pointed out. “Sources told ABC News, months ago, that Trump had personally reviewed versions of the draft order and discussed it with those involved. And the president has already signed an executive order attacking mail-in voting and voter registration, which felt like it was plucked straight from these conversations.”
Yes, the White House waves the threat of the nutjobs away by saying Ticktin “overstates” his influence, but Taylor said Trump officials say the same thing “about every crank whose proposal later appeared over the president’s signature.”
“Having sat in those rooms, I can tell you the distance between ‘the president has never heard of it’ and ‘the president signed it this morning’ is way, way shorter than most Americans can imagine,” said Taylor.
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