On Monday's edition of MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," former national security official Miles Taylor outlined how former President Donald Trump's election lies undermined the institutional guardrails of American democracy.
A key point, Taylor told anchor Nicolle Wallace, is that Trump knew what he was saying was false — and continued to go ahead pushing it.
"I made the mistake, Nicolle, of saying publicly, Trump's crazy, his advisors know it, but don't worry, there are people around him who are aware of it," said Taylor, referring to his anonymous 2018 op-ed in The New York Times.
"That was wrong. The guardrails of democracy weren't strong. Trump systematically dismantled them and the folks who were on at the very end, they already knew that. They knew that the rational points they would make to him would not be accepted, because Trump's tactic is to latch on, as you said, Nicolle, to the one person in the room who reflects his views and discard the others. He is the king of cognitive dissonance. Those people knew that."
"What they should have done is come out sooner and made that clear once they knew it and we have grand examples of that in the post-election period," said Taylor. "My good friend who you have had on this program many times, Chris Krebs, was the one we appointed to lead election security. Chris came out publicly, he was the one person most qualified in the entire federal government to say whether the election was secure or not, he went out and said it, Trump fired him, but Trump knew years before the 2020 election that this election would be secure because we briefed him on it."
Taylor emphasized this point, making clear that Trump had intelligence that debunked all of his election conspiracy theories — and disregarded all of it.
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"I was there when we told him we were putting in place the preparations to make 2018 and 2020 the two most secure elections in American history," said Taylor. "What did he do? He conveniently forgot that information and started to seize the narrative that it might be stolen from him so he could perpetuate this fraud on the American people and so that he wouldn't look like a loser. That's the one thing he cares most about, it's not upholding his constitutional oath, but trying to not look like a loser, and as a result, we're suffering the corrosion of our democratic institutions."
Watch the segment below or at this link:
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