Former Trump administration Homeland Security official Miles Taylor expressed his shock on MSNBC Wednesday evening at the erupting scandal over group texts in Young Republicans organizations, where multiple Republican operatives and even a state senator were openly pushing racist and neo-Nazi sentiments.
"As someone who, you know, came up, I think, in Republican and conservative circles, has been a staff member, does — has something changed here?" asked anchor Chris Hayes. "There's been a sort of back and forth of like, was it always like this? Is this new or is it, is it sort of irony gone too far, or is there a kind of, again, process of radicalization happening among an entire sort of group of current MAGA Republicans?"
"Well, look, Chris, I mean, I'll tell you this," said Taylor, who became famous as the author of the New York Times op-ed detailing an anonymous "resistance" within the first Trump term. "When I came up in the GOP and George W. Bush was president, and I worked in that administration, this would not have been tolerated. When I was working for Bush, when I was working for Cheney, when, you know, John McCain was my mentor, when John Boehner was Speaker of the House, when Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House. These types of folks, love or hate them, would not have tolerated this sort of widespread culture among their acolytes. This is not the Republican Party they wanted to raise."
"But make no mistake, Chris: this stuff existed on the fringes. But now it's not the fringes anymore. It's the core. It's the rotting core of the party," Taylor continued. And there's two things you can do, though, in response to this news. One is, of course, you can hold the mirror up to the people who wrote these messages. That's fair. That's fine. And some of them are being held accountable. But I think more significantly, we don't just look at these Young Republicans. We hold the mirror up to the people who are their mentors."
"That's why it wouldn't have been tolerated when I came up in the Republican Party," he said. "Because I had mentors who would have policed it. My butt would have been kicked out of the door. I wouldn't have had jobs in those places. But their mentors are condoning it. And it goes all the way to the top. Donald Trump and JD Vance."
"And I would go as far as to say this, Chris: these guys, like JD Vance are grooming young men in the Republican Party," Taylor added. "They are grooming them for cruelty. They are raising these weak little loser incels to go attack people who are weaker, to go attack people because of their race. To go attack people because of their religion. That type of bullying displays total weakness. But that's now become the core culture in the Republican Party that I once was in."