U.S. President Donald Trump attends a press briefing at the White House, following the Supreme Court's ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs, in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 20, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Former Trump administration Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor delivered a blistering assessment Thursday on MS NOW on how unprepared President Donald Trump was for the risk that Iran would shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
"One of the things I really have been trying to do is not to let my biases and priors override how I am interpreting the news, which is I obviously don't think particularly highly of the individuals that run the federal government or White House," said anchor Chris Hayes. "But at the same time, I want to think, well, it can't be as shambolic as it looks, right? I'm missing something. Obviously, the Department of Defense has an incredible architecture around planning. As someone who worked in the first Trump administration, like, how are you interpreting these signals?"
"Chris, I'm going to tell you this. It is not as bad as it looks. It is so much worse," said Taylor. "It is so much worse because Donald Trump and the people around him have a predilection for putting this veneer over their lack of planning and making it seem always like it's four-dimensional chess when it's less than checkers, okay? When it's like coin-flipping instead of checkers, that is what is happening inside that administration."
"And if you think that is exaggeration, I will walk you through what I think was the most serious situation I was involved in in the first term, which is that we were barreling towards nuclear war with North Korea," said Taylor. "And Donald Trump made it seem like all the bluster was four-dimensional chess to try to get them to the negotiating table. Well, I will tell you what his Cabinet members thought. His Cabinet members thought he was as crazy as a fox, and he was going to accidentally get us into a nuclear war to the point that we had to do literal, real-life nuclear planning at Homeland Security in anticipation that the president might accidentally get us into a nuclear conflict, and we would have to play clean-up here on the defensive side."
"That's pretty serious stuff that the president doesn't know what he's doing. He might get us into a nuclear war," Taylor added.
"Now, here we are much further along in a situation like that," he said. "And I'll remind you, Chris, with a country that Donald Trump's own envoy has said had enough fissile material for potentially 11 nuclear weapons, and even though they don't have enough enrichment capability, he just said two days ago on CNBC, they could still turn it into a dirty bomb. And now he's gone to war with that country. That's how reckless this is. These guys aren't thinking three inches in front of their faces."