Former Trump administration Homeland Security staffer turned whistleblower Miles Taylor regaled the crew of MS NOW's "The Weeknight" with a startling anecdote about how unconcerned President Donald Trump was in the middle of a North Korean nuclear threat — and what he was singularly focused on instead.
This came in the middle of a discussion about Trump falling asleep in the Oval Office, and what it says about his fitness for office.
"Americans who were polled are saying many of them feel as though the president has lost a step over the last year, a majority, the majority that that he is more erratic, that they would not describe him as stable," said anchor Symone Sanders Townsend. "And so the logical conclusion to just those numbers is, in fact, to ask the questions, well, is the president okay? Has he lost a step? And before I wrote it and then he sleeps, what if Joe Biden had fallen asleep in the Oval Office on camera multiple times? It would be all we were talking about. I am frustrated because it feels as though that we are giving Donald Trump a pass, because everyone is concerned if they're going to be sued."
"I agree, and I think we need to worry that his sleepiness is getting sleepier, but I worry even more about the highs than the lows, the moments of grandiosity, erratic and impulsive behavior are getting more erratic, more grandiose," said Taylor.
"We saw this in the first term," he continued. "People didn't believe me when I came out and said we were closer to the brink of nuclear war than folks realize, because Donald Trump was tweeting us all the way to the brink with North Korea, so much so that the Department of Homeland Security had to do those exercises to prepare for the possibility we might get into a nuclear war."
"But it was even worse than that," said Taylor. "I remember going into a secure facility after the North Koreans had just launched a test missile, and we didn't know if it was headed towards the United States. And you know what Donald Trump called to talk to us about? I would have hoped he was calling to say, 'Is everything okay? Are we going to be okay?' He called to say, 'We got to deport them at the border.' Why, during a live-fire exercise, is the President of the United States not even thinking about that possibility?"
"He was that erratic from the start, all over the place, not caring about these things. And now it's worse," he said. "Remember when Richard Nixon in 1974 said I could pick up the phone and in 25 minutes, 70 million people would die? That was a hypothetical. Donald Trump gets on Twitter and says 90 million people will die. That should scare folks."
"One other thing. A lot of people don't know this," he added. "On Donald Trump's desk, there's a little wooden box with a red button. He had that installed as a prop so that people are sitting in the Oval Office and see him reach for the red button and thinking, 'What's he going to press?' And he presses it, and the anteroom swings open, and a guy comes in with a Diet Coke. True story. He does it every single day. He presses that button. The fact that the President of the United States likes to joke about practicing pressing the big red button should tell us everything you need to know about his mental state."