Audacious move that could 'turn the tables' on Trump detailed by ex-DHS insider

A former Trump administration insider says Democrats have an unconventional weapon to flip the script on Donald Trump if they retake the House, and it starts with a surprising pick for Speaker.

In a new essay Thursday, Miles Taylor, the former official who once anonymously branded himself part of the "resistance" inside Trump's first administration, argued that Democrats should hand the Speaker's gavel to someone who isn't even in Congress. His choice is Pete Buttigieg.

Taylor's pitch hinges on Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, which says the House chooses its Speaker and officers, yet it never says that person must be an elected member. Republicans already grasped this, he noted, flirting with the idea of installing Trump himself as Speaker after Kevin McCarthy was ousted in 2023.

Now, Taylor wrote, Democrats should "consider turning the tables." He pointed to Jared Kushner's recent meeting with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as a sign that Trump is "terrified" of losing the House and being investigated.

His plan would keep Jeffries as majority leader running daily operations, while making the former Transportation secretary the public face of sweeping probes into what Taylor called "the most corrupt administration the nation has ever seen."

"He holds no office and would have to give up nothing," Taylor wrote of Buttigieg. "He is one of the best communicators the party has produced in a generation." The 2020 presidential candidate, he argued, has spent years dismantling hostile interviewers on live television, precisely the skill that brutal hearings would demand.

Taylor conceded the plan sounds radical, but that "Democrats are about to be handed that microphone."

"And they should give it to someone like Buttigieg," he concluded.