A former top Trump administration official warned Tuesday that President Donald Trump could set off a constitutional crisis after the midterms to protect what he called vanity projects, a day after Trump made the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool the centerpiece of his closing midterm speech.
Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term, wrote in The i Paper that he expects Trump to fight hardest for projects that may seem trivial, including the White House ballroom, a planned triumphal arch and the Reflecting Pool. He predicted Trump would defend them even if it meant potentially breaking the law and defying court orders.
Trump views the projects as his legacy, Taylor wrote, while Democrats have zeroed in on them as the clearest examples of what they see as corruption and self-enrichment at taxpayer expense.
“It sounds absurd to think America might face a constitutional crisis over monuments to one man’s ego. Yet there’s a good chance that’s what happens,” Taylor wrote.
He pointed to Monday’s speech, in which Trump discussed the pool’s renovations, the White House helipad and his planned arch. Taylor said the president spent more than 25 minutes on those topics before mentioning the election.
Taylor’s warning draws partly on what he saw after Democrats flipped about 40 House seats in 2018. The day after the election, he said, Trump privately complained about the probes he expected from the new majority, then held a press conference that ran 90 minutes. Sessions was ousted as attorney general later that day.
“It was like watching a drunk man waving around his steak knife at a dinner party,” Taylor wrote.
Taylor argued that the restraints Trump faced then, including advisers willing to push back and a looming reelection bid, are gone. He predicted Trump would try to block or slow a transfer of power in Congress by challenging tight races, leaning on state officials during certification and using the Justice Department to target districts where he alleges fraud.
Taylor, who has previously warned about a secret “Doomsday Book” of presidential emergency powers, said he and former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt have cautioned that Trump could use such powers to block a peaceful transfer of power. In May, he predicted that a midterm loss would push Trump to focus abroad.