Former DHS official on how the agency’s next leader can be successful in the role : NPR

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Miles Taylor listened to us. He was DHS chief of staff during the first Trump administration, when he wrote a then-anonymous opinion piece in The New York Times about resistance to Trump within the administration. Miles Taylor now runs a nonprofit organization dedicated to countering President Trump’s policies. Mr. Taylor, hello. Glad to see you again.

MILES TAYLOR: Thanks for having me, Steve.

INSKEEP: Could you just tell me about the work that Markwayne Mullin represents here? What does this job require?

TAYLOR: Well, it’s the hardest job in Washington, I mean, hands down, it’s absolutely the hardest job in Washington. And what you don’t want is someone to come into this position who doesn’t ask questions, someone who doesn’t speak truth to power. And I’ve worked with – or for – six different DHS secretaries, and I tend to find that the most important quality was character. And the most alarming quality: the secretaries who had the hardest time on the job tended to be blindly loyal. They were not capable of speaking truth to power. And that, Steve, is a recipe for disaster, because if they can’t do that, those type of disasters are the ones that cost lives when you’re talking about the Department of Homeland Security. This is the differentiator. And I think Markwayne Mullin answered some questions that people had about which of those two qualities was more important to Donald Trump in his selection.

INSKEEP: Well, first of all, it seems like you have a very different idea of ​​executive power than the president currently asserts. You’re saying that officials should use their knowledge and use their position to push back against the president when appropriate, when the president’s view is that people should greet him and do what he says because he was elected.

TAYLOR: Well, listen. I think that’s the minimum expectation we have of our public servants. We don’t pay them to blindly follow the president. We pay our public servants to speak truth to power. We pay them, at the bare minimum, to comply with the law. And I’ll just say that from my experience in the first administration – 2 1/2 years there – it was clear that Donald Trump had a penchant for illegality on many issues. Sometimes it’s because he didn’t know the law, Steve. But often it’s because he told us he didn’t care. So you had to be prepared to tell the president when something was unacceptable, when something was illegal, when something was constitutional.

The downside, of course, is that you may find yourself in conflict with the president and the White House a lot because he has this tendency to break the law. I mean, he even promised me, Steve, once that he would forgive us if we went to jail for closing the border, even though the way he wanted to do it was illegal. This is the kind of thing Markwayne Mullin will need to prepare for.

INSKEEP: Now it seems like you’re skeptical of Mullin’s independence. But he said – in a heated exchange with Rand Paul yesterday, he said that even if I have a difference of opinion with you or with everyone in this room, I’m going to protect everyone in this room.

TAYLOR: Look, when you’re trying to be validated by your peers, you have to say the things you need to say. I think what was most telling was what Markwayne Mullin didn’t say at that hearing. Now I always tell people that the sound of submission is silence. And he has remained silent or criticized some of the administration’s most controversial policies — from sending DHS forces to polling places, to politicizing FEMA aid, to treating political opponents like domestic terrorists. He didn’t really reassure them on the issues that really concerned senators, and I think they will remember that when they go to vote.

INSKEEP: He said if confirmed, he would end the practice of allowing ICE agents to enter homes or businesses without a court warrant unless they’re in pursuit of a suspect, so to speak. How important do you think this was?

TAYLOR: Look, it depends on what the White House ends up saying. The president will have his say on this. Stephen Miller is going to have to say…have his say on this. And that’s something he’ll also have to understand is that he has bosses in the White House who are going to micromanage this department and bosses who want to see ICE members open the doors and not have to ask permission. So I think that remains to be seen.

INSKEEP: You don’t really think the DHS secretary is calling the shots there anyway.

TAYLOR: I don’t. No, and that’s what Markwayne Mullin will have to choose. Will it be a long career in the Trump administration where he ends up staying there until the end, or does he want to leave with his conscience intact? He can’t have both.

INSKEEP: Miles Taylor is a security expert who served at DHS as chief of staff during the first Trump administration. Thank you very much, sir.

TAYLOR: Thanks, Steve.

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