STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Miles Taylor has been listening with us. He was chief of staff at DHS during the first Trump administration, when he wrote a then-anonymous opinion piece in The New York Times about resistance to Trump from within the administration. Miles Taylor now runs a nonprofit dedicated to countering President Trump's policies. Mr. Taylor, good morning. Welcome back.
MILES TAYLOR: Thanks for having me, Steve.
INSKEEP: Could you just talk with me about the job that Markwayne Mullin is standing for here? What does this job take?
TAYLOR: Well, it's the hardest job in Washington, I mean, hands down, this is absolutely the hardest job in Washington. And what you don't want is someone going into that job 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've tended to find that the most important quality was character. And the most alarming quality - the secretaries who had the hardest time in that job tended to have blind loyalty. They weren't able to speak truth to power. And that, Steve, is a recipe for catastrophe because if they cannot do that, those types of catastrophes are the ones that cost lives when you're talking about the Department of Homeland Security. That's the differentiator. And I think Markwayne Mullin answered some questions people had about which of those two qualities was most important to Donald Trump when he was selected.
INSKEEP: Well, first, it sounds like you have a very different idea of the executive branch than the president is asserting at the moment. You're saying that officials should use their knowledge and use their position to push back on the president when appropriate, whereas the president's view is that people should salute and do what he says 'cause he was elected.
TAYLOR: Well, look. I think it's the bare minimum expectation that we have towards 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 a bare minimum, to comply with the law. And I will just say that in my experience in the first administration - 2 1/2 years in there - it was clear that Donald Trump had an inclination toward illegality on a lot of issues. Sometimes it's because he didn't know the law, Steve. Oftentimes, though, it's because he told us he didn't care. So you had to be willing to tell the president when something was unacceptable, when something was illegal, when something was constitutional.
Now, the downside of that, of course, is that you're likely to be in conflict with the president and the White House a lot because he has that inclination towards breaking the law. I mean, he even promised me, Steve, once that he would pardon us if we went to jail for sealing the border, even though the way he wanted to do it was illegal. That's the type of thing Markwayne Mullin's going to need to be prepared for.
INSKEEP: Now, it sounds like you're skeptical that Mullin would be independent. But he did say - in a heated exchange with Rand Paul yesterday, he said, even if I have a difference of opinion with you or everybody in this room, I'm going to protect everybody in this room.
TAYLOR: Look, when you're trying to get confirmed by your peers, you've got to say the things that you've got to say. I think what was more telling was what Markwayne Mullin did not say in that hearing. Now, I always tell people that the sound of submission is silence. And he was silent or punted on some of the most controversial policies of the administration - whether to send DHS forces to election polling places, politicizing FEMA aid, treating political opponents like domestic terrorists. The things that senators were really worried about, he did not give them a lot of comfort on, and I think they're going to remember that when they go vote.
INSKEEP: He did say that if confirmed, he would stop the practice of allowing ICE agents to enter people's homes or businesses without a judicial warrant unless they were in hot pursuit of a suspect, so to speak. How significant do you think that was?
TAYLOR: Look, it's going to depend on what the White House ends up saying. The president's going to have a say about that. Stephen Miller's going to have to say - have a say about that. And that's something that he's also going to have to realize, is that he's got bosses at the White House that are going to micromanage that department and bosses who want to see ICE members kicking in doors and not having to go ask for permission. So I think it remains to be seen.
INSKEEP: It sounds like you don't think that the secretary of DHS is really calling the shots over there anyway.
TAYLOR: I don't. I don't, and that's what Markwayne Mullin's going to have to choose. Is it going to be a long career in the Trump administration where he ends up staying there until the end, or does he want to leave with an intact conscience? He cannot have both.
INSKEEP: Miles Taylor is a security expert who served at DHS as chief of staff during the first Trump administration. Thank you so much, sir.
TAYLOR: Thanks, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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