President Trump threatened the “Anonymous” author of a 2018 essay published by the New York Times that claimed there was an internal “resistance” afoot within his administration.
At a campaign rally in Tampa, Florida, on Thursday, Trump slammed the New York Times for how it described the author, revealed on Wednesday to be Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who was also a counterterrorism adviser to then-White House chief of staff John Kelly.
“It turns out to be this lowlife that nobody knows who the hell he is. He had nothing to do with us,” Trump said. “This is a disgrace to our country, it shouldn’t happen, and he should be prosecuted. Are you listening to me back in Washington? He should be prosecuted along with the New York Times.”
In the publication of “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” Taylor was characterized as a “senior administration official” by the New York Times, although he did not appear on the DHS website as part of its leadership until he was listed as chief of staff in late February 2019, more than 150 days after the op-ed was published.
Trump accused the New York Times of purposefully misleading Taylor’s credentials in order to boost his credibility as he criticized the president.
“Then, somebody gets it at the New York Times, the fake New York Times, and all of a sudden, he becomes nasty,” Trump said. “And they say, a top White House official. Well, he was a staffer, low, had nothing to do with the White House. He had nothing to do, and he goes in, and you know what? There should be major criminal liability for some scum like this.”
The 2018 op-ed did not claim that Taylor was a White House official.
James Dao, an op-ed editor for the New York Times, said a few days after publishing the Anonymous article that the term “senior administration official” is “used in Washington by both journalists and government officials to describe positions in the upper echelon of an administration, such as the one held by this writer.”
On Wednesday, CNN host Chris Cuomo confronted Taylor live on-air, pointing out that he lied to CNN colleague Anderson Cooper about his authorship of the essay when asked about it on the Aug. 21 episode of his show. Taylor said he “owed” Cooper a beer for the lie. Taylor, who left the administration last year and also wrote a book, A Warning, joined CNN as a contributor in September.
“You know who he works for now?” Trump asked of Taylor. “CNN. He works for CNN. Right there. See the camera right there with the light that just went off? See that, honey [referring to first lady Melania Trump]? That red light just went off.”
The crowd of thousands standing packed side-by-side shouted, “CNN sucks,” in response to Trump.
“Anderson Cooper asked him, ‘Are you Anonymous?'” Trump said. “And he lied to them. He said, ‘No,’ essentially. Said, ‘No, I’m not.’ And he works for CNN. I would think CNN would be firing him about it, but this is a real lowlife. You know who else he works for? Google. He works for Google. I think Google should fire him very quickly because bad things are going to happen to him.”
