An amusing bit from one of today’s rallies. And you know what? Trump’s entitled to a little mockery of his antagonist here. What a tremendously embarrassing fiasco the “Anonymous” saga turned out to be.
I don’t know why he thinks Miles Taylor should be prosecuted, though. If he means for leaking, it seems unlikely that there was any classified info in Taylor’s book. It was essentially an extended James Comey tweet about “norms.” One of the big knocks on it was that it didn’t tell readers anything they didn’t already know about the president.
Probably Trump wants him prosecuted just in a general authoritarian “my political critics belong in jail” sense.
Trump, speaking at the Phoenix Goodyear Airport, calls “anonymous” (Miles Taylor) a “sleaze bag” and adds that he was worried it would turn out to be someone like Hope Hicks, Jared Kushner, Mike Lee, or Rand Paul.
“This guy, in my opinion, should be prosecuted,” Trump adds. pic.twitter.com/Z9ROOy34pc
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 28, 2020
“I maintain my belief that the mystery author is some no-name undersecretary somewhere whose take on Trump would be ignored if they wrote under their own name,” I wrote last November. Everyone believed that, though, right? No one who could have cashed in on their name would have gone anonymous. Taylor went anonymous as a false pretense, to generate exactly the sort of fake suspense Trump jokes about in the clip. What if it’s Hope Hicks? What if it’s Kellyanne Conway? Meh.
John covered most of the bases on this story in his post earlier but let me add two points. One, to answer a question he posed there: No, apparently, CNN *won’t* be firing Taylor as a contributor after he lied brazenly to their own anchors on their own airwaves about not being “Anonymous.”
A CNN spox just told me that Miles Taylor will remain a contributor despite lying to Anderson Cooper. CNN cannot have it both ways — slamming Trump for his lies, yet condoning a very big and blatant one by its own contributor.
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) October 28, 2020
Asked about his lie to Anderson Cooper, Miles Taylor says he was doing what he'd pledged to do — deny authorship and keep the focus on Trump. "But if he’s willing, I owe Anderson a beer and a mea culpa."
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) October 28, 2020
He’ll be on Chris Cuomo’s show tonight, where Chris will pretend to be annoyed at him initially but then welcome him back into the good graces of the network because at least he lied for a cause CNN believes in, namely, hurting Trump.
Although Dave Weigel makes a fair point. What use will they have for him after next Tuesday assuming Trump doesn’t pull the upset?
How long does that contract last? If Trump doesn’t win next week, do people want to hear, like, his take on potential Biden nominees for DHS? I bet they don’t! https://t.co/dw389URQuP
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) October 28, 2020
The other point is that Taylor has made a lot of earnest Never Trumpers look terrible by playing his grifty double game. People like Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller who run Republican Voters Against Trump have worked hard making ads and putting together focus groups to try to convince 2016 Trump supporters to switch sides for Biden. Taylor’s been allied with them for the past several months but apparently didn’t let them know that he was “Anonymous” or that he was lying to people nonstop about it to protect the lucrative mystery surrounding his book. Longwell’s getting creamed on Twitter this afternoon for having sent this tweet in August:
People should stop paying attention to “Anonymous” and focus on the Trump officials who are willing to put themselves out there publicly with @RVAT2020. Like @MilesTaylorUSA.
https://t.co/pPkg8OCiKD via @politico— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) August 17, 2020
I don’t think Longwell was being sly there. I think she got duped by Taylor too and is doubtless understandably annoyed today about having been made to look like a chump. Rank and file Never Trumpers like to believe they act from selfless civic motives in contrast to hyperpartisans and opportunistic Trump bootlickers looking to cash in (yes, yes, I know about the Lincoln Project, that’s why I said “rank and file”) but Taylor’s revelation undercuts that. He’s a highly visible NTer by dint of his role at CNN and his work with Longwell’s group and now here he is outing himself in the biggest possible way as a serial liar who’s been working an angle to sell a book.
Everyone — nearly everyone — is a grifter in the end, it seems. We deserve a Trump second term.
By the way, although Taylor’s worked hard to ingratiate himself to lefty anti-Trumpers, that might not last long. His record at DHS is already being picked through this afternoon by liberals, especially his employment during the family separation saga at the border. He was accused of wrongdoing in a complaint by a DHS whistleblower too — during a period *after* Taylor’s famous “Anonymous” op-ed appeared in the New York Times.. I’m surprised he ended up outing himself at this point, all things considered. Being known as “Anonymous” will end up costing him more than it’ll benefit him.
