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Interview with Miles Taylor, Former DHS Chief of Staff; Lawmakers Demand More Accurate County of N.Y. Nursing Home Deaths. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired August 21, 2020 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:00]

MIKE TAYLOR, FORMER DHS CHIEF OF STAFF: This is not a one-time thing. We are at the point now where this is very, very emblematic of Donald Trump's character. And the QAnon episode is one more episode in a long line of episodes that extend before Charlottesville and since then.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Just one more thing on QAnon. They believe that President Trump is behind the scenes working to stop, you think, this cabal of global sex traffickers, Democratic officials and that he is secretly working with the Mueller team for subpoenas against Democrats and this widespread purge.

You worked at the Department of Homeland Security. Is President Trump involved in -- obviously, the U.S. works on sex trafficking issues around the globe, thankfully, because it is an actual problem.

But is he actually running, you know, to fight against this cabal, this alleged cabal of Satan-worshipping people that drink the blood of children?

TAYLOR: This is what's so surreal, Anderson. We are talking about this. And real Americans out there believe it because the president says it. That's why words matter. And that's why his use of words is extremely irresponsible.

And then the answer is no. OK? I helped run a Department of 250,000 hardworking men and women that protect this country every day. DHS is the largest law enforcement organization in America.

I saw no indication whatsoever, not only of a QAnon cabal of sex traffickers, but I didn't see a Deep State working against the president or any of these things that he regularly reverts to as conspiracy theories.

It is not real.

And we should recognize that when the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, is overtaken by these carnival barkers, that it will be deleterious consequences for the nation's security.

And I can tell you, it had a huge impact on morale in our department and throughout the federal government. COOPER: There's a new report that suggests that Trump officials held a

vote in 2018 during a White House meeting on whether to separate migrant families.

Can you expand on that? Do you know about that?

TAYLOR: Yes. I could expand on it far beyond our program. But let me give the shorter version.

At the very beginning of the administration, the White House pushed DHS, when John Kelly was secretary, to institute a policy of ripping kids apart from the families at the border.

It didn't matter whether they showed up at a port of entry or cross illegally, they said, let's rip them apart to scare migrants so they don't show up at the border. Kelly rejected that out of hand. Nielsen rejected that out of hand.

So what the attorney general in the White House decided to do, was said, look, we'll just prosecute everyone that crosses illegally.

That had the effect, because there weren't enough resources to process people quickly of leaving them apart from the children for an unacceptably long period of time.

Secretary Nielsen at the time was very, very concerned about that potential backlog after the attorney general announced the policy. She pushed back against the White House again and again.

And the White House got so frustrated that finally at that date in the spring they sat down with a number of members of the cabinet and senior staff and held a vote saying, look, Secretary Nielsen said we're not ready but do you think we're aware. Do we have the resources to do this?

I wasn't in the room for that but was very aware after the fact. I heard readouts from the conversations.

She was the one individual who said, no, I'm not raising my hand, we are not ready to do this. She was outvoted.

And the Department of Homeland Security was put in the impossible position of implementing this policy and trying to do it quickly enough so that children wouldn't be apart from their parents for an unacceptably long period of time while they went through the justice system.

This is a textbook example of how policy making went wrong in the Trump administration. And it emanated from the top. The president is responsible for this.

Granted, a lot of us, some of this is on us. Right? We could have done more to pump the brakes. The secretary certainly tried to behind the scenes.

And then finally, rightfully, we convinced the president to sign an executive order that summer ending the policy.

But as I've said before, Anderson, almost every single month in the administration after that, the president said he wanted to reinstitute the policy and go further and revert back do that version of year one, that sickening version of let's just rip them apart to scare migrants from coming to the border.

And that's one of the reasons that I ended up leaving this administration.

COOPER: You also have a -- talked about what happened behind the scenes when the president threatened to, quote, "bus and dump" immigrants in sanctuary cities, which was -- he talked about -- that was highly reported.

What was going on behind the scenes with that?

TAYLOR: So, in roughly February of 2019, the president called us, and he said exactly those words you just used.

He said he wanted us to "bus and dump" all the illegal immigrants we picked an up the border and drop them in Democratic sanctuary cities, basically, a way to punish the cities because they would refuse to turn over illegal immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

We had our lawyers look at this. Anderson, we didn't need to have our lawyers look at this. This was patently illegal on its face. This would be misuse of federal funds. That's not a legitimate law enforcement operation.

So, I was the one that personally went back to the White House to the chief of staff's office to several other senior advisers' offices and said this is illegal. You need to let the president know this is illegal.

[13:35:09]

The president called us again and said you need to do this. The secretary said, no, we're not able to do this.

As is the case in the Trump administration, within days, as I remember, the president went out and tweeted that this policy idea was actively under consideration, even though we had told him it was illegal.

Anderson, this won't be on page 14 of any newspaper today.

But again, we have another example of the president of the United States being told something is unlawful to do, yet he'll still try to go forward and implement the policies.

There's a litany of examples of him embracing and trying to pursue illegal behavior.

COOPER: The president watches a lot of television. You said one host served as a de facto chief of staff. TAYLOR: Yes. This is really disheartening. But there was a period of

time where, at first jokingly, we would say that FOX late-night host, Lou Dobbs, was the sort of shadow chief of staff of the Trump administration.

Why did we say that? Because the president would call us and he would say -- and pardon my language -- why the hell didn't you watch Lou Dobbs last night? You need to listen to Lou. What Lou says is what I want to do.

So, if Lou Dobbs peddled a conspiracy theory on late night television or a claim about what should be done at the border or with some law enforcement operation, the president wanted us to be tuning in every night.

My response to that was I don't have any time to watch Lou Dobbs in the evening. You have us running a 250,000-person department and trying to guard against some of the most severe threats to the country and I can't watch Lou Dobbs.

But this happened on a regular basis.

COOPER: You talk about a meeting of school violence that didn't go well.

TAYLOR: Well, this is an example, Anderson, of the president being unable to focus on things that are very important.

I think this was around the end of 2018 that we went to meet with the president to talk about a very important issue, school safety. OK?

Our mission was to tell him what the recommendations we had developed were around keeping kids from being shot in classrooms around our country. All right?

A sobering meeting, an important subject. We went in to discuss it.

Within minutes of bringing up the subject, the president was instantly distracted, wanted to talk about the wall. And in fact, the words he used that day were, he said, "I want my wall to be a beautiful work of art, a beautiful work of art. Here's how to design it."

I'm sitting there in my hands with recommendations how to keep the nation's children safe in their classrooms, the president doesn't want to talk about that. He wants to talk about his border wall and talks about his priorities and indiscipline.

COOPER: He says this publicly, obviously. And you think, oh well, he is just diverted speech and is talking about poll numbers or what counties, you know, what states he won and looking back at the election.

To know it's actually happening in real meetings where real things should be being discussed is incredibly disheartening.

TAYLOR: Yes. That's the truth. I think people felt that way. Anderson, I don't want to mischaracterize things. I wasn't the

president's best friend. We wouldn't watch movies together in the evenings.

I would be with the president in professional settings when he should have been focused on the job. And I was there with my boss, as well, as senior advisers in the national security cabinet of his administration.

But the president wouldn't be focused in those settings. I understand if, off hours, he wants to blow off steam and talk about conspiracy theories and focus on tweets. But this is when he's supposed to be on the job. But when he's on the job, his mind isn't.

COOPER: Miles, stick around. I want to talk more about what you saw of this president and concerns you say the cabinet had had with the president's mental acuity.

[13:39:11]

We'll be back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Back with me Miles Taylor, former senior Department of Homeland Security official in the Trump administration.

Miles, you mentioned the president's mental acuity was discussed daily by senior members in the administration, including those in the cabinet. There was that story early on about the 25th Amendment having been discussed.

Was that ever something that you became aware of?

TAYLOR: Yes. Anderson, I'll be frank with you. That's not really something that I can comment on, at least at the moment.

But what I will say is this. On a very regular basis, you would have these last-minute fire drills where the president would make spontaneous unplanned, ill-considered decisions from the White House.

And his cabinet would have to drop everything to try to go address those challenges. That may not seem like a big deal if it happens every once in a while.

Look, every president deserves to, you know, think up new ideas and have his cabinet respond. But I'm talking about weekly unplanned emergencies, it has a waterfall effect on the operations of the entirety of the federal government.

[13:45:08]

The taxpayers watching this expect their government to hum along, get the job done, protect the American people, get Social Security checks out. But when these fire alarms happen at the White House, it would have a waterfall effect on everything and make it really difficult for people to get the jobs done.

And I want to give you a specific example. We do a lot more at the Department of Homeland Security in this country than just protect the nation's borders. It is a very important mission but only part of the mission of Department of Homeland Security.

DHS is responsible for stopping cyberattacks, terrorist attacks, nation-state threats from foreign foes.

But the president wanted to spend about 95 percent of his time focused on border.

So we went to the White House at one point -- and this is probably in 2008. And we said, look, there's something we used to do in the Bush administration of Terror Tuesday, and they would sit down with George W. Bush and talk about the terror threats to the country.

And we said why don't we do Threat Thursdays. Come in with the president and talk to them about the other threats he is not spending time on because he's too focused on the border. We got blown off.

And we made the proposal again. We got blown off. We made the proposal, again, to the White House chief of staff and we got blown off. That never ended up happening.

So the president ended up, I would say, very ill informed about the most serious threats to the country because he didn't spend the time to focus on those issues or to learn about them.

COOPER: Certainly alarming.

There was an op-ed, a book by someone calling themselves Anonymous. Are you aware of who that is?

TAYLOR: I'm not. Look, that was a parlor game that happened in Washington D.C., of a lot of folks trying to think who that might be. And I have my own thoughts who that might be --

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: You are not Anonymous?

TAYLOR: I wear a mask for two things, Anderson, Halloween and pandemics. So, no.

COOPER: You said that more former administration officials would be joining -- coming out and talking about what they have witnessed firsthand. What sort of level of -- are you talking about cabinet members? Are you talking about people that worked in the White House?

TAYLOR: Well, we will see. My direct messages are open on Twitter. And I'm in contact with a lot of folks. But excited to report to you today that we have a full-page ad running in "Wall Street Journal," former Republican national security officials, supporting Joe Biden.

And we have managed to pull on two more senior ex-Trump administration officials onto that list.

One, an incredible man of John Mitnick, a top lawyer in the Trump administration. And Elizabeth Neumann, a main counterterrorism leader in the Trump administration.

Both were appointees of Donald Trump and both decided he is unfit to be president and he's dangerous to the national security.

I hope you hear from both John and Elizabeth soon. And, I think, you'll hear from some others in addition to them.

COOPER: Miles Taylor, I appreciate your time. Thank you, Miles.

TAYLOR: Thanks, Anderson.

COOPER: ANN investigation reveals the number of people who died in nursing homes from the coronavirus is severely underestimated. Take a look at why the numbers are so off.

Plus, Actress Lori Loughlin, who became the face of the college admissions scandal, soon will learn how long she will spend in prison.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:51:55]

COOPER: Just in, New York lawmakers are demanding the state give a clear picture on how it's handling the pandemic's effect on nursing home. Today, they sent a letter to a New York official asking for a more accurate count of nursing home deaths. The state has three weeks to respond.

Brynn Gingras on why there's cause for concern.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jerry Maldanado remembers the exact moment he knew his 81-year-old mother, Maria, contracted COVID-19.

JERRY MALDANADO, MOTHER DIED OF CORONAVIRUS IN N.Y. NURSING HOMES: April 19, when I heard her first cough and my heart sank.

GINGRAS: By then, the virus was rampant in New York.

Maldanado's mother died eight days later at a nursing home an hour outside Manhattan. He was by her side.

MALDANADO: I remember in my panic saying, what do I bring my mother. What do I bring the person who made me everything I am? And I could only think of flowers.

GINGRAS: It's for families like Maldanado's that Democratic State Senator James Skoufis has been hounding New York's Department of health for a clearer picture on how many nursing home residents died from COVID-19. Currently, the states estimate it at more than 6,600 people.

STATE SEN. JAMES SKOUFIS (D-NY): My gut sense is, at a minimum, we're talking a couple of thousand additional deaths.

GINGRAS: The state's coronavirus data base shows a total that excludes nursing home residents who died a at a hospital after being transferred from a facility.

In a letter sent to the department, state lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are demanding a more accurate count.

DR. HOWARD ZUCKER, NEW YORK HEALTH COMMISSIONER: The issue here is that --

GINGRAS: The mood comes after health commissioner, Howard Zucker, couldn't provide answers in recent legislative hearings.

ZUCKER: I wish I could give you the number today but I need to be sure it's absolutely accurate.

We need to understand what worked, what didn't work. And we can best prepare for next time. And the only way to do that is to get full information.

GINGRAS: Now Maldanado believes the state's current death toll is even more underestimated because, in his mother's case, her death certificate says she died of cardiac arrest, even though he said she was being medically treated for the virus.

MALDANADO: And the reason they don't attributed as a cause of death is because they told us that she could not be tested for COVID. Because the nursing facility didn't have the testing capacity.

GINGRAS: The discrepancy in numbers is another flash point in the state's handling of the virus when it comes to nursing homes.

Recently, Governor Andrew Cuomo took heat for this March 24th order demanding nursing homes to accept all recovering coronavirus patients from hospitals. It's impossible to tell if the directive contributed to the death toll among the state's most vulnerable.

That order was amended more than a month later.

When pressed on his administration's handling of the nursing home issue, Cuomo has defended criticism saying --

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): I think it is all politically motivated.

MALDANADO: It's offensive to argue that the quest for accountability is political. It's like the last laugh in the face that you can give to grieving families.

GINGRAS: The federal government required states to report all COVID nursing home deaths to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But each state follows the directive differently.

[13:55:00]

On a national level, the AARP has been lobbying to get each state to post nursing home death numbers and cases daily.

ELAINE RYAN, AARP: We want to know where to take action immediately. Residents deserve that information. Families deserve this information.

GINGRAS: This, as a recent report shows COVID-19 cases in nursing homes increased steeply in July, particularly in areas with high community spread.

MALDANADO: They were married 50 years, nine kids together.

GINGRAS: For Maldanado --

MALDANADO: mom was one of those victims, right? One of those numbers who had a history and a story. And for me, it's really important that she be remembered as a person.

GINGRAS: Brynn Gingras, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Vice President Mike Pence claims a miracle is around the corner in the form of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year. I'll talk to a former CDC director about what he thinks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)