Conservative Miles Taylor once held a high-ranking role in the first Trump administration as chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He later emerged as a vocal critic of President Donald Trump. In an article for the UK-based i Paper, Taylor says more and more Republicans are now "breaking with Trump" and argues that the "paranoid" president has reason to believe more will follow.

"Donald Trump is going through the stages of grief over a growing defiance of him and his movement," Taylor writes in the i Paper. "The possibility of Democrats retaking power and investigating him triggered the first phases: denial and anger. Last week, he entered the 'bargaining' phase, as evidenced by his son-in-law taking a secret meeting with a top House Democrat, evidently in an effort to find common ground. But I can tell you — from 10 years of watching Trump's movement, first inside his administration and then battling it from the outside at close quarters — that he's harboring a deeper worry than being investigated by liberals. He fears his fellow conservatives even more — because he knows we're the ones who beat him last time."

Taylor says Trump has reason to remember what happened in 2020, when the campaign was shaped not only by Democratic messaging but also by public criticism from former allies. "In the autumn of 2020, I helped organize a wave of former Trump administration officials to come out publicly against the president we'd served," he writes. "Our ranks included Cabinet officials, intelligence chiefs, and once-loyal White House staff who saw behind the curtain and couldn't accept the thought of Trump's reelection. CNN's Jake Tapper devoted an hour-long special to the historic defections, just weeks before Election Day."

He adds that Trump "still blames many of us for costing him" the 2020 presidential election, while saying that "his paranoia isn't entirely misplaced."

According to Taylor, post-election data showed "a meaningful slice of Republican voters crossing over for Joe Biden, plenty of them for the first time in their lives, in the handful of states that decided the outcome." He says those voters were not persuaded by Democrats, but instead were influenced by fellow Republicans — an example of how defections inside a party can matter more than outside criticism in close elections.

"Political scientists have a name for this phenomenon," Taylor writes. "They call it a 'permission structure.' Most people don't change their vote because the other side made a great argument. They change it when somebody they already trust — someone who shares their tribe — tells them it's all right to flip."

He continues: "A Democrat telling a lifelong Republican that Trump is unfit for office is pretty much just background noise. But a Republican who sat in the Trump White House and saw the corruption? That's permission. We built that structure in 2020, and it worked in a way no Democratic attack ad could."

Taylor points to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former Trump administration counterterrorism official Joe Kent as examples of former Trump allies who have publicly turned against him. He says the list of defectors is likely to grow, underscoring the possibility that criticism from inside Trump’s own orbit may carry more weight with Republican voters than attacks from Democrats.

"Trump built his movement on the idea that criticizing him is treason," Taylor writes. "His former allies are busy proving that it isn't. And if they are successful, then Trump's last two stages of grief — depression and forced acceptance — will be scheduled for the first week of November."