President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are descending into "despair" and "extreme panic" ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, according to a former senior official from the Trump administration who says he knows from experience "what comes next."

Miles Taylor, who served in the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term and rose to become its chief of staff before departing in 2019, issued the warning in his latest column for The i Paper, published on Tuesday. Taylor first drew public attention as the author of an anonymous New York Times op-ed describing a resistance movement inside the White House against the president's worst impulses — authorship he concealed until revealing himself in 2020. He has since become an outspoken critic of his former boss, making frequent media appearances to offer an insider's perspective on Trump's political strategy.

In the column, Taylor argued that things are clearly not going well for the White House or the Republican Party overall as election day approaches. Midterm elections land halfway through a president's term, with all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and roughly one-third of the Senate on the ballot — enough on its own to reshape the balance of power in Washington for the second half of the term.

"You can tell how a campaign thinks it's doing by its closing argument in the final weeks," Taylor wrote. "Candidates who believe they're winning talk about their record. Candidates who believe they're losing throw everything at the wall, including the kitchen sink. Three weeks out from the U.S. midterm elections, Donald Trump and his allies are in a state of extreme panic. His opponents are cautiously celebrating this apparent validation that the MAGA movement is on the ropes. But I watched this US president lose up close, when I worked for him, which is why I see the panic as an ominous sign, too."

By Taylor's own yardstick, the closing arguments of the final weeks offer the public a visible gauge of how each campaign reads the race — a signal that will play out in real time as election day nears.

Taylor wrote that the signs of Trump scrambling to find anything that might sway midterm voters left him with a grim sense of caution and déjà vu, recalling what happened when Trump faced similar headwinds during his first term.

"The last time Trump believed he was losing, he searched for any voice near him that was willing to whisper back reassuring lies that he hadn't really lost," Taylor wrote. "Indeed, in December 2020, he was in such denial that he summoned outside advisers Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne to the Oval Office to hear their pitch for seizing the voting machines from the election he had just lost. White House lawyers spent hours fighting them off. Weeks later, Trump spoke to a rally of MAGA followers who then marched across town and stormed the Capitol – although he did not make a direct call for violent action."

Taylor described these outside advisers as what he calls Trump's "crackpots cabinet," writing that as the president's anxiety about the midterms swells, he is consulting them about his options.

"The one that has me most worried is Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk and conspiracy theorist convicted of election interference," Taylor wrote. "Trump spent a year pressuring Colorado's governor to let her out of jail; within weeks of her release, she was having lunch at the White House with the President. Last Monday, according to Trump ally Ed Martin, she was back in the Oval Office discussing election 'plans,' which the White House won't confirm or deny."

Taylor also recounted a conversation he had with John Kelly, who served as White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019, as Trump's desperation in 2020 became undeniable. Kelly said it was unlikely Trump would "concede gracefully" if defeated, adding, "Nothing would please more than if he chained himself to the Resolute desk, and they have to go in and cut the chains and carry him away in a straitjacket."

"The end result wasn't far off," Taylor concluded. "This time, the people who'd happily hand him the chains are back in the Oval Office. They're whispering in his ear again. And they're telling him that desperate times call for desperate measures."