Il conservatore Miles Taylor ha ricoperto un tempo un ruolo di alto livello nella prima amministrazione Trump come capo dello staff del Dipartimento della Sicurezza Interna degli Stati Uniti (DHS). In seguito è emerso come critico esplicito del presidente Donald Trump. In un articolo per il britannico i Paper, Taylor afferma che sempre più repubblicani stanno ora "breaking with Trump" e sostiene che il presidente "paranoid" ha motivo di credere che altri seguiranno.

"Donald Trump is going through the stages of grief over a growing defiance of him and his movement," scrive Taylor nell'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 afferma che Trump ha motivo di ricordare ciò che accadde nel 2020, quando la campagna fu influenzata non solo dalla comunicazione democratica ma anche dalle critiche pubbliche di ex alleati. "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," scrive. "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."

Aggiunge che Trump "still blames many of us for costing him" le elezioni presidenziali del 2020, pur dicendo che "his paranoia isn't entirely misplaced."

Secondo Taylor, i dati successivi al voto hanno mostrato "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." Dice che quegli elettori non furono convinti dai democratici, ma furono influenzati da altri repubblicani — un esempio di come le defezioni all’interno di un partito possano contare più delle critiche esterne nelle elezioni ravvicinate.

"Political scientists have a name for this phenomenon," scrive Taylor. "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."

Prosegue: "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 cita l’ex deputata Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), l’ex conduttore di Fox News Tucker Carlson e l’ex funzionario dell’amministrazione Trump per il controterrorismo Joe Kent come esempi di ex alleati di Trump che si sono pubblicamente schierati contro di lui. Dice che la lista dei defezionisti è destinata a crescere, sottolineando la possibilità che le critiche dall’interno della cerchia di Trump possano pesare sugli elettori repubblicani più degli attacchi dei democratici.

"Trump built his movement on the idea that criticizing him is treason," scrive Taylor. "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."