保守派人士 Miles Taylor 曾在第一個 Trump 政府中擔任高職，出任美國國土安全部（DHS）幕僚長。後來他成為 President Donald Trump 的公開批評者。在英國《i Paper》的一篇文章中，Taylor 表示，愈來愈多共和黨人現在正「breaking with Trump」，並認為這位「paranoid」的總統有理由相信，還會有更多人這麼做。

「Donald Trump is going through the stages of grief over a growing defiance of him and his movement,」Taylor 在《i Paper》中寫道。「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.」

這位前 Trump 政府官員接著寫道：「He has good reason to remember. 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. 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.」

Taylor 指出，Trump「still blames many of us for costing him」2020 年總統選舉，並補充說：「his paranoia isn't entirely misplaced.」

「The data afterwards 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,」Taylor 解釋。「Those voters were not won over by Democrats. It was fellow Republicans who gave them the air cover to do it. Political scientists have a name for this phenomenon. 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.」

Taylor 繼續寫道：「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 舉前眾議員 Marjorie Taylor Greene（R-Georgia）、前 Fox News 主持人 Tucker Carlson，以及前 Trump 政府反恐官員 Joe Kent 為例，說明曾經支持 Trump 的人物如今已公開與他決裂，並強調脫離 Trump 陣營者的名單還會持續增加。

「Trump built his movement on the idea that criticizing him is treason,」Taylor 寫道。「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.」