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The beating heart of DEFIANCE.org is our Weekly Mission Briefing. Every Wednesday at 5p ET, we take real action to counter Donald Trump’s abuses of power.

This week, our mission is about what’s coming on May 1st. A coordinated national strike — workers, students, and consumers walking…

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Years from now, if the world order collapses, historians will trace it back to something more mundane than a nuclear war or a deadly pathogen. “It began,” they’ll write, “with a single man’s insatiable need for chaos.”

A weapon of mass distraction, if you will.

I watched that “weapon” get built, up close, during my time at the Department of Homeland Security. There was hardly a day we were allowed to focus on our job of protecting hundreds of millions of Americans. Instead, more days than not were spent scurrying around Washington, dealing with the fallout of foolish presidential missives.

As an example, let me tell you about Friday, December 21, 2018.

I walked into the Oval Office for what should’ve been a straightforward win. Donald Trump was about to sign legislation I’d spent years helping craft and which we’d painstakingly gotten across the finish line in Congress just before the holidays. It was a sweeping government overhaul to ramp up efforts to detect weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) — nuclear material, engineered pandemics, and the dangerous new threats that technology was creating. It was a bipartisan, historic effort.

As usual, Trump had no idea what he was signing. I walked up to the Resolute Desk and launched into a briefing on the looming WMD dangers of the near future. I knew he didn’t absorb his intelligence briefings. But maybe if I sketched out the scenarios with enough doom and gloom, he’d pay attention. He nodded blankly as I spoke. My words seemed to blow through his ears like air conditioning.

There’s no way he understood what I just said, I thought. Afterwards, he didn’t ask questions. Then he looked around the room and changed the subject.

His thoughts weren’t on homeland security that day. In his signature electromagnetic impulsiveness, Trump was focused on fresh controversy.

The president had just sent U.S. allies into a panic by tweeting — from the White House residence, against military advice — that he was pulling U.S. troops out of Syria and Afghanistan. For Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, it was the final straw. Fed up with watching life-and-death decisions get made by tweet, he announced he would transition out of his job in February. What did we think of Mattis? Trump wanted to know. He was scheming to “fire” the Pentagon chief before that transition. Just to spite the former Marine. In fact, Trump wanted to do it before New Year’s Day.

Even that topic couldn’t hold the focus of his microwave mind, where his thoughts and ideas popped off like corn kernels. Soon he was ranting about the border wall, as WMD experts filed into the room for the actual bill signing. He’d just announced, on a whim, that he planned to veto a bipartisan spending bill and shut down the government because Republicans hadn’t worked hard enough to get him money for his border wall. Hours earlier, Trump’s decision had rocked Washington. His agencies (including our own) were now scrambling to shift into emergency-operations mode, days away from Christmas. No one had expected a shutdown.

As he gloated about the surprise move, Trump seemed oblivious to the fact that the nuclear detection experts who’d come into the Oval Office for this celebratory moment were now worried. Would they be able to implement this bill Trump was about to sign? Would they even be allowed to come into the office next week? Would they get their next paycheck?

Eventually, Trump uncapped his Sharpie and squiggled his name on the bill and took a few pictures. Grinning and putting his thumb in the air. Once again, I tried to bring his attention back to the issue at hand. WMD threats. The urgency. What we could do about it, even before his signature finished drying. Blank face. He wasn’t processing what I was saying. I probably would’ve accomplished more by singing French lullabies to a pillow on the couch.

Trump diverted again. He started complaining about the Mueller investigation — a subject with zero relevance to anyone in the room.

“Can you believe this is still happening?” he blurted, clearly stuck on some headline from earlier in the morning. “A complete hoax. A witch hunt.”

Alright then. That’s enough, I concluded. I tried to shoo the career employees out of the room after they’d each gotten their photo. We’d learned the hard way. The longer you stayed around Trump, the more likely you were to leave holding the bag of a bad idea, a silly presidential side quest, or an order you couldn’t follow, unless you wanted to begin your post-government career in prison.

Afterward, I walked down the hall to the Chief of Staff’s office. John Kelly hadn’t even bothered to come to the bill signing. He announced two weeks earlier that he was quitting, too, and I couldn’t blame him. The conditions around Trump weren’t compatible with governing. I sat on the couch outside his office and jotted words in my notebook.

Weapon of Mass Distraction.

That was biggest homeland security threat we faced. Time was running out to sound the alarm.

That day in December was almost tame in comparison to the crises we’ve watched the president foment ever since. But it crystallized something I’d been struggling to articulate: the problem with Trump’s near-pathological obsession with spectacle and self-imposed controversy. The unseen consequences.

What happens in the immediate is obvious. Donald Trump spews “distraction radiation” on everything around him. He does this to federal agencies, the press, the public, and our allies around the world. Like actual radiation, it can have severe immediate-term impacts that everyone rushes to address. But it gets worse as time goes on. Other systems start to fail until, eventually, all of your productive effort is subsumed by the symptoms and the after-effects.

In government, time is a very finite resource. A Cabinet secretary has roughly ten productive hours in a working day. Every hour spent managing a presidential tantrum, untangling an illegal directive, or responding to a manufactured crisis is an hour not spent on the country’s real problems. Then the damage spreads. When someone as reckless and sleepless as Trump is firing off missives from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. — like he did this past Sunday night — the blast radius grows wider. While you’re frantically responding to his social media sensationalism, the actual work you ignored becomes another emergency. Then it can’t wait any longer.

Suddenly, all you’re doing is crisis response. Lurching from one disaster to the next.

During the first Trump term, the biggest national security issues in a generation went unaddressed. Take, for example, the rise of A.I. When Trump took office, it was evident to most of us in the national security community that A.I. was poised to reshape our world. We were woefully behind. We talked about it in urgent tones at interagency meetings, making plans to overhaul entire departments. Those meetings kept getting postponed, then abandoned. It became “next quarter’s priority.” Again and again.

Today, America is far less prepared than it should be. It’s hard to overstate how many matters like this were ignored because Trump dropped a distraction bomb.

Throughout DHS, there were management challenges big and small that demanded our time, like the U.S. Secret Service. For years, agency insiders warned that “modernization” was needed, or something terrible would happen. Agents were burnt out and under-resourced. It was on everyone’s to-do list. But real reform required sustained focus, and focus was the one thing Trump made impossible. Senior DHS officials weren’t spending our days “modernizing” agencies. We were getting berated to find legal cover to deploy federal shock troops into Democrat-run cities or to arrange gun-toting photo ops at the border.

Chaos has consequences. Even the most basic reforms at the Secret Service might have helped catch the shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania who tried to assassinate Donald Trump himself. The irony is not lost on me.

This is what a Weapon of Mass Distraction actually does. The fallout is more than mere “wasted time.” It literally warps priorities across the entire policymaking apparatus until the cacophonous noises of a narcissist become the entire focus of federal employees. Meanwhile, true dangers lurk in the background.

In Trump’s second term, his WMD has been upgraded. No target is spared. No hesitation is displayed.

As I write this, America’s closest allies are quietly stress-testing fuel reserves and supply chains, bracing for the possibility that the Iran conflict (which almost no one outside the White House and Israel wanted) tips the global economy into crisis. Defense ministers are fielding demands from Washington to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz as a loyalty test to Trump. Or else.

Meanwhile, China and Russia are consolidating gains across every domain where American has closed its eyes. The most important technological reckoning in human history, i.e. the emergence of A.I. as an existential challenge to our species itself, is unfolding without serious Western action. The bandwidth simply isn’t there. Every week brings a new Trumpian act of vanity, moral absurdity, or power-wielding calamity. Once again, roomfuls of people — whether it’s a newsroom or a boardroom or a briefing room or a classroom — turn their attention to the billowing mushroom cloud Trump has sent into the sky, instead of what they should be doing.

I used to worry about real-life WMD. It was a top-three priority for me when I went into DHS during the Trump administration. Then it nearly fell off the list. What I didn’t fully anticipate was the deadlier weapon the president was wielding. While he didn’t launch literal nuclear strikes against the American people, he consumed the attention of everyone responsible for keeping them safe. And by turning the most powerful country on earth into a perpetual PR and crisis-management operation, Donald Trump left all of us naked and exposed to danger.

Future historians, if they’re in a position to write anything at all, may find this the most confounding chapter of the American story. Yes, a would-be autocrat tried to seize and consolidate power. That was terrible. But it wasn’t what did America in. What they’ll marvel at is how Trump managed to detonate the house while everyone was busy watching him throw matches into the front yard. The distraction became the weapon.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way.

If you want to disarm Trump, I can help you. In fact, I can tell you exactly where codes are, how to enter them, and precisely when to push the button. First, you need to find your nearest polling place. Second, you must look up which candidates Donald Trump has endorsed this year — and who’s running against them. And finally, you must get to the polls on November 3rd to cast your ballot and defeat his democracy-destroying coalition before it’s too late.

That, my friends, is how you dismantle an atomic bomb.

I’ll see you there,

Miles Taylor

P.S. What’s coming up? We’re full-time focused on saving the republic. Join us for our next broadcast. Watch LIVE for free. Members get access to the replay.

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At the same time, Iran peace talks collapse at the last minute, Trump moves to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, and allies refuse to back him as global marke…

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Here’s a thought experiment: if your boss is a danger to himself and other people, who do you go to first? His family? His friends? The police? And what if your boss is the president of the United States?

JD Vance should be asking himself these questions.

Sunday night into Monday morning, the president of the United States conducted an all-night social media binge that would alarm any reasonable observer, whether or not he was the president, and which cemented a growing sense of dread about Trump’s mental stability.

It began at 9:03 p.m. with a savage, 334-word screed against Pope Leo XIV, attacking the first American-born pontiff as “WEAK” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.”

It continued at 9:49 p.m. with an AI-generated image of Trump depicted as Jesus Christ, seemingly blessing a sick man.

A minute later, a picture of Trump Tower on the moon.

A political meme at 10:10.

News clips at 10:32 and 10:53.

Then, at 12:43 a.m., the president announced the United States would impose a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz — the very same blockade he’d condemned Iran for imposing — and which he directed via social media in the dead of night.

He kept going: 2:35 a.m., an article about Joe Biden.

2:36 a.m., the naval blockade again.

2:37 a.m., an article about Rep. Eric Swalwell.

2:37 a.m., the same Biden article, again.

2:38 a.m., a piece about his White House ballroom.

4:10 a.m., a news article about Iran.

Democrat influencer Harry Sisson was among the first to sound the alarm about the frenzied posting spree, writing:

“He’s not sleeping, he’s pretending to be Jesus, and he’s posting all night. He’s not well.”

Harry is right. Trump is not well.

In fact, pair this insomniac all-nighter with Trump’s recent apocalyptic rhetoric — his warning last week that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not capitulate, and his threat of “complete decimation” if peace talks fell apart — and you have an alarming picture of historic proportions. A commander-in-chief threatening genocide and spending his nights posting grandiose self-flattery and ordering military actions while most of the military is sleeping.

The Iran talks did, in fact, fall apart over the weekend. U.S.-Iran negotiations in Pakistan ended without agreement after a 21-hour session, with Vice President JD Vance coming back empty handed. That collapse appears to have sent the president into freefall. His much-hoped-for ceasefire has crumbled, after Trump himself seems to have been trying to micro-manage the outcome from afar, to no avail. And in the vacuum, Trump is not marshaling his Cabinet or addressing the nation. He is posting manically, unable to control himself.

Perhaps the most frightening dimension of what we witnessed last night was that Trump’s apocalyptic warnings have merged with a messianic self-image. Literally. He’s continuing to reinforce the view that he is the Messiah.

In the days before Easter, Trump seemed to relish comparisons between himself and Jesus Christ during what was supposed to be a closed-door Easter lunch at the White House. Last night he posted an AI-generated image casting himself literally as the Christian savior, less than an hour after he attacked the leader of the Catholic Church in language no American president has ever used against a sitting pope.

Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he was “disheartened that the President chose to write such disparaging words about the Holy Father,” adding pointedly that the pope “is the Vicar of Christ who speaks from the truth of the Gospel and for the care of souls.” Three of the country’s senior-most cardinals issued a joint rebuke. Pope Leo himself said he had “no fear of the Trump administration” and vowed to continue speaking out against the war.

The man being attacked as weak and un-Christian is the Catholic Pope. The man doing the attacking is posting pictures of himself as Jesus Christ. Can you imagine if Barack Obama did this? Or Joe Biden? Or any American president in history?

This is the moment when those around Donald Trump should probably stop telling themselves the same ludicrous self-assuring lies that I’ve heard them tell for years — that this is some kind of performance or 3D chess or chaos-as-method — when it’s really just scary. What we’re seeing is an elderly man coming apart in public, with nuclear weapons at his disposal.

Which brings me to JD Vance.

Just two weeks ago, Vance announced that he will publish a book titled Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, due out June 16. The book explores his conversion to the Catholic faith and what it means to be a Christian across all of the seasons of his life. “I’m a Christian,” Vance said proudly in announcing the book, “and I became a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ’s teachings are true.”

He flew home from Islamabad Sunday afternoon (34 hours of travel and 16 hours of failed negotiations behind him), to find his boss had spent the night attacking his Pope, mocking his faith, and casting himself in the role of JD’s lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

If this isn’t a sufficient wake-up call to the Vice President of the United States, then his spine is, indeed, made of chocolate pudding.

To be fair, Vance’s constitutional toolkit is limited. The vice presidency is a sparse portfolio with little more power than the president’s bag boy. He can preside over the Senate, cast tie-breaking votes occasionally, and stand in readiness waiting for his boss to drop dead. That’s about it, other than whatever the president tells him to do. The framers, in their wisdom or their naïveté, did not design the office to restrain an unraveling president. Vance has no formal authority to tell his boss to put down the phone at 2 a.m. or to take a breather before threatening genocide.

I know this dynamic intimately, because I watched it destroy Mike Pence.

In the Trump years, I came to believe that Pence represented one of the great moral failures of modern American political life. He stood in the Oval Office through some of the most alarming episodes of the Trump presidency — including sickening abuses of power, monologues about cruelty, and obviously illegal demands — and did nothing about it. Just stood there. I saw it more than a few times. His straight-backed posture and beatific gaze. Silent as a portrait. I meant what I later wrote:

“Pence [will] be remembered for an erect posture and flaccid conscience. He stood proudly next to the chief executive but never stood up to him. He was built to obey.”

But I have come to regard my earlier judgment as incomplete. Because when it truly mattered (when Trump was engineering a violent assault on the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history), Mike Pence did actually stand up. He walked into that Capitol on January 6th knowing what was coming and certified the election anyway, despite the president’s demand that he break the law. He protected the Constitution. And in doing so, he may well have saved the Republic.

Whatever his failings, Pence earned that day. It washed away his civic sins.

This is such a moment for JD Vance.

The president was not merely eccentric or impulsive last night. He showed the signs of genuine psychological deterioration, the kind which requires no medical degree to observe. If I’d witnessed a relative experiencing that kind of sleeplessness, grandiosity, messianic projection, impulse to attack, and absurdity, I would be calling the nursing home at 9 a.m. Vance is not some bystander to this. He is, constitutionally and politically, the first person in the line of succession.

The vice president has the obligation to act. So if his powers are limited, what should he actually do?

I don’t imagine he will do anything. But he should. And if there’s a chance that his conscience was finally awoken, then here’s my personal recommendation. Keep in mind, this is the minimum course of action.

First, Vance should convene a private meeting with a small number of Cabinet members, including at least he Secretaries of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and Treasury. This wouldn’t be to plot a “coup” but to establish a shared understanding of what they’re witnessing and what their collective responsibilities are in the event the president asks them to exceed their authorities and do something terrible. I’ve already made clear my deepest doubts that Trump’s team would ever invoke the 25th Amendment, but they have a duty to discuss what’s happening.

Second, Vance should reach out privately to senior congressional leaders — at least in the GOP — to privately voice his concerns and begin building the political architecture that would be necessary if conditions worsen. The Congress has oversight responsibilities, and its leaders deserve to know what Vance knows. He should say to Speaker Mike Johnson: “You see what I see? The president is unwell. We need to be prepared to keep him from doing something dangerous.”

Third, and most critically, Vance should go to the president directly. This should be a private conversation, man to man, in which the vice president delivers an honest assessment that that the president’s behavior is alarming senior officials and could destabilize his whole presidency.

Let’s be honest, this won’t go well. In fact, a conversation like that probably leads Trump to lash out and double down on the madness, including threatening to jettison his vice president. But you know what? That’s exactly what JD Vance needs right now to prove his point to Cabinet members and Congressional leaders — that Trump is prepared to rip off the brakes as he’s speeding toward a cliff. That’s what it would signal if he tried to get rid of the one man who has the constitutional role to step in.

I know what you’re thinking. There’s no chance JD Vance does anything like this. To be honest, I felt the same way about Mike Pence. But in the end, I was wrong. So I would submit to you that there’s a possibility there, however remote, that the vice president might rise to this occasion. I’m not even suggesting Vance break with him publicly, for goodness sake. At the barest minimum, he just needs to be the adult in the room and tell the president that his behavior could destroy him and all of us.

The Pope that Trump just attack responded with four words: I have no fear.

The question for JD Vance is simpler: do you?

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

P.S. What’s coming up? We’re full-time focused on saving the republic. Join us for our next broadcast.

• DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET. Watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, on our YouTube channel, or on my X account. Or you can watch the replay at DEFIANCE.News.

• WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET. Same ways to watch, above! Replays available afterwards.

• WEEKLY COFFEE — Every Friday @ 2pm ET. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News for Members-only coffee every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available afterwards.

• MONTHLY MEMBERS-ONLY MEETING — First Wednesday of every month @ 5pm ET. These are sent out the week of, via Zoom. Replays available afterwards.

P.P.S. Add us to your calendar. You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here or add it to your Outlook/iCal/other calendars here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

Plus, our new segment Top MAGA…

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In the United States today, you’re just as likely to own a cat as you are to believe that we might need to kill each other to resolve our differences.

I did a TEDx talk last year on the rising cost of dissent in America.

During that conversation, I brought up a shocking survey that NPR had just released which found that 1 in 3 Americans now believe political violence may be necessary to put the country back on track.

1 in 3.

For perspective, I told the audience that 1 in 3 Americans also own a cat. Consider that for a moment. If you bump into someone on the subway, that person is just as likely to possess a cat as they are to possess the view that we might need to shoot each other to fix our political system. Maybe they possess both. (In theory, there’s an 11% chance of that — murderous, cat-owning Americans. But I digress.)

I bring this up because this week Donald Trump made the single most shocking statement ever issued by an American president. Ever.

“A whole civilization will die tonight.”

He wrote that on social media, threatening to wipe out 90 million Iranian people, while White House aides refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. Whether Trump was bluffing — or whether he even knew if he was bluffing — is a separate question from whether such a statement is even within the galaxy of “appropriate” for the leader of the free world. I’ll spare you the analysis. It wasn’t. In fact, it was a crime. The Geneva Conventions explicitly prohibit “acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to terrorize civilians.”

(By the way, today Trump is back to threatening “COMPLETE DECIMATION” of Iran.)

But what alarms me almost as much is how many Americans were not alarmed by this. A YouGov survey found that 1 in 3 Americans either approved of Trump’s threat (14 percent strongly approved) or weren’t quite sure. I saw that and thought, “Are you kidding me?” A third of the country is either ready for us to slaughter the civilians of another nation, or they’re not sure that mass killing is the right approach?

Apparently so.

Given that shocking reality, I want to pose two questions.

FIRST, why is this happening?

I’ve spent years studying the problem of political violence, including writing about it in two books, convening summits of experts, exploring the launch of new political parties and organizations, and so on. A lot of hot air has been breathed on this subject, so let me try to give it to you in a single summarizing sentence, at least from my perspective. Let’s call this sentence: “Why people are mad (and getting madder).”

Here it is —

As technology has empowered individuals to connect, organize, and act well beyond what was once imaginable, it has simultaneously made them less tolerant of centralized institutions that make decisions on their behalf (like cable companies, news organizations, or corporations); by the same token, when governments and democratic structures fail to keep pace, the gap between what citizens feel entitled to demand and what their institutions actually deliver becomes a powder keg.

Put another way, the individual now feels more “sovereign” than at any point in history. They want to make their own decisions. And they’re more pissed off than ever when someone else makes them.

We live in a time of fast culture. Most people don’t need J.C. Penny to tell them what to wear or want the nightly news to tell them what to think. A person with a smartphone can reach millions of people overnight and form a movement in hours. Yet the structures governing our lives have barely changed in generations. Americans haven’t seen their Constitution updated in more than three decades. In fact, more than half the country was born after 1992, which was the last time it happened. So for most Americans, the founding document has never been edited in their lifetime. We don’t talk about updating it, and we’ve forgotten that we can.

Into that gap rushes fury.

Americans have developed the existential sense of dread that if their side doesn’t take power, something terrible will happen. On both sides, that’s where political violence comes from. By the way, if you’re rolling your eyes at the words “both sides” because your side is the non-violent one, I hate to break it to you: the data disagrees. Republicans and Democrats in roughly equal measure report a favorable view toward political violence. They both see the contest as life-or-death. When the formal channels feel too slow or corrupt, they’re increasingly willing to go around them.

That psychology has clearly found its way into the Oval Office.

If Trump feels like he can’t get the deal he wants with another country, he threatens the murder of 90 million people. International law be damned! That’s the logic of political violence on a global scale, driven by the same impulse, the same contempt for process, and the same willingness to terrorize rather than to persuade the opposing side. In this case, it’s the extreme outcome of anti-institutionalism, albeit masquerading around with a presidential seal. But I’ve spilled enough words on Trump’s corruption lately, so I’ll keep this focused on us as a people.

This leads to my SECOND question. What do we do about it?

There are immediate remedies and longer ones. In the short term, it falls to the two-thirds of Americans who don’t see slaughter as a solution to shout down the one-third who do. I didn’t say shoot down. I said shout down. That means making it socially unacceptable to hold such views. Making it feel fringe, once again, to talk about mass violence. We wouldn’t be the first generation to id it. There’s precedent, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, if having to hit the reset button after a period of widespread animosity and violence.

But we should also acknowledge that the frustrated folks have something right. Their seething anger is a sign of something. They have legitimate grievances, even if their remedy is ludicrous. The system is not moving at fiber-optic speeds. Our institutions do look antiquated against the fastest technological upheaval in the history of the species. And there is no serious and sustained public conversation on what to do about it.

Unfortunately, that conversation is coming, whether we invite it or not. In the next one or two decades, we’ll be forced into a fundamental revisitation of domestic political structures and the international order or face the consequences of inaction. Democracy itself will need to be revised and amended. Today’s international system (built in 1945 for a world of large nation-states and broadcast media) will need to be rebuilt for a world of hyper-networked individuals that have almost superpower-like abilities through AI. Or the system will collapse.

The trend lines are clear. The ability to create a powerful app has shrunk from requiring a team of developers and a few months to requiring a normal person, AI, and a few keystrokes. Not long from now, anyone will be able to “generate” entire businesses and social movements in seconds. It’s hard to overstate how much this will upend our economy and society. Plenty are chattering about the AI-enabled future. But far fewer are talking about serious political retooling to meet the moment.

The idea of foundational change feels “radical” because our generations have never had to do it. We cannot, however, accept the alternative. A growing portion of the population feels so alienated from institutions that won’t adapt that they’re willing to do it by force, if necessary.

I had a conversation about this briefly yesterday with my friend Sue Gordon, the former Deputy Director of National Intelligence. In our phone chat, I said the words “Constitutional Convention.” While the term sounds radical, we need to start mainstreaming it because our political system requires more than just tweaks or a few pieces of legislation. We need a once-in-a-century gathering of the minds. To limit the apocalyptic “see-saw” in our system, we need to revisit our social welfare system, the balance of power between national and local government, and presidential powers.

Otherwise, angry masses are going to be forming in the streets — across parties and presidential administrations — demanding action or fomenting destruction or both. A third of Americans are getting weirdly comfortable with the idea of violent attacks or rebellion. So it would seem worth it to at least have some big-picture discussions about our democracy first, even if that kind of talk sounds “radical.”

If we don’t do any of it, I can spoil the ending. America won’t have many birthdays left. Certainly not if we choose to fight instead of fix the foundations of our system. Donald Trump, casually threatening to extinguish an entire civilization on a Tuesday night, unintentionally made that point better than I ever could.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

P.S. What’s coming up? We’re full-time focused on saving the republic. Join us for our next broadcast.

• DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET. Watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, on our YouTube channel, or on my X account. Or you can watch the replay at DEFIANCE.News.

• WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET. Same ways to watch, above! Replays available afterwards.

• WEEKLY COFFEE — Every Friday @ 2pm ET. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News for Members-only coffee every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available afterwards.

• MONTHLY MEMBERS-ONLY MEETING — First Wednesday of every month @ 5pm ET. These are sent out the week of, via Zoom. Replays available afterwards.

P.P.S. Add us to your calendar. You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here or add it to your Outlook/iCal/other calendars here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

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The beating heart of DEFIANCE.org is our Weekly Mission Briefing. Every Wednesday at 5p ET, we take real action to counter Donald Trump’s abuses of power.

This week, our mission couldn’t be more urgent. Fighting election sabotage. If you only have 30 seconds to read this, then here’s what …

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I won’t wait around while Trump threatens genocides abroad and makes plans to seize elections at home. This is the break glass moment, folks. So we’re going to rise to the occasion.

Yesterday, Donald Trump threatened to wipe out a civilization. If you had any doubt remaining about how unhinged and unchecked he is, yesterday should have cleared that doubt away. He issued a threat of annihilation like a tinpot dictator with a grudge and a nuclear arsenal. Anyone ignoring it deserves the consequences of complicity.

But we’re NOT just watching. We never were.

I started DEFIANCE.org after this man came after me and my family. I knew where it was headed, and I wanted to give others a way to fight back. I know that’s put us at greater risk, but my comfort isn’t the priority while the country is burning. We exist for exactly this moment. Our job at DEFIANCE.org isn’t to “doom scroll” on social media, it’s to defy the destruction of our democracy — relentless, and with the specific goal of stripping this man of the power he’s abusing.

Right now that best way to do that is to retake a branch of government. Congress. We’re going to secure our elections so we can flip the House… begin the investigations… open the impeachment inquiries… and constrain his power by law, by process, and by the same Constitution he keeps wiping his damn shoes on.

Donald Trump knows this, of course. It’s why he’ll throw everything he has at the 2026 midterms. He has no boundaries. He tried to prevent the transfer of power before. He will do it again, and it will be worse. Every voter suppression scheme and executive order they think they’ll get away with, they’ll launch, with the goal of making it harder for Americans to exercise the most fundamental right they have: the right to change their government. They know that if Americans are free to choose, they’ll choose to end Trump’s lawless reign of terror.

Which brings us to this week’s focus: Fighting Election Sabotage.

Every weekday, we do an hour-long podcast called DEFIANCE Daily at 5p ET. But on Wednesday’s, it’s a special edition. We announce real action we are taking to fight back. This week, we’re teaming with a group that’s suing the Trump administration over his executive order targeting mail-in voting. The ballot box is the last line of defense, and we WILL NOT let him touch it.

Tonight we’re also bringing in the firepower to match the moment. Election experts Max Flugrath and Kim Rogers will join us to break down what’s at stake and what can be done. And then we have an exclusive interview with Congressman Dan Goldman, who is leading the charge in the U.S. House on election protection. He’s the man on the front lines making sure Congress doesn’t roll over while Trump rewrites the rules of voting in his favor.

Join us at 5pm ET for the Weekly Mission Brief (or catch the replay afterward). We’ll also be announcing concrete actions you can take right now to protect the midterms, support get-out-the-vote efforts, and make sure 2026 is the year this era of reckless, authoritarian governance starts coming to an end.

And a reminder of what this organization is built on: all Member fees, subscriptions, and proceeds go to protecting democracy. The majority of that goes to direct action. So if you’re not a paying Member, I’d urge you to become one. Head over to DEFIANCE.org/join. I swear you’ll get more out of it than subscribing to HBO or Netflix. This subscription saves democracy.

I’m tired of folks just writing about what’s happening. We’re doing something about it.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

P.S. What’s on the schedule? We’re focused full time on saving the republic. Join us.

• DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET. Watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, on our YouTube channel, or on my X account. Or you can watch the replay at DEFIANCE.News.

• WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET. Same ways to watch, above! Replays available afterwards.

• WEEKLY COFFEE — Every Friday @ 2pm ET. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News for Members-only coffee every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available afterwards.

• MONTHLY MEMBERS-ONLY MEETING — First Wednesday of every month @ 5pm ET. These are sent out the week of, via Zoom. Replays available afterwards.

P.P.S. Add us to your calendar. You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here or add it to your Outlook/iCal/other calendars here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

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Here’s something that might surprise you. We’re just three people away from stopping Trump’s authoritarian takeover and curbing his madman antics. Three. That’s the number of House Republicans who, if they chose to act, could flip control of the chamber today. And it may not be as unlikely as it sounds.

As a former House staffer, I’ll tell you that the math is almost insultingly simple.

Republicans currently hold 218 seats to Democrats’ 214. A majority normally requires 218 votes, but with several seats vacant, only 217 are needed. That means the margins in the House are the narrowest they’ve been in almost 100 years. The body hasn’t been this evenly divided since the 1930s, when the body was briefly split 218-216.

Hypothetically, if three Republicans crossed the aisle and voted with Democrats, they could change control of the entire U.S. House overnight. It would also change the course of history.

The process is as simple as the math. Three Republicans could announce they’re caucusing with Democrats. They’d vote to reorganize the chamber, support a new Speaker, and hand Democrats control of the committee structure. (Perhaps, as part of a deal, they’d insist upon getting key chairmanships or choosing a particular unifying leader to run the House.) Then the primary legislative and investigative chamber of the United States Congress — currently clenched in MAGA hands — would belong to the opposition. Those brave Republicans wouldn’t even need to switch parties.

I’ll be the first to admit that this sounds like the kind of political fantasy that belongs in early 2000s television dramas. The West Wing, perhaps. I’ve lived through so much “crossing the aisle” false hope that it could fill a novel.

But here’s what makes this more than just a fantasy: dozens of House Republicans have already decided they’re done. They’re retiring. Most are sick of working in politics. And I can personally attest that many of them despise Donald Trump — and are spooked by his recent rants (e.g. “a whole civilization will die tonight”). They see that he’s falling apart.

In all, thirty-nine GOP members have announced they won’t seek reelection. That number is closing in on the all-time record, and still growing. That exceeds the wave of Republican retirements in 2018, the last time Democrats retook the House. Importantly, these members have no primary race to survive, no Trump endorsement to seek, and no MAGA base to placate back home. While some are running for higher office (governor, senator, etc), the majority are leaving public life altogether.

So what if just a handful of them decided to do something profound? To use their dwindling months in office to make decisions as a matter of personal conscience, not politics? That possibility — however remote it might seem — is partly why Speaker Mike Johnson is so nervous about his vote margin. All it would take is a single secret meeting of three of his Members to strip him of control.

On the surface, it’s very unlikely.

I’ve watched with gut-punching disappointment how Member of Congress (even those who are retiring) get cold feet when it comes to breaking with the tribe. They spent careers building relationships, raising money, and defining themselves within the Republican Party. So to caucus with Democrats would be seen by some of their families, their former colleagues, their donors, and their constituents as the ultimate betrayal. They fear it would wreck their post-congressional job prospects (and, sadly, that fear is greater than their fear of the republic being smashed to bits by a lunatic).

But it’s happened before. In 2001, when the U.S. Senate was split 50-50 between parties, Republican Senator Jim Jeffords did the unthinkable. He left the GOP and handed Democrats control of the Senate, something that until then had never happened in the history of the chamber. While his former Republican colleagues didn’t forgive him, he played a decisive role in shaping policies in the post-9/11 era.

This would be harder to do today than it was back then. It wouldn’t be enough for three GOP House Members to privately make a bold decision. They’d have to move simultaneously, in secret, holding firm under withering pressure. Trump doesn’t forget, of course. Indeed, the moment such a move became public, the weight of the entire executive branch, the Republican National Committee, the MAGA media apparatus, and the personal fury of a vindictive president would descend on those three individuals and everyone connected to them.

And Democrats would have to cooperate, too. They’d have to rally around a Speaker candidate palatable enough that three Republicans could vote for them without feeling they’d simply handed the gavel to “the squad.” That’s not impossible. But it’s another coordination problem layered on top of an already audacious gambit.

So why write about this at all? Because the “improbable” is not the same as the “impossible.” And we’re in a dire moment worthy of such dramatic action. The president is treating war and the use of force like a video game, except that his controller launches actual nuclear weapons. What’s more, at least a few of the retiring Republicans have flirted with defiance against the current commander-in-chief, including in very public disagreements with Donald Trump.

Don Bacon of Nebraska is perhaps the most compelling name on the list. He represents a genuine swing district, has repeatedly broken with Trump and MAGA on key votes, and has made clear he believes the direction of the Republican Party is wrong and even dangerous. If anyone has both the ideological permission and the personal freedom to do something like this, it’s Bacon.

Then there’s Dan Newhouse of Washington, who actually voted to impeach Donald Trump after January 6th (one of only ten House Republicans to do so) and has paid for it in Republican politics ever since. He already knows what it costs to defy Trump when it matters. I supported him in a grueling re-election campaign that most MAGA Republicans hoped would destroy him. It didn’t. He made it back to Congress and proved that courage matters.

Another possibility could be Michael McCaul of Texas. I spent years working for him when he was Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. McCaul is, at his core, a national security institutionalist. He’s watched the demolition of the alliance structure he spent a career fortifying — such as the abandonment of Ukraine, the deference to our Russian adversary Vladimir Putin, and the hollowing out of NATO — with visible discomfort. While he’s stayed behind the party line, I know he’s distressed to see the America of Ronald Reagan sink beneath the waves.

These aren’t radicals or secret progressives. The three examples I’ve given are all true conservatives who disagree with Democrats on most things. But that’s precisely the point. A move like this would not be ideological. It would be constitutional. In other words, it would be an act of institutional defense by people who understand, at some level, that our system is being lost to the limb-ripping populism of the moment — and who happen to find themselves with nothing to lose.

Think about what a flipped House might do to safeguard our democracy.

It could invoke the War Powers Act and force votes on any unauthorized military action, including limiting the spiraling war with Iran and the increasingly murky operations in the Caribbean, where the administration is summarily executing people. It could force the Trump administration to stop taxing Americans to death through tariffs and spending the United States into oblivion. It could subpoena Trump officials about threats to NATO and wayward plans to take over Greenland. It could freeze DHS operations until the Department makes guarantees to abide by the Constitution and not spy on the American people.

Moreover, a flipped House could open urgent investigations into corruption, from the suspicious trading patterns timed to presidential announcements to the official favors given to major donors and foreign leaders who’ve showered the Trump family with money. The House could launch inquiries into the abuses of power at the Justice Department, the IRS, and federal regulatory agencies that have been used so brazenly as instruments of personal and political revenge against private citizens who’ve done nothing more than criticize this administration or news organizations that’ve done their jobs. They could haul up Trump officials to testify until we get the full truth behind the Epstein files or what DOGE actually did with its access to the personal financial data of millions of Americans.

They could also block voter suppression legislation. Perhaps most crucially, they could remain an institutional check on power if Donald Trump attempts to hijack the midterm elections, seize ballots, or once again falsely declare “fraud.” What’s more, a flipped House could be prepared to initiate impeachment proceedings against a president who’s openly embraced war crimes, systematized self-dealing, weaponized the government, and blown through democracy’s guardrails.

I know what you’re thinking. None of this would be easy. Of course it wouldn’t. A Democratic House majority built on three Republican defections would be very fragile, contested, and loud as hell. Republicans would challenge its legitimacy in every forum available to them. The president would probably declare it some sort of coup attempt, which would instantly turn the media and political environment into a vulgar and violent circus. The madness isn’t lost on me. But is it crazier than what we’re living through?

My case to those three souls, whoever they might be, is that they would be offered something few politicians in American history are given. They’d have the chance to be the people who mattered most, when it mattered most — and on the right side of a question that’ll define how this era is remembered. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say they could be the three who save democracy. We’re living under the rule of a wannabe despot who’s more unhinged by the day. Future generations may well owe their lives to the bravery of a few congresspeople who decide to say “no more.”

Any GOP representative retiring in this environment must know they’re headed down one of two paths. They can do something audacious and never be forgotten by history. Or they can exit stage right in quiet complicity — and never be forgiven by it.

Just three people. That’s all I’m saying. They’re already going down to the House Floor each day taking votes, going through the legislative motions they no longer care about. But I can see a more monumental way for them to spend their final months in office. The question is whether any of them are brave enough to see it, too.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

P.S. Join us every weeknight for DEFIANCE Daily @ 5p ET - Watch LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, on our YouTube channel, or on my X account. Also, join us on DEFIANCE.News for Members-only coffee every Friday at 2p ET.

P.P.S. Add us to your calendar. You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here or add it to your Outlook/iCal/other calendars here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

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Years ago, I revealed that Trump’s Cabinet discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office during his first term. We ran the scenarios. And there was only one that made sense.

On Easter Sunday morning, as families gathered for church and children hunted for eggs, the president of the United States published an expletive-laden threat on social media promising to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges.

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut rightfully called the post “completely, utterly unhinged” and urged Trump’s Cabinet to spend the holiday “calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment.” Other Democrats echoed the sentiment. Even MAGA Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene — once among Trump’s most fervent loyalists — wrote that he “has gone insane” and called on those around him to “intervene in Trump’s madness.”

“Yes,” I wrote on social media. “He’s pledging war crimes. It’s time for the 25th.”

But it won’t happen. Ever.

In 2018, I disclosed that members of Donald Trump’s own cabinet had privately discussed invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment during his first term. What I described was not rumor or speculation. It was the lived reality of senior officials who had concluded, in private, that the president might be trending toward the type of unhinged conduct that could conceivably justify his removal. We weren’t there yet. But we could all see where his impulsive conduct and disconnection from reality was headed. It wasn’t good.

We judged that Trump was capable of getting us into an accidental nuclear conflict. I can’t think of more appropriate circumstances than that to invoke the Amendment. Yet those Cabinet members, almost to a person, chose not to act.

Why? The mechanics of that hesitation are worth revisiting.

By early 2018, the conversations were real and they were serious. Rod Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, had discussed not only wearing a wire in the Oval Office but invoking what officials in those days simply called “the Twenty-Fifth.” The White House chief of staff had quietly conducted an informal whip count of sorts among cabinet secretaries. The results were sobering and instructive.

As I wrote in Blowback:

“A number of cabinet members were prepared to take the vote in an extreme scenario, but no one thought it was a viable option at the moment. Trump would call it a coup. His supporters would violently take to the streets, and Congress would probably overturn the determination anyway.”

Let me explain. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, as codified in 1967, allows the vice president and a majority of the heads of the fifteen executive departments to declare the president unfit and strip him of his powers, but Congress can reverse the determination within twenty-one days. Back then, a reversal was likely. It’s even more likely today. The GOP House and Senate would never cross this president so brazenly, regardless of the imminent mortal danger he might pose to the republic or how mentally impaired he might be.

Even if Trump’s Cabinet found the courage to do something, the constitutional clock would almost certainly run out in Trump’s favor. He’d come back into the job more vengeful than ever. Then officials would be rounded up, jailed, and killed in a bloody purge, the likes of which America has never seen.

But we had bigger reasons for not entertaining the idea (yes, bigger than our near-certain imprisonment or execution). We knew, with certainty, what Trump would do the moment the papers were signed. He’d go on television and declare that the Deep State had ousted him. He’d call it a coup. And his followers would believe him, no matter how serious the circumstances that led to his removal. They’d rise up violently against the government and thrust the United States into full-blown civil war.

The people who could’ve acted in the first term were, by any measure, a more independent group than what surrounds Trump today. Back then, the Defense Secretary resigned rather than execute orders he found immoral. The White House Chief of Staff was a four-star general with a soldier’s sense of duty. The DHS Secretary was a trained lawyer who’d authored the government’s emergency continuity plans. Justice Department leaders had served under multiple administrations with a respect for the rule of law. Nonetheless, they prudently declined to pull the constitutional ripcord.

Still, I expected in a second term it would get so much worse. He’d be more unhinged and would use the military in corrupt and contemptible ways. I predicted he’d deploy U.S. troops domestically, conduct extrajudicial killings of individuals he deemed “terrorists,” and start wars that could possibly spiral into globe-engulfing conflicts. Wouldn’t that be enough to stop him? I wondered aloud.

When I reflect on the nightmare scenario — of an American president hijacking the military for nefarious ends — I like to believe there are safety valves. That’s the type of moment when the Twenty-Fifth Amendment gets invoked, isn’t it? Surely the president’s cabinet would save the day by ejecting him from office... But I know better. [Trump’s next] cabinet will be stacked with loyalists.

Those forecasts have held up. Trump has become exactly as reckless as I anticipated. And his current Cabinet is not a check on the president’s worst instincts, by any measure. They’re an accelerant. They’ve egged him on as he seeks to bend the U.S. military to his personal will, rather than the national interest.

All of this to say, while it may be “time for the 25th,” in the most literal sense, that much-hyped constitutional amendment is not coming to save us. Which brings me to the only question that matters: What will?

In the first term, we ran every scenario of how to deal with Trump’s misconduct. Aside from simply speaking truth to power — and speaking out — every scenario designed to “check” Trump from within was fraught with constitutional and mortal peril. Our best hope, it seemed, was the system the founders have bequeathed us. The democratic process itself. The political opposition should be the countervailing force and work to usurp Trump’s power electorally.

And guess what? It worked. Trump got whipped in the midterms, and the balance of power shifted. His influence diminished. What’s more, the Democrats successfully used their bully pulpit in Congress to weaken Trump going into the 2020 election.

Have we forgotten?

I’ve spent years watching the democracy-protection community pour enormous energy into doomed constitutional off-ramps, including impeachment, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, criminal indictments, and more. Meanwhile, the actual political infrastructure that might deliver definitive accountability has gone underbuilt. Every moment that senators spend calling for a mechanism that requires Trump’s own cabinet to act against him is a moment not spent registering voters in Wisconsin, recruiting candidates in competitive House districts, or building the grassroots organization that’s the only thing that can reliably constrain a demagogue.

The midterm elections are coming. They’re the real emergency exit.

If we want Donald Trump’s power curtailed through actual oversight, subpoenas, and lasting accountability, then we need a Congress willing to exercise it. That means we must focus all of our energy on flipping the House and putting the Senate in play. It means building an organizing operation so large and so durable that it cannot be gerrymandered or suppressed or litigated away. What I call the “Too Big To Rig” coalition.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a fantasy dressed up as democracy’s savior. Believe me. Our only hope — at least right now — is an election that smothers the MAGA movement. So let’s get to work.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

P.S. Join us every weeknight for DEFIANCE Daily @ 5p ET - Watch LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, on our YouTube channel, or on my X account. Also, join us on DEFIANCE.News for Members-only coffee every Friday at 2p ET.

P.P.S. Add us to your calendar. You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here or add it to your Outlook/iCal/other calendars here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

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Trump once told us the truth behind his border wall in private. What he really wanted, he said, was soaring black spikes baking in the hot sun — electrified, if possible — and tall enough that the bloodied corpses of attempted climbers might dangle above the desert floor and send a message to others: do not defy me.

It was January 10, 2019.

We were on Air Force One with the president, headed to the Southern Border, and Donald Trump was in a boisterous mood. The U.S. government was partially shut down, and Trump felt like he was winning. Before we took off, we told the president that TSA and FEMA employees were about to miss paychecks. But he assured us Congress would cave.

The goal of his game of chicken? More money for the border wall.

Almost no one in the administration had supported a shut down in December 2018. In fact, we were caught completely off guard when the president — just before the holidays — started musing about not signing an incoming budget bill from Congress. Although the appropriations legislation had been passed unanimously by the Senate, he felt the familiar urge to stun Washington. If he refused to sign, Trump said, he could use it as leverage for House Speaker Paul Ryan to get him funds for a big, beautiful wall.

$5.7 billion, to be exact.

Speaker Ryan said he didn’t have the votes. Trump didn’t believe him. So the president decided to take a gamble. He balked at the budget bill, refused to sign anything without a border-wall windfall, and shuttered much of the government as federal workers prepared to celebrate Christmas with their families.

Government employees panicked. At DHS, emergency responders fretted about whether they could afford presents for their children. Some asked us whether they should squirrel away their final December paychecks, just in case the standoff dragged on and they wouldn’t get paid in the new year. We didn’t know what to say. The president had no game plan, and he brushed off our worries. As it turns out, those who left space under the Christmas tree were right.

By January 10, three weeks into the shutdown, it was no closer to resolution. Trump had done little personal diplomacy with Congress over the holiday. Hundreds of thousands of employees were now on the cusp of missing payroll. And Trump was in no rush to reopen the government. He was in good spirits and confident his gambit would pay off.

In fact, he wanted to take a trip to the border — to visualize what the billions in hoped-for cash could buy him at the border.

I climbed the steps onto Air Force One that morning armed with charts about the DHS budget and the operational toll of the shutdown, from counterterrorism to disaster response. Airports could soon be thrown into chaos if TSA agents started to call out of work. The human toll would fast become apparent, too. Our employees wouldn’t be able to pay their rent or mortgages. If Trump didn’t broker a deal, federal workers would start showing up at food banks.

Alas, those were not the charts the president wanted to see. I was summoned to the his cabin for another reason.

Trump had come up with an idea. He assumed he’d get the billions in taxpayer dollars he wanted, and he was busy mentally designing a bolder, bigger border wall. Not the boring, corrugated metal panels that CBP put up. He wanted to make his mark. He’d been toying with concepts to scare away asylum seekers. Once we were in the air, the president conveyed the most important feature. The border wall needed something iconic, he said: a mechanism to pierce the living flesh of anyone who scaled it.

At a White House event earlier this week, President Trump hosted a closed-door Easter lunch in the East Room. The guest list included select MAGA allies and faith leaders, as well as Secretaries Rubio, Hegseth, and the soon-to-be fired Pam Bondi. The event was supposed to stay private, but the White House mistakenly posted the video to its official website and YouTube channel.

Perhaps most notably, Trump’s “spiritual adviser” Paula White-Cain, who heads the White House Faith Office, took the stage at the event and addressed Trump directly.

“Mr. President, no one has paid the price like you have paid the price. It almost cost you your life. You were betrayed and arrested and falsely accused. It’s a familiar pattern that our Lord and Savior showed us. But it didn’t end there for him, and it didn’t end there for you.” She then connected the resurrection to Trump’s political comeback, telling him: “Because of His resurrection, you rose up. Because He was victorious, you were victorious.”

Trump stood stone-faced and bored as White began her remarks about Jesus. He is not, after all, a reader of the Bible — or a regular reader of books of any sort, for that matter. But he perked up the moment she pivoted to comparing him to the Savior. His expression shifted into a wide smirk, and he raised his eyebrows and mouthed a quiet “thank you.”

He welcomed comparisons of himself to Jesus Christ. In fact, the president had already set the tone before White spoke. Referencing Palm Sunday — when crowds welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem as the messiah, or king — Trump told the room: “They call me king now, can you believe it?” He then complained that he couldn’t get a $400 million White House ballroom approved, adding with obvious disappointment, “I could be doing a LOT MORE if I was a king.”

The response from faith leaders was swift. Jesuit priest James Martin drew a clear line: “Comparing a political leader, in a public prayer, to the sinless Son of God during Holy Week? No.” Reverend Benjamin Cremer called the remarks “blasphemy,” saying it was “what it sounds like to take Jesus’ name in vain.” Even conservative commentator Erick Erickson blasted the group for “twisting scripture.”

The White House deleted the video from its site and YouTube channel, though a thumbnail briefly remained. Aides refused to respond to press inquiries about why the footage was removed. But the reasons weren’t hard to surmise. The president and his guests had gone too far in their historical comparisons, even for MAGA faithful, by comparing him to Jesus Christ.

But there is an interesting historical comparison to be made between Trump and the contemporaries of Jesus of Nazareth. While the president may bear little resemblance to the Jew who came to be known to many as the Messiah, Trump shares striking similarities to another man of the period. Indeed, a man who the Roman Empire sent to govern the Holy Land during the time of Jesus was similarly known for his kingly conduct, ostentatiousness, and impiety.

As Christians, we’re sometimes taught that this man, Pontius Pilate, was a morally conflicted leader. He governed Judea on behalf of Rome, and during that time, he faced a historic decision. A mob demanded he put to death a controversial preacher from Nazareth. Pilate was so overcome with doubt about putting Jesus to death that he did everything in his power to save his life. Then, he reluctantly caved to those who demanded blood and had Jesus crucified.

But history tells another story, not of Pilate as the hand-wringing man of conscience he’s been made out to be, but as a bloodthirsty tyrant who relished punishment. Rome was even forced to remove him from his post for excessive cruelty.

Two of the most authoritative sources from the period — Philo of Alexandria and Josephus — paint a consistent picture. While attempting to maintain an occupation of the Holy Land on behalf of the Roman Empire, Pilate built a reputation for persecution of his enemies, for public insults and controversies, and for a vengeful agenda. While he tolerated the religious establishment, it was not out of respect but to maintain power. He kept Jewish leaders close to maintain his grip, while often mocking them and inflaming religious sensitivities with his conduct. Indeed, Pilate was derided for elevating false idols, lining the palaces of Jerusalem with gold-plated excess, and expropriating money from the Jews.

But religious leaders depended on him for their own power. So many seemingly endured the humiliation.

What’s most notable about Pilate, in my view, was his nagging political anxiety about forces out to undermine him and Rome. He developed an obsession with insurrection. The rabble-rousers who gathered crowds in protest or claimed allegiance to some other “kingdom” (including the “Kingdom of God”) were charged with sedition. During his ten-year reign, Pilate is said to have carried out hundreds of crucifixions without trial, including preemptive executions of people he suspected were a threat to Roman authority.

The use of the cross was deliberate and calculated. Accused insurrectionists and invaders were nailed up on a hillside as a public warning. Every would-be dissenter or activist in the province could see. In many cases, the flesh of the dead would hang for days in the hot sun to send a message. Do not defy Pilate. Do not defy Rome.

When Jesus of Nazareth entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, acclaimed by crowds as a king, he would’ve been on Pilate’s radar rather quickly. A man had entered the territory, openly questioned the authorities, and proffered that there was something greater than the Empire. Indeed, if Christians and scholars agree on anything, it’s that Jesus was put to death for sedition.

That day in January, I sat in Trump’s cabin waiting for him to say something.

As we reached cruising altitude, the president sat watching the television behind my head. It was his own face on the screen. His voice emanating from the speakers. He was consuming a Fox News report on a recent controversy, and judging by his barely hidden grin, he was pleased with the coverage. After a while, he jutted the remote at the television and commanded it to silence.

Then he fixed his gaze. He wanted to see the designs.

In my bag, I’d brought the newest mock-ups of the border wall for Trump. DHS had been in an exhaustive process with the president since he took office. First, he’d wanted a mammoth concrete wall built along the Southern Border. Then he changed his mind and proposed a different design. Something more elegant, he said. Then again, he suggested digging an expansive moat along the border and filling it with deadly reptiles.

Recently, he’d settled on a new aesthetic. He wanted bollards. Tall, steel polls secured closely together. Like prison bars blocking the entrance to the country. Border officials were fine with this, as long as their agents could see people on the other side. They’d disliked his concrete bunker concepts because they wouldn’t know if someone was attempting to get over or not — and his alligator moat because it was absurd.

As the president pored over the papers, his face soured.

“These,” he said, tapping his finger at the top of the wall design, “I don’t like these.”

He was pointing to the curved metal panels, known as an “anti-climb” feature. I reminded him that he told DHS to make the wall harder for people to get over. The panels did exactly that and were in use elsewhere on the border. He had a different idea, he said.

“I want spikes,” Trump declared. “Big spikes.”

In his mind, the wall needed to be more than just formidable. It needed to be lethal. If its height wasn’t enough to kill someone from a fall, he said, the top needed to be sharp enough to do the job. I didn’t need his explanation. Weeks earlier, he’d already asked for a drawing with spikes on the wall. Border officials showed him a simplistic cartoon concept (not an official rendering), and before we knew it, he’d tweeted it out gleefully.

Today, we were showing him something more serious. But he groused that it didn’t look intimidating enough. To him, functionality didn’t matter nearly as much as fear. The wall itself needed to deter anyone who dared to approach it.

His tone grew stern. Did we not realize this was an invasion? There was an invasion at the Southern Border. These were criminals and foreign invaders. They were a threat to America.

What he wanted, he emphasized, was spikes. Atop the steel bollards. They needed to be sharp. Sharp enough to easily pierce human flesh. If they weren’t sharp, there was no point. Also, the wall needed to be painted black, he reminded us. So it would bake in the sun. During their ascent, climbers’ hands should be burned instantly. And, if they managed to reach the top, they should face the possibility of getting impaled on the spikes.

If that wasn't enough, Trump took a moment to describe the gruesomeness of the sight. The blood. The hanging, nameless migrant. Up high on the bollards for anyone to see. For everyone to see, really. That was the point.

“Trust me,” he said. “It’ll send a message.”

The 2018 - 2019 shutdown ended in failure for the White House.

Trump never got the border wall money he wanted, and he delayed designing and re-designing his spikes in order to figure out other ways to get the money. That included declaring a “national emergency” in February 2019 and raiding other agencies’ bank accounts to find cash for construction.

Unable to muster his self-purported dealmaking prowess with Congress, Trump was left without sufficient funds. He only built 52 miles of new wall. Far short of the thousands of miles needed to achieve his vision.

At the time, opponents of Trump’s immigration crackdown felt like they’d beaten him. They were relieved when he left office. But I was relieved for a different reason. I knew that what he wanted wasn’t a wall. It was a weapon. At other points, he suggested to us the wall also needed to be electrified. As if it weren’t enough to burn and stab the migrants, they needed to be shocked, too.

The most frustrating part, of course, was that Trump could have had an immigration deal. There was a pathway to bringing Democrats and Republicans together to achieve the kind of grand bargain that’s eluded other presidents. But he had no interest in that kind of outcome. He wanted to look tough. And his immoral and illegal missives are what first drove me to quit.

While I never heard Donald Trump say he wanted to forcibly impale migrants on the border wall, the possibility of such harm was the point. (He did, however, propose shooting them.) Trump wanted to strike fear into the hearts of the people seeking refuge. Those invaders were to understand that they’d get no safe haven in the United States of America. They’d face death.

This is the character of our current president.

His lexicon is rife with the anachronistic terminology of crime and punishment. He’s a man who posts messages in response to criticism from political opponents such as, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” — and opens federal investigations for protected speech, as he did to the Members of Congress who warned federal employees about illegal orders. Trump rants about “insurrection,” “invasion,” “rebellion,” “enemies of the state,” “enemy combatants,” “alien enemies,” “gang monsters,” and so on. He’s remarked ruefully that America no longer hangs its criminals or uses firing squads. And too many times to count, he’s threatened retribution against his foes to set an example.

Some have accused the president of “medieval”-level cruelty. In fact, that’s exactly how one CNN panelist described it when news broke during the first Trump administration that the president was demanding we place those sharp “spikes” atop his border wall. Was the president drawing his inspiration from the “Middle Ages”? the commentator wondered aloud on television.

It was a fair question, but her time horizon was wrong. The Medieval Period (or Middle Ages) was approximately 500 AD to 1500 AD. The time was marked by ruthless leaders who fought over boundaries, fortified territories, and inflicted unspeakable punishments on rivals.

Trump’s visions of civilian harm actually dated further back. Some of the methods that seemed to excite him had roots in Classical Antiquity (800 BC to 500 AD). In the time of Jesus. Because if there’s one way to describe what the president of the United States imagined seeing on his border wall, it was casual crucifixions. He wanted the intruders who challenged his authority to meet a violent end. He wanted others to see. And he wanted all to be cowed.

That’s cruelty, alright — in its oldest form.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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