U.S. President Donald Trump at an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 18, 2025 (REUTERS)
Ex-DHS official Miles Taylor said President Donald Trump should get ready for an ugly world once he’s out of the White House after prosecutors begin to chew on his obvious allegations of corruption.
“It's clear there's no one telling him ‘no’ inside,” said MS NOW anchor Chris Hayes, referring to Trump’s attempt to convince his own appointees to hand him a whopping $10 billion settlement while president. “And if there were ever a clearer example of that, to me, it is this there is no one saying you cannot give yourself $10 billion from the us treasury.”
“He should not spend the presidency lining his pockets. He should be preparing to line his prison cell,” said Taylor, who exited Trump’s first presidential term after numerous legal outrages. “I don't mean that hyperbolically. He is guaranteeing, by doing things like this that he'll spend the rest of his days after this administration in courtrooms, in depositions, and potentially incarcerated. This is a corrupt act. This is a high crime and misdemeanor. And anyone who is enabling it, I would tell them right now — because I've been in your shoes inside his administration when he asked me to do illegal things. Don't bet that this man's going to pardon you.”
“Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer told Hayes that most Americans innately knew Trump was corrupt and “priced corruption into the baseline with Trump” when they elected him — but that was only because they expected him to deliver a better economy.
“The corruption matters a lot more when gas is $4.50 [a gallon], when prices are up, when the economy is not going well, and the president's broken his core promise,’ said Pfeiffer. “The president was elected to lower prices. That's why people put him in office. He is not doing it. What is he doing instead? He's doing a bunch of corrupt stuff to make himself richer, to make his rich friends richer. And that is a very, very powerful argument I think can have real purchase in the midterms.”
Hayes compared the Trump family enriching itself with the White House to the antics of Chinese President Xi Jinping, or the Viktor Orban family in Hungary, but Taylor said this was a bad comparison.
“It's absolutely what it looks like. But … the difference is, in a lot of those places, they got away with it,” said Taylor. “And again, here's the message to people inside the administration: I'm telling you, do not count on the mob boss to protect you. You will not get away with it. He may try, but [former AG] John Mitchell went to prison for Richard Nixon. And I'm sure Mitchell and the others who were prosecuted didn't feel like they got a good end of that deal.”
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