Two former top Homeland Security officials in the Trump administration have told The Daily Beast that there was an unwritten policy to not utter phrases like “domestic terrorism” and “white supremacy” around the president, for fear that he would take such conversations as implicit criticism of him.
The directives, said Elizabeth Neumann, previously assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security for counterterrorism and threat prevention, were never formalized. But both she and Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at DHS, say that they were explicitly told by White House brass not to use such phrases or terms around Trump.
“Following the El Paso mass-shooting last year, the White House was looking to find a way to show that they were handling the situation,” Neumann, who worked on countering extremism and domestic terror, recalled. “I was advised by senior officials in the White House at the time that I should couch this in terms of countering violence, rather than countering domestic terrorism or white supremacy, when discussing it at the White House or in front of the president…
“I can certainly testify on firsthand experience that we were asked [by the Trump White House] to avoid using ‘domestic terrorism’ and terms associated, and especially, ‘Russia,’” he told The Daily Beast on Friday afternoon. “We were explicitly told at one point by the White House to not bring up Russia in front of the president anymore.”
“After the hurricane, the president demonstrated ignorance about Puerto Rico’s status in the United States multiple times: Was it a territory? Were Puerto Ricans Americans? It seemed basically like his first time learning about Puerto Rico,” Taylor recalled. “It was a joke in the administration that he doesn’t understand it’s a U.S. territory, or even what it means to be a U.S. territory. It baffled us. It was one of those things that would have been amusing, if it weren’t also so terrifying.”
