Former Trump administration Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor on MSNBC on OCtober 1, 2025

One of President Donald Trump's first moves after the federal government shutdown began was to freeze roughly $18 billion in funding for New York City infrastructure projects. One former Trump administration official is now predicting severe backlash to that move.

During a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House," former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor — who authored the anonymous 2018 op-ed about the "resistance" within the Trump administration — said law enforcement communities would likely revolt over the withholding of funds.

"I think this is going to blow up in their faces when the groups — especially the sheriffs' associations, the police associations, the FBI associations start to mobilize ... and say: 'Wait a second, this is what allows us to do our jobs. This is what allows us to save lives,'" Taylor said. "And I have been on the receiving end of those angry voices. When I worked on Capitol Hill on the Appropriations Committee, anytime a member of Congress — and it was usually libertarian members of congress or Tea Partiers — tried to slash money for these types of grant programs, they got eaten alive because police and firefighters and 9/11 victims' families would show up on Capitol Hill and say, 'how dare you put lives in danger by trying to cut these funds and ... put the money toward your political priorities?'"

"The administration isn't even trying to go through Congress with this. It's trying to do it by fiat. It's trying to do it by itself. And I suspect they're going to be on the receiving end of some very loud and very angry first responders in this country."

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace went on to ask Taylor about how Trump's effective defunding of police in America's largest city squares with his previous promises to stand with law enforcement communities. Taylor plainly observed that Trump's vow to honor law enforcement comes with the caveat that law enforcement has to view loyalty to him as paramount.

"He never backed the blue. He backs the brownshirts," Taylor said. Donald Trump said he supported law enforcement, but what he meant was, 'I support law enforcement that supports me.' ... Donald Trump has long wanted his own 'pocket police' that's accountable to him, that's not accountable to the oaths they take, theta's not accountable to the Constitution, that's willing to advance his edicts.

"[Trump] said he was going to dismantle the deep state. He's actually building his own deep state," he continuned. "But the first place he started was not the EPA or the Department of Agriculture. It's federal law enforcement. He can lose the Congress, he can lose the courts, but if he has the guys with the badges and the guns, he has power. And that's why he's focused on lowering the standards into the FBI and ICE, and driving ideologically aligned people into these jobs so that they stay and advance his agenda."

Watch the segment below:

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