MS NOW host Nicolle Wallace and former Trump administration official Miles Taylor on MS NOW on December 9, 2025

One former high-ranking official who served in President Donald Trump's first administration has a theory behind his controversial boat strikes in the Caribbean Sea: He wants to emulate TV mafiosos.

During a Tuesday segment on MS NOW's "Deadline: White House," Miles Taylor – who is best known for authoring the anonymous 2018 New York Times op-ed about being part of the "resistance inside the Trump administration" — told host Nicolle Wallace that Trump wanted to conduct similar strikes during his first presidency, but was prevented from doing so by advisors. Taylor asserted that Trump has known for at least seven years that blowing up boats in international waters violated traditional rules of engagement.

"We told them that that would be illegal. I didn't have to go to lawyers to ask that question. It would be obviously, obviously illegal to blow up unarmed civilians in boats off the coast of the United States," Taylor said. "Now, Stephen Miller denied that that exchange happened. And then, as we found out in the past few weeks, he has been one of the key architects, reportedly, of this policy. So those denials now look pretty silly in hindsight."

"They cannot use lethal force against someone who is not using lethal force against them. That's when that term got seared into his brain. And that's why I think you've heard trump and especially his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in the second term, talk about loosening the rules of engagement," he continued. "He was frustrated that he heard it so much in the first term. He saw it as a restriction. He doesn't want to abide by those rules this time. And apparently, even if that means committing murder on the high seas."

When Wallace asked Taylor point-blank why the president wanted to "blow up boats," Taylor offered a frank assessment that Trump wanted to "intimidate others." He then compared the president to typical depictions of organized crime figures in pop culture, and suggested Trump sought to emulate them.

"Think about mob bosses. In every movie and TV show we have seen, depicting how mob bosses start to flex their muscle, what do they do? They carry out egregious acts of violence against their enemies, to show that they are tough, to show that they will do anything," Taylor said. "That's the only reason I can think that Donald Trump is doing this, because I will tell you from an operational standpoint, it is completely, totally and entirely unnecessary."

"But worse than that, Nicolle, it is counterproductive. If you want to disassemble these networks, if you want to crack the cartels, what you need to do is roll up and arrest these low-level guys, follow them up the chain and use the intelligence to break those organizations," he added. "Trump says he's trying to save americans from drug overdoses. Well, what he's doing is destroying the evidence that would help us prosecute and dismantle those networks. He's not helping this case. He's hurting this case. And in the meantime, to me, very clearly is breaking the law."

Watch the segment below:

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