Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said Sunday that Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) interview in which he dodged repeatedly on whether he would accept the election results in 2024 sends a “very chilling signal” ahead of the November election.
Taylor, who worked in the Trump administration, told CNN’s Jessica Dean that he saw Scott’s interview as an informal audition to be Trump’s running mate in 2024. Scott is one of a handful of Republicans considered to be in the running for the presumptive nominee’s No. 2 pick.
“Well, the hesitation, the faltering in his voice: It’s an audition. He’s auditioning, and he was thrown a question by the casting directors that he didn’t expect,” Taylor said. “And I think this is something that is sending a very chilling signal.”
Taylor later added: “I’m very personally disappointed in some of these members of Congress who I’ve known, like Tim Scott and Elise Stefanik, and others who are hewing to this line to get close to Trump. It’s taken something that we thought was a threat to democracy from one man, and it’s extrapolated it through the upper ranks of the entire party.”
In an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Kristen Welker pressed Scott on Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the 2024 election results and then asked whether Scott whether he would commit to accepting the results.
Scott repeatedly avoided answering the question — even when pressed at least three times for “just yes or no” on accepting the results of the election — and said, “At the end of the day, the 47th president of the United States will be President Donald Trump.”
Welker followed up, asking, “Wait, wait, senator. Yes or no. Yes or no? Will you accept the election results of 2024, no matter who wins?”
“That is my statement,” Scott replied, later adding, “The American people will make the decision, and the decision will be for President Trump.”
Taylor said he was concerned about the similarities in Scott’s rhetoric to Trump’s remarks ahead of the 2020 presidential election, when Trump hinted repeatedly that he would not accept the election results if he lost.
Taylor said he was concerned that mainstream Republican politicians appear to be pushing similar talking points, already casting doubt on election results.
“I’m going to compare it to the last time this happened four years ago, and six months before the election, Donald Trump was doing the same thing. He was signaling that he might not accept the election results of 2020,” Taylor said.
He noted that Republican members of Congress at the time were largely not echoing Trump’s sentiment.
“Largely you heard reassurance from Republican members of Congress about how it would be a free and fair election, and there would be a transfer of power regardless, and they mostly dismissed these claims that Donald Trump would try to hold on to power, and they did that right up until the last minute,” Taylor said about 2020.
“This time is very different because they know what Donald Trump is capable of. And they don’t want to get on the wrong side of him because they want to be on his side. They want to be next to him on that ticket.”
A spokesperson for Scott declined to comment for the story.
