>> reporter: well, like i said, it was a very fast-moving storm, so the winds from hurricane zeta, we're told, should move out of here by midnight tonight. and tomorrow the forecast looks sunny and nice. >> appreciate it. thanks very much. before we go, there now have been 76,271 new covid cases reported just today. 972 deaths reported just today. the news continues. want to hand it over to chris for "cuomo prime time." chris? all right. thank you very much, everybody. i am chris cuomo, and welcome to "prime time." tonight we have anonymous. his name is miles taylor, and you've seen him on this program before. but you're going to see him in a whole new light tonight. this is miles' first tv interview since revealing he was the person behind the pen more than two years ago when he turned the white house upside down with that now infamous trump resistance op-ed and subsequent book warning about the president's unfitness for

office. the former chief of staff at homeland security under secretary nielsen was a very big and inside position. what did anonymous and others actually stop from happening? how worried was he and were others in-house? how many are still there? insight into why biden is hitting the notes that he is in this campaign, especially in the final week. and also why did miles taylor conduct himself the way he has? let's start there. miles taylor, thank you for taking the opportunity. >> hey, chris, as always, thank you for having me. >> all right. first what matters most certainly to me. you lied to us, miles. you were asked in august if you were anonymous here on cnn with anderson cooper, and you said no. now, why should cnn keep you on the payroll after lying like that? >> chris, it's a great question, and i'll just give you the blunt truth.

when i published a warning, i said in the book that if asked, i would strenuously deny i was the author, and here's the reason. because the things i said in that book were ideas that i wanted donald trump to challenge on their merits. we have seen over the course of four years that donald trump's preference is to find personal attacks and distractions, to pull people away from criticisms of his record. i wrote that work anonymously to deprive him of that opportunity and to force him to answer the questions on their merits. and i'll tell you what happened, chris. the end result is the president couldn't. he failed to deny what was in that book, and in fact to this day, the white house has failed to challenge the narratives that were in that book or the narratives that i've explained in my own name over the past four months, speaking out against the president. so when asked by anderson whether i was anone muymous dur that time period, i temporarily denied it. but i've always said i would ultimately come out under my own

name. but that said, i owe anderson cooper abeer, a mea culpa. i wanted that work to stand on its own two legs and deprive the president of an opportunity to do one more personal attack to distract from his record. but, look, i'm here tonight to say that was me, and i hope people challenge me on those accounts. and i hope the white house looks back at those accounts and looks at them and tries to actually say whether they're true or not because there's an army of people who have now come out, chris, who will validate them. >> we will go through what the white house said in response. we will go through your time there and what mattered in terms of what you were trying to hold off for america's collective national security. but you know what the problem is with having lied is that now you are a liar, and people will be slow to believe you when you lied about something as important as whether or not you wanted to own this. >> chris, that's the truth, and this was a very torturous

decision. it was not immediate for me to want to publish this work anonymously at the get-go. it really wasn't. but at the time -- and i'll be frank with you. behind the scenes, i was trying to get people, who i'm not going to dime out, but other household names in the administration to come out and tell the truth that, chris, we all knew inside this administration. this isn't about just miles taylor. it's about a majority of the president's cabinet at that time that shared these views. i couldn't. and the next best opportunity was to convey it in a way that the president would avoid those personal attacks. but you're right, chris, and i owe an apology for having to maintain that necessary misdirection for that period of time in order for that argument to work. but, look, i'm here now to talk about it, and i've been out there talking about this for four months. >> why not come out when you wrote the book and avoid the idea of a mysterious money grab? >> yeah, no, i think it's a really good point. but i want to start on the point

of money grab. to be clear, there was never about eminence, right? that's why it was written without attribution. it was never about money. that's why i pledged the proceeds of the book almost entirely to charity. and it wasn't about a score-settling, tell-all. it's a character study of one man, the president of the united states. and it wasn't me throwing other colleagues under the bus. the point was to focus on him and his record. if you go back in time, chris, our founding fathers did this. when they wrote the federalist papers to defend the passage of the constitution, did they do it in their own names? they did it under pseudonyms and they did it for a reason, is madison and the other authors didn't want it to be about them and their personalities. they wanted the people to debate the ideas, and i wrote this, chris, because i wanted people to debate the ideas and donald trump's character and record. but again i want to point out to you i had no fear about putting my own name on the line here, and that's why i did it months ago, so people could come out and challenge me.

they could pick apart my record. they could pick apart my stories. >> but not as anonymous. as miles taylor, you did. >> unquestionably. now they can. i welcome it. it's not like this hasn't come out without a cost but i'm happy to walk through that as we chat. >> let's do this. talk to you about your accountability here. now the president's. here is his response to the news of who anonymous is. >> everybody was looking for anonymous. turned out to be a low-level staffer, a sleazebag. anonymous was a nobody, a disgruntled employee who was quickly removed from his job a long time ago for -- they tell me incompetence. i don't know what for, but they tell me incompetence. i'll tell you what. this guy, in my opinion, he should be prosecuted. he should be prosecuted. >> facts first. were you terminated for incompetence? >> no, absolutely not, chris.

and everything the president just said is so extraordinary because i think every single line he just used in there was a lie. and we've gotten so numb to it. to your first question, no, i wasn't fired from the administration. i could show you guys my resignation letter. >> okay. >> when i left the administration on my own accord, and in fact at the time, the white house and other agencies were basically begging me to stay in and take other jobs in the administration. so, false, i was not fired. trump is incorrect. >> the idea he didn't know who you were, that i never heard of him. didn't you brief him? weren't you around him on a semi-regular basis in your capacity with secretary nielsen? there you are in a picture right next to him. he takes pictures with a lot of people. what's your answer? >> he sure does. he takes pictures with a lot of people except, chris, i was with this man on a regular basis in the oval office, in the white house situation room, on air force one and another public events and settings. it's ridiculous for the president to deny this. what's even better is earlier this year, he told the press, don't worry.

i know who anonymous is. then when i spoke out against the president this summer in my own name, the president responsibiliti responded and demonstrated awareness of who i was. then again the president reverted and showed amnesia and said, i don't know who this guy was. then he went to the podium and walked through my resume and background. i think the bigger concern here is maybe the president needs to have a memory check done by one of his doctors. i want to be fair. i wasn't the president's best friend. we didn't do dinners in the residents together. but i was a senior official in this administration who watched him up close and personal in the most department, in his eyes, in his administration. >> side point about journalism, and then i want to get to his assertion that you should be prosecuted. the side point is "the new york times" described you as a senior official. you were deputy chief of staff when you wrote it. do you believe they properly categorized you as a senior official when you were still deputy chief of staff and not yet chief of staff? >> yeah. i'm going to leave it to the media to make those

determinations. but when i was in the role of deputy chief of staff before i became chief of staff, almost every major outlet in america characterized me as a senior administration official, including the network that we're on now, cnn, characterized me at that time in that job as a senior administration official. abc, cbs, nbc, you name it because we talked a lot to the press as an administration to talk about the president's policies and in various capacities. so i'll leave that to the media to decide, but that was a widespread practice for a position at that level. >> the president says you should be prosecuted. did you anticipate this? are you concerned about this? >> chris, i have no fear. but what i'll say that's more alarming is this president has created a culture of intimidation where people who speak out against them, he threatens to use the powers of his office to punish them. when i put out my op-ed, do you know what his first response

was? he tweeted out treason. to the president of the united states, criticism of him is treacherous and subversive. that's not what our founding fathers said about criticizing the president of the united states. but what's worse, when people like the intelligence community whistle-blower came out against him, the president made comments like, well, you know, back in the day, we used to hang people for things like this. it is chilling to me, and it's one of the reasons i'm speaking out, that we have a commander in chief who silences dissent not just with bullying but with physical threats, with legal threats to abuse his power. and we just saw it the other day in michigan with governor whitmer, the president downplaying the threats again her life and in some ways inciting violence -- >> he's still doing it. >> he's still doing it. >> you know, i did a little cross-referencing of how you characterize other people who shared your concerns in-house and people who have left in the last year or so. and there aren't many of them except, you know, in some circumstances that don't seem to follow, which leads to the

question, how many people who shared your concerns do you believe are still on the job? >> this is how i portrayed it to other people. i think there was an 80/20 split in the administration. when the administration started, 80% of people i think were qualified for their jobs, and there were 20% campaign lackeys that were brought in for jobs they weren't qualified for. of that 80%, the vast majority of senior lieutenants in the administration for the first two years shared the sentiments that i expressed in my book "the warning." i mean that sincerely. since then, chris, you have seen the president's former chief of staff, national security adviser, communications director, secretary of state, secretary of defense, director of national intelligence, and the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff all come out and say similar things to me. and i'm so glad they did, but, chris, you've got to give me a second to put in a plug for the people who unlike those folks who were at the end of their careers, people who are mid-career and had everything to lose by doing this elizabeth ne

olivia troye, josh venable, alex vindman, fiona hill. these people weren't household names. these people were similar to being at my level in the administration. they have literally put 24r their lives, their families and their repations on the line to speak can dpidly about this president. that's what i want to draw attention to. who the hell cares who miles taylor is? i'm going to tell my piece of the story. the big story here is an unprecedented number of officials m this administration shared the same sentiments i laid out in that op-ed two years ago. they continue to share them, and many more who are still inside the administration. even though that 80-20 has flipped and is down to 20% competent people, they still view the president has unfit and some of them i don't blame them for not resigning because some of them need to be in those jobs. >> you could flip it, miles. you could say all of you should have stayed in, especially you because if you weren't going to come out by name and say it,

then you might as well have stayed in and kept helping the country stave off whatever you were concerned about. >> chris, it's a very point. people ask me all the time, if it was so bad, miles, why did you stay? and my answer is braecause it w so bad on a daily basis, the things the president wanted us to do were unethical, immoral, un-american, and in some cases blatantly illegal. know, for a time period i think we did a pretty damn good job in year one putting the bad ideas back in the box. that's not to say we didn't fail. my god, there were failures in the first few years of this administration. >> what did you stop from happening, miles? put some meat on the bones for us. >> that's a great question. so the president of the united states -- the one i always go back to is the border. i was never an immigration guy. i came into the administration as a national security guy. as i became the deputy chief of staff, i had to take over immigration and of course chief of staff. the president at one point

wanted us to gas, electrify, and shoot migrants at the border. what we're talking about, chris, is innocent women and children who were seeking a better life in the united states, fleeing violence and persecution, and the commander in chief is telling us he wants to gas them. >> he literally said? was it ever put in writing or was it passed on by somebody else? >> swear on my life, verbatim, oval office of the white house, of the president of the united states, that he mused about shooting them. and then when there was clear shock on the faces of the people in the room, the president said, well, maybe you could just shoot them in the legs to slow them down so they couldn't get to the border. >> you told him that it was mostly women and children, and he said that they should be shot or gassed, seriously? >> correct. correct, chris. if that's not gut-wrenching to you, then you're not human. we would talk about these things behind the scenes. those were moments you would have to ask the tough question, wow, do we resign now, or do we stay and say, mr. president, that's illegal, and we refuse to

do it? and we chose the latter. that wasn't always the easiest or right choice, but we got to a point where saying no to those things stopped working, chris, because he would just go around us and do them anyway. >> what else? >> the president offering to exchange presidential pardons at the border for illegal behavior and to close off the border. we said it was against u.s. law. the president said do it anyway and if you go to jail, i'll pardon you. on other occasions, we told the president we needed important national security authorities from congress to address a very sensitive threat. and the president said to us over the phone, i don't care what you need. just break the law and do it. we said, mr. president, we can't break the law 20 do it. we need congress to pass these important authorities. and he would tell us to go, you know, down that route. he wanted us, as i've told you guys before, to bus illegal immigrants into sanctuary cities so that those cities would become more violent.

we told the white house this would be illegal. the president consistently brought it back up. the president consistently told us he wanted to resume family separation, another sickening policy and a big mistake of this administration. the president would regularly suggest ideas that were so beyond the pale that we wouldn't consider them, and we would push back, but it came to a point where he did stop listening to us and he just started doing things anyway. >> i want to talk to you about that point. in the op-ed, you wrote many trump appointees have done what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting mr. trump's misguided impulses until he's out of office. the root of the problem is the president amorality. what i don't get is how did you guys allow for the separation policy that we've seen paperwork -- i mean i think we were some of the first to report it on "new day" here at cnn that officials came to the conclusion that separating kids from their parents would be the harshest

instruction and the biggest deterrent and that that was what was smiled upon by the administration? how did you let that happen? how is that moral ground for you? >> it's not. it's not, nor is it a policy that i embrace, support, or stand by. in fact, in year one of this -- in fact, before i even get to this story, chris, this is what i want to say. family separation was one of the most disgusting, abhorrent policies of this administration, and it was emblematic of how terrible ideas got rushed through the policy processes could be considered. the consequences are small children that were unnecessarily separated from their parents for extended periods of time. many of them will never see their parents again. i don't know how it gets more inhumane than that. >> why was it defended by the secretary at that time? i noticed recently with these 545 kids, you deleted the tweet to your credit. but you had put up there saying, hey, look, it's horrible, but a

lot of them very sadly it's because the parents didn't want to claim them because they wanted to leave them for a better life in the u.s. look, i know the situation down there well. i checked with them. this was not the situation of parents basically sacrificing themselves at the border to go through the process to get the kids in here. it's really just an extension of not giving a damn about where the parents are in respect to the kids, and it's because of an overflow of a policy of harshness. why even justify it the way you did there? it seems like you guys had something about this policy that you liked. >> no. false, and i'll tell you why. we fought our asses off behind the scenes to make sure this didn't go into effect. what few people know is that kirstjen nielsen, and agree with her or not, behind the scenes as soon as jeff sessions and the white house said they were going to ram this policy downtown america's throat without consulting us by the way, we delayed for months and said there aren't the resources to do

this. if you guys actually put this into effect, there will be a massive backlog of children at the border. you need to wait months. there needs to be more people to do this and we need to message it so that people coming to the border know there's a safe way to come in and i away that might put you at risk of losing your children. the white house said we're doing it anyway. they outvoted the secretary. then they stuck her as the fall girl. this is how screwed up this administration actually is. when it comes to that tweet, chris, i didn't delete it because i was ashamed of that tweet. i deleted it because it lacked context. t the news story said many of those children will never see their parents again. >> true. >> because those parents made a difficult and horrible choice that they should have never had to be put into a situation -- back to a country that you feel like is too dangerous to raise them, or you can leave your child in the united states for a better life, but we're going to deport you anyway. that's not a decision we should

ever have to give parents that show up at our border, and it's a damning indictment of this president's failure to actually resolve the crisis at the source and instead resolve it with cruel policies. the last thing i want to add on that is every single month after we got him to end the family separation policy, every single month before i left that administration, donald trump said, i want to resume it, and i want to make it harsher, and i want to rip every kid apart from their parents. that's why i resigned from this administration is how sickening that demand was. and we said no every time, but i believe in a second term, donald trump's going to bring this back. that's not wild speculation. donald trump will bring this policy back, and that's why we have to vote him out of office. >> you know, you have tied what you saw in his demeanor, disposition, and policy preferences what you saw as a direct link to how he has treated the pandemic. how so? >> yeah. i mean, look, the president is wildly unfocused in any meeting.

you've heard that not just from me but half the cabinet secretaries that seem to have left this administration. more importantly when he approaches any policy decision, chris, he approaches it through the lens of his personal self-interest and his ego. why was that a problem when it came to the coronavirus pandemic? well, because we had plans on the shelf for how to deal with a pandemic at homeland security. >> because this is a national security issue. pandemic falls under that umbrella. >> think of it like a war. when we have a war, the secretary of defense is accountable to the president, and he talks to the combatant commanders in the field and there's a chain of accountability to run that war. we designed the same system for homeland security threats. guess who didn't use it? donald trump. he said i don't want to pull those plans off the shelf where - instead the president said, i want it to be about me, my press conferences every night, and i want it to be run by a task force of people in the white house. >> i understand that, but i'll

tell you something. that's not my concern. you're right. >> yeah. >> you know, but to me it's a smaller point. here's why, miles. if he had -- no matter how he wanted to do it, if he had just decided to do it, given it a name, operation no pandemic or whatever and put his arms around it, not only would the country be in a better position, he would. what was your understanding in-house or now from people who are still in-house for why he has never realized that ignoring the virus was never going to work? and the obvious choice that was better for him and us was to put his arms around it and go all in? why not? >> the answer is very simple, and i could not be prouder of my former colleague olivia troye, who was in the vice president's office as his homeland security, who left, and who has shined a light on this decision. olivia's answer has been very simple. because for donald trump, he was afraid that by talking about this pandemic and telling americans how bad it really was, it would cost him his re-election. and you know what that's turned out to be, chris?

a self-fulfilling prophecy because by ignoring it and downplaying it, the president has made it so bad and so many thousands of americans have died unnecessarily that he's ultimately, i believe, going to cost himself the president by not taking ownership. >> a couple more things. one, in terms of what has happened since, what you've seen with chad wolf in the agency and the extension of his policies and the harshness, is he to be blamed, or is he somebody who is being overrun by the president? >> well, i promised since the beginning here to try to stick to my rule of focusing my attention on the president and not people by name. i know a lot of these folks. but i will say is this. chris, the president has horribly and almost irrevocably politicized the department of homeland security. keep in mind this was a department built out of the rubble of 9/11 so we didn't have to watch stories again in the future of americans jumping out of burning buildings and phone

calls to loved ones just before they died. that's why dhs was built. the president has so heavily politicized that department that now when you look at something like the covid-19 response, we are now again hearing stories at a 9/11 scale of family members calling each other for last good-byes from hospital rooms that they'll never get to see again. the president, by politicizing this department, failed to let it do its mission. if i described homeland security as an apple pie and one slice was border and immigration and one was counterterrorism and one was cybersecurity, yadda, yadda, yadda, to the president that whole pie is just border and immigration. when the crumbs fall off of his lips, what's left on the ground is a little bit of counterterrorism and pandemics. he doesn't care about those other issues. as a result. american lives are actually in danger. >> but the guy's got mahpower, t like nielsen did. you're in there. you raise your hand. you're there for the constitution. you're there for the people. oh, but he's making it hard. oh, he's hard to convince.

you've been given power. nielsen never spoke out about the policies at the border the way you have since. wolf says nothing about what is being ignored in states that are desperate for more help than they get right now, and that's his job. why should people be okay with dereliction of duty on the basis of, well, trump makes it really hard? >> chris, people shouldn't be okay with it, and i'll still try to avoid naming names. but i got to say i got former colleagues in that administration who stand by every word i wrote in that book "a warning," and now i see some of those same colleagues refusing to speak truth to power, refusing to stand up to the president, and pretending like they also didn't say every day in private that they felt like the man was unfit for office. there's going to be a moral reckoning after this administration, and those people are going to have to do some soul searching. but i really hope i'm wrong, and i hope behind the scenes they're standing up to the guy. but i'm not seeing that in what's coming out of in white

house. >> what is your biggest fear about what happens if the president has a second term? >> i think the president will feel completely emboldened to pursue not just these almost nazi-like immigration policies -- i don't say that lightly. that's pretty harsh term to levy against the president, but that's really where they want to go, is turn this country into fortress america rather than a shining city on a hill. but worse still for me as a l e lifelong national security professional is i believe the president is going to sell out our allies and befriend our enemies and put this country in danger. he's already shown a proclivity for friendships with despots and dictators around the world and he's kicked our best friends to the curb. that kind of thing is going to put this country in danger for the long run. the president will want to do things like pull out of nato, pull out of our international agreements, pull our troops back from places where they're fighting forward so americans don't have to fight bad guys here at home on our city streets. that's what he's going to do.

i think if the guardrails come off, which they have, but even more in a second term, the president will feel unimpeded. and finally, chris, i think the damage he's done to our democratic institutions, he will double down on that, damaging the courts, damaging the oversight power of congress, and expanding the power of the executive so far that it's unreasonable. this is not a conservative president. you know why? because conservatives always believed in small government. donald trump's government's so bic and expansive that it invades our lives and our minds every single day. to me, that's not a small government conservative. >> a couple more things. one, why now? >> that's a good question. why now speaking out? >> mm-hmm. >> well, look, i consider myself having been speaking out for the past two years against that president. of course at first anonymously. but the reason i attached my own names to these criticisms throughout the general election is this. the american people are paying attention right now. i'll guarantee you, chris, if last summer, as soon as i left my job i came out with a bullhorn and said, this is who

donald trump is, within 48 hours, the news story would be over. no one would pay attention, and they wouldn't care. right now americans are reviewing the president's resume, his record, and his character, and it is mission-critical that people like me but others come out now when the voters are listening and tell them who this man really is. and i have to say again i could not be more proud of the courage of other people who have joined me in doing this and taking great sacrifice around the same time, people who also could have spoke n out sooner but recognizd now america is paying attention and this is the time we have to talk. >> you think more whether come out? >> i hope so. look, i'm doing this because i hope, one, yes, that more former officials will find their consciences when they wake up tomorrow morning and hopefully do the same thing. but i've almost given up on that, chris, because the people who have had the courage to 135ek out, they've done it. what i want people to do now is i've taken off the mask, i want americans to take off the masks

in the communities, the people who are too scared to talk about the damage done and what another four years can do. they need to take off their masks. they need to speak. the loudest voice they can is their vote. the next best thing they could do is persuade other people with their voice. forget anonymous. anonymous is over. let's stop talking about it and let's all stop being anonymous in our criticisms of america's politics and the discord in our discourse. it's time for americans to speak up, to vote, to repudiate this man and vote him out of office. >> you wish you had taken your own advice and come out by name initially? >> what i wish i did, chris, my regretd is i wish i had left this administration sooner. i do. i genuinely think i should have resigned about a year earlier, and i'll let you know this. behind the scenes at the time, there were a lot of discussions. at one point --

>> say it again, miles. i lost your transmission for a second. >> sorry. you got me now? >> yes, sir. >> what i was saying is i wish i had resigned a year earlier. we talked about it. there was a group of us that were going to resign en masse. the fear was that donald trump would replace us with sycophants almost immediately, and we would have had no impact. but i still think it would have been worthwhile to consider it and that's partly my regret is not leaving a little bit sooner. >> last thing. the tape that just came out from the woodward tapes about jared kushner, does it square with your understanding of the moves in-house at the time? jared kushner's suggestion that the president played the pandemic to political advantage. he didn't want to own the fight. leave that to the governors. but he wanted to own reopening, so he would get the upside but none of the downside. >> completely. you know what? that was validated by people i was speaking to in the white house at the time. that was their strategy.

i talk to these people still. they told me their strategy was goetz the president as far away from 2 as possible. get the responsibility off the federal government and stick it on the governors. and then when things start going better again, claim it for the election. that's not hyperbole or my cliff notes. this is what people were telling me over the phone. >> it's what jared kushner said on tape. i know some of these questions aren't easy but you know how this show is. thank you for coming on and answering the questions. i appreciate you taking the opportunity. >> chris, thanks for having me. >> all right. anonymous no more. miles taylor. forget about it. a lot of this plays into the intrigue about kushner that i mentioned last. miles taylor word about what the president's ambitions and motivations are are no more telling than what his own son-in-law said about why they ignored the pandemic and what they wanted to own. his father-in-law, the president, played us on the pandemic. feel what you want about miles taylor. we're going to have a reflection

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all right. we just had our exclusive interview with miles taylor, one known as "anonymous," about why he stayed quiet, why he lied to us about it, and what he wants you to believe about him now and going forward. let's get some thoughts on how what he says squares with the reality of others who were inside and understand national security policy and what the impact could mean on this election. and also we've got to talk about kushner and the politics of this pandemic. they are all coming together in the last week of this election. great panel. david gregory, michael steele, former lieutenant governor down in maryland, and also, of course, the head of the republican national committee, the gop. and elizabeth neumann, one of

the women who worked in-house that you just heard miles taylor say is to be rewarded as a champion of our national security efforts, that she had the bravery to put her name to what she saw and what she thought, and he is right to celebrate what you did and the way you did it. it is not easy, and thank you for doing it. it is the highest duty of a citizen. you told truth when power wouldn't like it. not easy. thank you, all three. let's talk with you first, elizabeth. is what miles has to offer about what was fought against, what battles were won and lost and why, including on the pandemic -- does it square with your notion of what happened in-house? >> it does, and, look, i think historians will have the luxury of looking back and picking apart the decisions that all of us made when we were serving. many of us that came in in 2017 were discovering -- and i've been criticized by those who

particularly are from new york that we should have known better when we came in, in 2017, what the detriments of character and incompetence trump had that, you know, i'm not from new york. i hadn't paid attention to donald trump for the decades that many had been exposed to him. so in 2017, many of us thought he would rise to the occasion, that he would listen to his advisers. and over the course of that first year, it started to become dreadfully clear that he was not learning. he was not interested in learning. he was listening to his advisers. and while there were adults in the room at that time that kind of constrained him, over time he rejected those constraints and pushed them out. and over the course of four years, you've seen the consequences of that. fewer and fewer people willing to stand up to the president and tell him no. and more and more people that

will tell him whatever he wants to hear to the point where we are now in a devastating, once-in-a-century pandemic, and it's not entirely clear to me that his advisers are actually telling him the truth. i mean it is impossible that he may actually think we're rounding the corner because that might be what his advisers are telling him because he is so -- reacts so poorly to hearing ground truths. and quite frankly, he just doesn't want to do the job. he wants to be about himself. he doesn't care about governing. >> i would believe you if we didn't have the reporting we have or at least i have about how he was when he got sick. you put it together with the woodward information, he knows damn well what this country is dealing with because when his ass got sick, he didn't go to walter reed for any kind of, you know, know bless oblige reason. he went there because he was scared. and he wanted the treatments

that he denies everybody else. i respect your proposition about how you guys came into it. everybody had every reason to believe it was an act and he would pivot. he said that to many of you, and i know that. michael steele, the only reason to look at the past as a lesson, when people in your party, real republicans, real conservatives, take a look at what miles, what neumann and what others say about what motivates his prescriptions, why aren't there more of you? why are you more unicorn than wildebeest in the jungle of politics? >> yeah, that's a good question. you know, a lot of it is tied to factors that, you know, everybody gets to make a personal choice over. you heard some of that from miles. we've heard it from others, that it is a difficult decision. look, these men and women come into this with this intent of service to the country, and they try as hard as they can to make

every president successful. whether they, you know, agree with the policy or don't agree with the policy, whether it's up or down, their job is to make it successful on behalf of the american people. and there's always that thing, chris, and i know you've been there. i've been there. we've all been there where, you know, you're like, okay. i just give it another five minutes. all right. if i give it just another week. all right. if i give it another month. you're always -- you're always hopeful about the opportunity around the corner, and that's what keeps them in. that's what keeps them in for as long as they're there, because that sense of service -- i mean, you know, they're not coming into these jobs to become millionaires and, you know, have, you know, lobster and steak every night. this is hard work. this is the people's work. so the expectation, particularly in the national security area, in the, you know, the human services, the health care area, those public servants do a great, great work. so it is frustrating for a lot

of folks on the outside who say, why don't you just get the hell out of there? and you think about it, and you've heard from everybody. look, yeah, i thought about it, but i wanted to continue to serve because i had the hope that i could get it to a space where it's better. and then you realize you can't, and that's when you have to make your move, when that moment comes when you know it's enough. and everybody's got it now at the ballot box. i mean how many people were with trump until two weeks ago until, you know, whatever that trigger was for them? >> well, we'll see. we'll see. >> this is the difficulty. >> we'll see what happens on election day. for michael steele, his moment, you know, you're going to be a little new to the audience. but, michael steele, the reason i went through his pedigree the way i did is because he is a true minted republican and conservative. and, yes, that is why his moment became what is now known as the lincoln project, and he is one of the founders of the lincoln project. and i know that the president wants you to see them as rye

noes or whatever. but let me tell you in that game, it is not easy to do what these men and women are doing and putting themselves against party. in the sake of party, it's not easy. it's a game that doesn't look at anything as bravery when it can be seen as disloyalty. d. gregory, i heard that little covid cough. i knew you were trying to curry favor. politically how does this play? miles taylor coming out on the wednesday before the tuesday of the election in the shadow, or i guess sharing the spotlight with, better metaphor, jared kushner admitting on tape exactly the ugliest portrayal of the politics of the pandemic? leave it on the governors. let them be the losers. when they open up, we step in so we're the winners. >> look, miles is compelling to listen to. i don't think there's a lot new there. i frankly think, you know, he comes off as a guy who doesn't like trump, who has endorsed

biden, and who is a little attention-seeking at this point. i thought he sounded a little cute about -- just the whole thing, being anonymous, writing the book, and then hanging in. people are going to make their judgment, but we know where he's coming from. we also know what these judgments are about the president and about the policy. what's compelling is it reveals an administration policy and a president when it came to immigration -- and we know this about other things. no limits, no boundaries, no real policy. that's what's important because you related it to kushner and the approach on coronavirus, and this is what i think is similar. no limits, no boundary, no real policy. the calculation is simply about the kind of reality tv aspect of it. how do we win it? what do we own? what do we win? and who gets the credit? and how do we avoid getting the blame? that's not what you do in a crisis. you have to lead.

you have to steel the american people for what's hard. you have to guide people emotionally. you know, you got to be there for people. there was much more manipulation involved. and all the stuff that miles is talking about is what was at most charitably such a heavy-handed and inhumane approach to border security that was all about toughness, all about building a wall, keeping immigrants out, creating scapegoats, creating enemies that trump could say, i'm here to protect you from. >> mm-hmm. >> we've known this. i think people have made their judgments on it, whether you're pro-trump based on his hard-line immigration policies or you're against him. i think all of that has been kind of baked in at this point, and honestly i think, you know, miles now telling us that he's anonymous, i don't think is a huge deal at this point in the game. >> david gregory, respect the candor. michael steele, thank you for

coming here to cnn and on our show. appreciate you. and elizabeth neumann, again, you're better than these other guys. you came out. you put your name and your reputation on the line, and you did it for reasons that were never going to make you rich in anything other than the confidence that you said the right thing at the right time. t thank you for doing it. you have my appreciation and i'm sure many others'. thank you. god bless your family. stay healthy. we'll be right back. and, in more and more cities, the unprecedented performance of ultra wideband. the fastest 5g in the world. it will change your phone and how businesses do everything. i'm proud, because we didn't build it the easy way, we built it right. this is the 5g america's been waiting for. only from verizon. >> tech: every customer has their own safelite story. this couple was on a camping trip... ...when their windshield got a chip. they drove to safelite for a same-day repair.

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refusal of the trump administration to recognize the reality we're living through, at a time when almost a thousand americans, a day, are dying, every single day. is an insult to every single person suffering from covid-19 and every family, who's lost a loved one. >> the former vice president is all in on message and metaphor about this pandemic.

that, directly, it is the crisis that is affecting everything and that this president has done everything he can to get out of the way of any kind of leadership. that is biden's bet for this election. that, that is what will matter most, from arizona to maine. trump held, yet another, potential superspreader event in the state of arizona, this matters so much. look at the people. this is the man who's supposed to give the message of what we need to do to be safe. his friends and allies are more comfortable going after me for what i do than what the president is doing for all of these people. what does that tell you about where we are? he's keeping up the lie about rounding the corner. you want to play with that analogy, if we're rounding the corner, the next stop is a cliff. look at the numbers. the question is will it work in the states he needs? i think the pandemic and the election are coming together into a big problem for this president. let's bring in the man with the numbers. wizard of odds, harry enten. what do you see?

>> i mean, look, i'm a guy of numbers, right? and what we can do is we can look at the ten closest states that donald trump won four years ago, and look at the coronavirus cases in those states. they are climbing in all ten of them. you said it. from arizona, you can go down to wisconsin, it's climbing in all of them. so, the idea that you can just ignore this or that voters are going to ignore it, just doesn't make sense to me from a political angle, christopher. >> what you would be banking on is a disconnect. but, you know, we see it in schools and how many parents are sending their kids into school. people are afraid, no matter what they display in their political allegiance. so, let's go into a state that absolutely matters as a swing, probably for both guys, wisconsin. >> this is a state trump won, barely, four years ago. it's a state he probably needs to win and look at this.

look at the polling average. biden up by 9 percentage points. look at that. it's up 21% from last week, averaging 4,000 cases per day. this is a huge connection. and you know what, i'd be honest with you, i am surprised that biden is doing as well in wisconsin as he is doing. i'm not surprised that he's leading, given he's leading nationally. but the fact that his margin is nearly matching the national margin to me indicates voters are clearly making this connection between coronavirus in their backyard and their voting patterns as well. >> fourth-highest new case average in the united states. the positivity rate is at 28%. record cases and deaths reported on tuesday. how can that not resonate with people? it is real. politics is often about feel. these are all facts that will make you feel. covid. top issue for voters. is that becoming more true? or less true? >> i think it's becoming -- it's

as true as it's been, and you know that joe biden is the one that voters favor on that issue, right? they trust him more to handle the coronavirus than president trump. and they have thought that, throughout this process. in every cnn poll that we have taken, more voters trust biden on the coronavirus than trump. and it has been the case over the last six, seven months, basically since april-march, when the coronavirus cases really started to explode nationwide, that it has been listed as the most important problem according to gallup. and what is so important about that, chris, what's so important and what i don't want to get lost is when you look at gallup's history. the most important problem. and you ask, which party do you trust more to handle that issue? look at this. this slide tells you everything you need to know. since 1948, the party that is trusted most on the important, most important, problem has won the presidency, in every election, except for 1948, where they lost it, and in 1980 when it was tied. and they've won, pretty much, every single year. so voters are making the

connection and, historically, when voters make that connection, it is a big problem for the party that is losing on that most-important problem. >> a lot of times, campaigns is about -- are about what politicians want you to think is a problem. this one is about what we know is a problem. harry enten, thank you, brother. we'll be right back. it's either the assurance of a 165-point certification process. or it isn't. it's either testing an array of advanced safety systems. or it isn't. it's either the peace of mind of a standard unlimited mileage warranty. or it isn't. for those who never settle, it's either mercedes-benz certified pre-owned. or it isn't. the mercedes-benz certified pre-owned sales event. now through november 2nd. shop online and build your deal today.

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the unfair money bail system. he, accused of rape. while he, accused of stealing $5. the stanford rapist could afford bail; got out the same day. the senior citizen could not; forced to wait in jail nearly a year. voting yes on prop 25 ends this failed system, replacing it with one based on public safety. because the size of your wallet shouldn't determine whether or not you're in jail. vote yes on prop 25

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prepare for collision. >> i know there is a lot going on, on election week, but we got to stay in touch with people in need. scary moments off the coast. that barge broke loose from the port from the hurricane of zeta in louisiana. you see how close the barge came to hitting a boat and its crew, man. imagine being stuck on there. the cat-2 storm made landfall, less than four hours ago. more than 700,000, already, without power. d lemon is, also, watching this. he has family, as you know, in louisiana. hopefully, everyone is safe, so far, tonight, my brother. come on in. "cnn tonight" starts right now. >> yeah. yeah. you can hear me, right? >> uh-huh. >> imagine it being my friends or family there. i mean, it seems like, every week i'm calling them saying are you guys okay? are you guys okay? are you ready? are you prepared? do you need to evacuate? do i need to, you know, get you