Trump sought to withhold California fire aid because of politics, former official says

Brandon Baker, center and Prescott McKenzie, right, take cover from flying embers during a brush fire in Ventura in December 2017. “He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn’t support him and that politically it wasn’t a base for him,” Miles Taylor, who left the Trump administration in 2019, claims in the ad. “These were his words: He knew that he had ‘magical authorities,’” Taylor said, recalling a phrase he said Trump used to brush off questions from aides. The two-minute ad, promoted by a group called Republican Voters Against Trump, follows sharp criticism from several former top White House aides and others, including former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who have questioned Trump’s fitness to serve a second term. “And what’s worse — was actively doing damage to our security.” Taylor worked under acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, who briefly held the job in 2017 after former Gen. John Kelly left the post for the White House and before the Senate confirmed Kirstjen Nielsen, the last non-acting head of the third-largest federal department.