Biden will get tested for Covid-19 today
Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, says that President Trump having coronavirus also sparks national security concerns.
“You have key agents that are responsible for protecting him that now likely have to also go into quarantine. So you have new shifts of agents coming in. … There’s going to be an extensive contact tracing effort, and this isn’t just a contact tracing effort for anyone. It’s a contact tracing effort for the commander in chief,” Taylor said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“There’s a broader issue here regarding continuity of government,” he said.
Taylor said that while he was in the DHS, there were trainings to prepare for situations where leadership might be affected from doing their jobs.
“The thing that very few of us have talked about publicly and hoped never happened is that that lax approach to the Covid-19 pandemic might actually have an affect on the stability of the federal government. We are now in that situation,” he said.
Taylor said that while he wishes the President a speedy recovery, “we have to consider the possibility that this may affect, again, his ability to carry out the duties of his office. That’s a big concern. It’s something that this White House wasn’t preparing for, in my view.”
Taylor said officials also need to keep an eye on foreign actors looking to capitalize on this moment.
“Senior national security officials are watching to make sure that our foreign adversaries don’t find a way to exploit this health crisis that’s reached the highest levels of the US government,” he added.
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