Donald Trump wants his own version of the Russian Wagner mercenary group that is responsible to the president only, a former senior White House official has claimed.
Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump presidency, said Trump wanted to create his own mercenary force which he would have complete control over.
He said while security officials managed to ‘shut down these conversations’, Taylor believes that if Trump wins the presidential election in November his attempts to create a mercenary group like Wagner would not be thwarted.
Speaking to journalist Robert Moore on ‘Trump: The Return?’, which airs on ITV1 and ITVX at 9pm tonight in the UK, Taylor said: ‘When I was in the administration, Donald Trump wanted to create his own mercenary force in the United States military.’
‘He saw what Vladimir Putin had with the Wagner group in Russia and he wanted to create his own version of this. This is a real story,’ Taylor said, adding that he managed to shut down the conversations by saying it was not a viable approach.
‘But the year after I left the administration, that conversation cropped back up and Donald Trump asked his national security council to look into this idea of creating a mercenary group responsible to the President only,’ Taylor, who released his memoir ‘Blowback’ on his time serving under Trump in July 2023, said.
