Thursday, May 17, 2018

The moral hazard of working for a corrupt administration

Those who work for a corrupt political administration can expect to have their own careers damaged.

Image by Peggy_Marco on Pixabay

I moved some information to Medium.

MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin: "Have you ever seen loyalty like this that doesn’t come at the barrel of a gun?"

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "That’s actually the saddest thing about this, is that in many regimes, if you criticize the leader, even if he’s no longer in office, you go to jail or you’re shot. Here, what is at stake is: They're losing office, but also their reputations, because for those who are very wealthy...you can't really buy people off, so what you do is you threaten to shame them and uncover their secrets, and that's called kompromat. So, Donald Trump is an expert of that through Roger Stone who was taught by Roy Cohn, so there's also an American strand of that, but he also uses ritual humiliation...to keep people in line and remind them of what awaits them if they open their mouth and say the wrong things."

— MSNBC interview, 2024

There were many warnings about this prior to Trump's inauguration.

Reflecting on a first week in office that included "big splashy pronouncements such as announcing a wall that he would force Mexico to pay for, even as the Mexican foreign minister held talks with American officials in Washington" and "quiet, but no less dangerous bureaucratic orders, such as kicking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff out of meetings of the Principals’ Committee, the senior foreign-policy decision-making group below the president, while inserting his chief ideologist, Steve Bannon, into them," Eliot A. Cohen wrote: "In an epic week beginning with a dark and divisive inaugural speech, extraordinary attacks on a free press, a visit to the CIA that dishonored a monument to anonymous heroes who paid the ultimate price, and now an attempt to ban selected groups of Muslims (including interpreters who served with our forces in Iraq and those with green cards, though not those from countries with Trump hotels, or from really indispensable states like Saudi Arabia), he has lived down to expectations."

He added that the president embodies the opposite of "reverence for the truth" and "sober patriotism grounded in duty, moderation, respect for law, commitment to tradition, knowledge of our history, and open-mindedness."

He said:

"Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity—substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have."

He cautioned:

"To friends still thinking of serving as political appointees in this administration, beware: When you sell your soul to the Devil, he prefers to collect his purchase on the installment plan. ... To be associated with these people is going to be, for all but the strongest characters, an exercise in moral self-destruction."

Eliot Cohen also warned professional conservatives: "Either you stand up for your principles and for what you know is decent behavior, or you go down, if not now, then years from now, as a coward or opportunist. Your reputation will never recover, nor should it." Indeed: "Many conservative foreign-policy and national-security experts saw the dangers last spring and summer, which is why we signed letters denouncing not Trump’s policies but his temperament; not his program but his character." He predicts that this president will "fail" because: "With every act he makes new enemies for himself and strengthens their commitment; he has his followers, but he gains no new friends."

Thus George Will recalled in June 2020:

This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.

And in July 2020, E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote an opinion in the Washington Post, noting that the Trump administration had included, within the Senate bill for coronavirus relief funds, $1.75 billion to reconstruct a new FBI building at its current location, which happens to be "down the street from Trump International Hotel. The FBI has proposed tearing down its existing building and relocating to the suburbs, potentially leaving the site open to private competition for the Trump International Hotel, as Trump executives have warned.

Stephanie Grisham, who served as White House Press Secretary from July 2019 to April 2020, said on November 13, 2021 that Trump generally encouraged White House staff to do illegal things. "In the White House, when we would get Hatch Act violations, that was a badge of honor," she said. Grisham's comments, according to the Huffington Post, followed "a federal investigative report [that] revealed that at least 13 former Trump officials violated the Hatch Act by intermingling their government duties with campaigning" and faced no consequences.

Chris Cillizza wrote on Sept. 23, 2019:

The reason that questions about Trump's behavior throughout this Ukraine drama won't be the final straw in the Republican relationship with Trump is because there will never be a final straw in Republicans' relationship with Trump. When he won the GOP nomination, the vast, vast, vast majority of GOPers simply decided that even though they didn't support him initially and still had LOTS of questions about how he went about things, Trump was channeling their base and the only way to stay alive politically was to support him without question.

The Democrats' inaction enables the Republicans to continue supporting Trump. As Marina Fang wrote on Sept. 23, 2019:

White House aides are not worried about potential impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump because they view House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has advocated for an incremental approach, as emboldening them to defy Congress, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The report cited two unnamed White House officials who claimed they were 'not worried about defying or mocking [House Judiciary Chairman Jerry] Nadler because Pelosi has made it clear she is not interested in impeachment and the House Democratic Caucus is split about what to do to counter Trump.'

Traditionally, Senate-confirmed officials submit resignation letters when a new president takes office, with the expectation that nonpartisan people will be kept on board, since "[o]nly career officials have the decades of institutional knowledge required to keep the nation’s agencies running," Ronan Farrow wrote in War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence. Foreign Service officers must eventually have a presidentially-appointed job or, eventually, be forced to retire. Not being given a job means the same thing as being fired. One diplomat said she was informed: "Your assignments are broken. Who knows if you have your next job, maybe you don’t. It’s utter chaos. And it’s out of the blue. No reason." Many dismissals happened around the time of Rex Tillerson's Feb. 1, 2017 confirmation as Secretary of State; Tillerson would later claim not to have been aware of some of these dismissals. Farrow wrote: “In the first days of 2018, when I asked Tillerson about Countryman and the wave of forced retirements, the secretary of state stared at me, unblinking, then said: 'I’m not familiar with that one.' A little over a month later, Tillerson was gone too: another casualty of a fickle president and a State Department in disarray.”

In May 2018, addressing the Virginia Military Institute, Tillerson said: "If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom." On Dec. 6, 2018, interviewed publicly by a journalist during a cancer treatment fundraising event in Houston, Tillerson recalled: "So often, the president would say 'Here's what I want to do, and here's how I want to do it,' and I would have to say to him, 'Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can't do it that way. It violates the law.'" He also described Trump as "a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, 'This is what I believe.'" Trump responded by tweeting the following afternoon that Tillerson was "dumb as a rock" and "lazy as hell," that he lacked the "mental capacity" to run the State Department, and that the State Department was finally thriving under Tillerson's successor Mike Pompeo. In November 2019, it was reported that Pompeo planned to resign because he wanted to run for Senate and he felt that he was losing his reputation by working for Trump, although Pompeo denied it publicly.

In November 2019, questions were raised about the qualifications of Mina Chang, a top official at the State Department.

Around the same week in mid-November 2019, a third party recorded two of Colombia’s top diplomats in a candid conversation in a cafe.

“The U.S. State Department, which used to be important, is destroyed, it doesn’t exist,” he [one of the diplomats] said. In particular, he said President Donald Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, "salió con un chorro de babas" — a colorful expression that translates literally to “let out a stream of drool,” and which means, roughly, he was all talk and ineffectual.

In October 2019, CNN reported:

Michael McKinley is testifying Wednesday behind closed doors as part of the House Democrats' impeachment probe — less than a week after resigning as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

McKinley, a former US ambassador, planned to open his testimony by telling investigators that his resignation was driven by his concern that the Department's leadership was not supporting career foreign service officers, according to a source familiar. In the first hour of the testimony, McKinley specifically raised concerns about the removal of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from Ukraine, and how the State Department did little to protect her, said a source familiar with his remarks.

In February 2017, Paul Waldman said of the President that "the idea of him having a coherent ideology is absurd" and that what he has instead is "a remarkable lack of human virtues and an even more remarkable set of character flaws". If there were a terrorist attack,

"he won't try to calm people down or remind them of how safe we are. He'll do exactly the opposite: ramp up people's fear and anger, using the attack (now matter how minor it might have been) as justification for a range of policy moves. He said during the campaign that he wanted to put mosques under surveillance; that could be just the start of a range of harsh actions directed at American Muslims. ... And given his regular, personal attacks on judges that don't rule as he'd like, there's a genuine question of whether he'd obey lawful court orders that restrained him in a situation where he felt he had the advantage. ...there will be some kind of attack eventually, and Trump will try to exploit it. The more we understand that now, the better prepared we'll be to push back when the time comes."

Allan J. Lichtman wrote in his book The Case for Impeachment, published in April 2017:

"Even early in his presidency, Donald Trump exhibits the same tendencies that led Nixon to violate the most basic standards of morality and threaten the foundations of our democracy. Both Nixon and Trump exhibited a determination to never quit, to win at all costs, to attack and never back down, and to flout conventional rules and restraints. But as ambitious and headstrong as they were, they also shared a compulsion to deflect blame, and they were riddled with insecurities. They exploited the resentments of white working class Americans and split the world into enemies and loyalists. In the first month of his presidency Trump talked more about ‘enemies’ than any other president in history. Neither man allowed the law, the truth, the free press, or the potential for collateral damage to others to impede their personal agendas. They cared little about ideology but very much about adulation and power. They had little use for checks and balances and stretched the reach of presidential authority to its outer limits. They obsessed over secrecy and thirsted for control without dissent."

John Kelly, the chief of staff, claims he warned Trump before he departed that he needed to surround himself with more truth-tellers. "I said, whatever you do — and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place — I said whatever you do, don't hire a 'yes man,' someone who won't tell you the truth — don't do that," Kelly said. "Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached."

An alarming number of departures have indeed steadily come to pass. As of November 2019, his cabinet has had over 90 percent turnover.

Elizabeth Shackelford, a political officer for the U.S. State Department's mission to Somalia, wrote a resignation letter on Nov. 7, 2017 to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson saying that the damage to the U.S. reputation under the Trump administration "is visible every day in Mission Somalia, my current post, where State’s diplomatic influence, on the country and within our own interagency, is waning." Noting that other diplomats have left the agency, she asked Tillerson to "stem the bleeding" or else "follow me out the door.” Tillerson was fired the following March; there were many reports that he learned that he was fired at the same moment the rest of the nation did, that is, when Trump tweeted it.

In November 2017, Michelle Goldberg published this opinion in the New York Times:

"Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, warned that it was a mistake to infer that what we’ve seen so far of the Trump administration will be 'as bad as it gets.' As time goes on, he wrote, 'Trump will find people who will empower him, instead of trying to contain him. Some of these will be junior officials who gain experience. Others may be opportunists who see a chance to gain high office by pledging to be more of a loyalist than the current cabinet.'"

Another principled resignation from the State Department was Chuck Park in August 2019. He had worked in foreign service for nearly 10 years. According to a CNN article, "Park said that after the election of President Donald Trump, he had remained 'complacent' and had 'let career perks silence (his) conscience'...distancing himself from 'ideals that once seemed so clear to me. I can't do that anymore.'" Citing the recent white supremacist mass shooting in El Paso, the city where his son was born, he said, "I can no longer justify to him [his seven-year-old son], or to myself, my complicity in the actions of this administration."

And what does this complicity look like? He explained in his Washington Post op-ed on the day of his resignation:

Every day, we refuse visas based on administration priorities. We recite administration talking points on border security, immigration and trade. We plan travel itineraries, book meetings and literally hold doors open for the appointees who push Trump’s toxic agenda around the world....And when we are [called out], we shrink behind a standard argument — that we are career officials serving nonpartisan institutions.

He explained to CNN: "Though we are keeping the metaphorical lights on, we are not the heroes that some make us out to be. The real 'resistance' must come from American voters in 2020."

Some of the people closest to him have been broken by their association with him. A Fox News video on Dec. 1, 2017 was headlined "Sources: Flynn broken financially and emotionally" with the description "Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI about contact with Russians." By January, Paul Manafort was suing Robert Mueller.

In losing so many people, the president isolates himself. Sam Levine wrote on Jan. 3, 2018:

"Trump has now turned on two of the men who helped him win the White House — Bannon and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — and they are returning the favor.

Bannon, whom Trump called a "tough and smart new voice" four months ago, is now a man who wants to “burn down the country.” Flynn, a "terrific guy” in 2016, is now a "liar," because he is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation.

Under pressure from law enforcement, the Trump administration is cracking up."

That same day, Trump issued a statement after parts of Steve Bannon's book were leaked.

Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (published Jan. 5, 2018) had several things to say about not surviving the Trump administration. Dina Powell, for example, had worked for George W. Bush and returned to work for Trump, and she also had a corporate career. Wolff notes how she worried that working for Trump could sully her: “Powell’s carefully cultivated reputation, her brand (and she was one of those people who thought intently about their personal brand), could become inextricably tied to the Trump brand. Worse, she could become part of what might easily turn into historical calamity.” Her colleagues thought her decision to work for Trump “indicated either recklessness or seriously bad judgment.” As another example, an email that circulated in early 2017, “purporting to represent the views of Gary Cohn,” said: “Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family.” And “[Sean] Spicer, hesitant to take the job, kept anxiously posing the question to colleagues in the Washington swamp: ‘If I do this, will I ever be able to work again?’ There were conflicting answers.”

A year after the inauguration, on the morning of Jan. 29, 2018, David Frum once again had dim expectations for the State of the Union to be given that night. "Look, if President Trump gets through the hour without putting a fork in somebody’s eye he will be praised as the most presidential president since the most presidential president," he said. He went on to say: "We all know what he is, we all know why he’s president, and what got him into that job. So, I think the question for all of us is how do we protect the country during the remainder of the presidency. There are no serious questions left about what kind of person he is.”

White House communications director Hope Hicks resigned on Feb. 28, 2018, having served in the role since July 2017. "Her resignation," Lydia O’Connor wrote for the Huffington Post, "comes one day after her eight-hour testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. According to reports, Hicks admitted during her testimony that Trump sometimes required her to tell 'white lies.'" [Note: A better term, rather than "meddling," is "information warfare."]

Chris Cillizza wrote for CNN on March 19, 2018:

There's a sentence in Olivia Nuzzi's terrific profile of Hope Hicks in New York magazine that tells you absolutely everything you need to know about not only President Donald Trump but also the group of people who orbit him.

It's this one:

"No matter how dead any of the eccentrics or maniacs or divas appeared to be, how far away from the president their status as fired or resigned or never-hired-in-the-first-place should have logically rendered them, nobody was ever truly gone."

* * *

No one is ever truly "dead" to Donald Trump. The only thing he loves more than conflict between and among those who work for him is a reconciliation among those people.

Remember, always, that Trump was reality TV before reality TV. He is in the business, even now, of keeping eyeballs on him. That means drama, conflict and resolution. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

(After the House Judiciary Committee requested documents from Hope Hicks relating to her time at the White House, Trump ordered her in June 2019 not to provide the documents. Trump's order may be valid, insofar as he can claim "executive privilege." However, executive privilege would not provide an excuse for Hicks not to provide documents related to the 2016 presidential campaign.)

John Feeley, ambassador to Panama, retired in March 2018, and told The New Yorker in May that the president is "like a velociraptor. He has to be boss, and if you don’t show him deference he kills you.”

There had been at least 29 "high-profile" departures as of May 2018. The Brookings Institution keeps statistics on this, and the New York Times cited Brookings when reporting on Dec. 10, 2018 that George W. Bush had 33 percent senior staff turnover after two full years in office, Obama had 24 percent, and Trump so far has 62 percent without having yet finished his second year. Those who work for this president are learning their lessons.

CNN keeps an updated list of the departures.

"After nearly four years of inveighing against the US intelligence officials and analysts who revealed Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, Donald Trump is finally acting fully on his paranoia by carrying out a purge," Kent Harrington wrote on March 4, 2020. The purge includes "the acting director of national intelligence, Admiral Joseph Maguire, and his deputy," while "his interim choice to replace Maguire, Richard Grenell, who had been the US ambassador to Germany, is a notorious Trump sycophant with no intelligence experience...[who] has already ordered his own minions to start investigating alleged conspiracies among the intelligence officials who uncovered Russia’s election interference, and to pore over personnel files in search of those who may not be sufficiently loyal to Trump."

Update: This is how Grenell behaves online in 2022.

Related: Vacant positions.

Related: Positions are still vacant in 2023. Joy Reid reports:

"And one of her [Ronna McDaniels's] party senators, Tommy Tuberville, still refuses to lift his hold on at least 300 military nominees, including top officers who would command forces in the Middle East. And then there's Senator Rand Paul, who has been blocking all State Department nominees since June, demanding that the department first release additional information about the origins of covid, something the State Department does not have. As a result, roughly 38 countries are without US ambassadors, including key countries in the region, like Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, and Oman. That list does not include the three-year vacancy over at USAID for the top official in the Middle East or the fact that the State Department has had no coordinator for counterterrorism in two years."
The ReidOut with Joy Reid. "Israel declares all-out war on Hamas after suprise attack from Gaza killing..." October 9, 2023. (39:15–40:02)

The president's choice in June 2018 for deputy chief of staff (following the departure of the predecessor, Hope Hicks) indicates a new level of loyalty and toughness that will be required, according to Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair.

Trump’s decision to tap [Bill] Shine as deputy chief of staff signals that the West Wing is entering a new era, one in which the last redoubts of internal rebellion are stamped out. “Shine is very tough,” a former Shine colleague told me. “You could pull a gun on him and he’d be like, ‘Son, put the gun away.’”

* * *

“This guy is up to eyeballs in shit,” a Republican close to the White House said. In a normal West Wing, Shine’s baggage would be disqualifying.

Shine had left Fox the previous year

"in part because of his role enabling sexual harassment (Shine denied knowledge of [Roger] Ailes’s behavior). ...Shine played a central role in facilitating Ailes's sexual and psychologically abusive relationship with former Fox executive Laurie Luhn. ... Luhn told me that Shine summoned her from Washington to meet with Ailes in New York. Shine monitored Luhn’s e-mails to make sure she wan’t talking about Ailes, Luhn told me. Shine also arranged for Luhn to see a psychiatrist after she suffered an emotional breakdown." Furthermore: "In his role at Fox, he rarely granted interviews, having imbibed Ailes’s worldview that reporters were the enemy. ... Two sources told me Shine was also aware of Ailes’s use of private investigators to harass and intimidate journalists."

(In March 2019, eight months after assuming the job, Shine stepped down from his position to join the Trump 2020 presidential campaign.)

After the departure of two Chiefs of Staff — Reince Priebus and John F. Kelly — Trump reportedly dressed down his Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney in front of congressional leaders during a January 2019 meeting. Mulvaney had been on the job less than two weeks. Trump reportedly interrupted Mulvaney and told him, "You just fucked it all up, Mick." In June 2019, Trump criticized Mulvaney for coughing in the background of a television interview. "If you're going to cough, please leave the room," Trump requested. "You just can't, you just can't cough. Boy, oh boy. OK, do you want to do that a little differently than uhh —" (Some speculated that Mulvaney had been coughing intentionally for the president's own benefit. Trump had been bragging about his personal financial statement and how he hoped the press would get a hold of it, and Mulvaney coughed mid-sentence.)

A large percentage of positions were empty as of June 19, 2019:

While attention-seekers may congregate around any politician in power, Michelle Goldberg wrote in November 2018 that

"Trump is unique as a magnet for grifters, climbers and self-promoters, in part because decent people won’t associate with him. With the exception of national security professionals sticking around to stop Trump from blowing up the world, there are two kinds of people in the president’s orbit — the immoral and the amoral. There are sincere nativists, like Bannon and senior adviser Stephen Miller, and people of almost incomprehensible insincerity.

In many ways, the insincere Trumpists are the most frustrating. Because they don’t really believe in Trump’s belligerent nationalism and racist conspiracy theories, we keep expecting them to feel shame or remorse. But they’re not insincere because they believe in something better than Trumpism. Rather, they believe in very little. They are transactional in a way that makes no psychological sense to those of us who see politics as a moral drama; they might as well all be wearing jackets saying, 'I really don’t care, do u?'"

An update on Manafort: In 2019, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for his efforts to "evade taxes, deceive banks, subvert lobbying laws and obstruct justice." While the president could pardon Manafort for these federal crimes, he would not be able to pardon him for state crimes in which charges were filed separately. Manafort approached a small bank that usually serves veterans. Although not a veteran himself, Manafort got the multi-million dollar loan he wanted (causing massive losses for the bank), and the bank CEO was "appointed to an economic advisory group on Trump's campaign"; the CEO was also supposed to be made Secretary of the Army, although this was not fulfilled. The CEO has pled not guilty to federal charges of bribery. (Trump's next pick for Army Secretary turned out to have recently been in a fist fight at a horse auction, and his next pick said that "transgender is a disease" and had made intolerant comments about Muslims. Trump got his fourth choice, Mark Esper, the top lobbyist for Raytheon, a company that gets its income from defense contracts. In June 2019, Esper was promoted to Acting Secretary of Defense.

Empty positions go unfilled for a reason. Umair Haque wrote on July 2, 2019:

"It's not well understood in America — Americans are still in deep denial about it — but fascists now occupy the highest positions in the land. Part of this is the many, many top government posts that have been left unfilled. Power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny few, as a result. The Prez, his closest advisors. The Nazis did that, too. It’s a key institution of fascism to concentrate power — and starving democracy of decentralized power is how it’s done. Hence, literal fascists now do everything from “border security” to foreign policy to 'research.' That’s why investment in climate change research is being cut, while investment in camps and Gestapos is skyrocketing.

* * *

...the fascists control the state, and the state has the most money and power. They are using it now, to build the institutions of fascism at lightning pace, at record speed.

And once those institutions are built, my friends, it is very, very difficult for a society to come back."

On July 12, 2019, Alexander Acosta resigned his position as Secretary of Labor after it was revealed that he had given a secret plea deal to billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2008. Epstein had faced federal charges of sex abuse against 40 teenage girls. He had pled guilty to state charges, registered as a sex offender, paid settlement money, and spent a relatively small amount of time behind bars (13 months, during which he was allowed to leave six days a week to go to work), in exchange for which the federal investigation against him was ended. Acosta, who was then U.S. attorney in Miami, violated federal law by giving Epstein this plea deal without notifying Epstein's victims. The deal itself promised secrecy to Epstein while casting the underage girls as "prostitutes" rather than as sex trafficking victims. Although some of the victims sued in 2008, the issue was never resolved.

(Patrick Pizzella took Acosta's place, becoming the third Secretary of Labor during Trump's first term. Epstein, having been re-arrested, committed suicide in his jail cell, as reported on the morning of August 10, 2019. Some of his accusers were able to speak in court later that month.)

Following Acosta's resignation, the New York Times editorial board called the administration "exceptional" for "its instability, its swampiness and its turnover at the top. Keeping track of just the top-tier departures requires an advanced knowledge of spreadsheets." It said that "the many defenestrations...are occurring on almost a burning-building scale..."

Jeff Sessions abandoned his Senate seat when he was selected as Trump's attorney general, and then was let go in November 2018. In a tweet over a year later, Trump admitted that he fired Sessions because Sessions had recused himself from the Mueller investigation, which displeased Trump who felt that he had "loyally...appointed" him AG. After losing the AG job, Sessions sought to recapture his Senate seat. In a November 2019 campaign ad, Sessions complains, "When I left President Trump’s Cabinet, did I write a tell-all book? No! Did I go on CNN and attack the president? Nope! Have I said a cross word about our president? Not one time." Avi Selk explains that Sessions "uses his first ad exclusively to ingratiate himself to his ex-boss — so much that he never actually gets around to mentioning his Senate candidacy."

In Sessions' replacement, Attorney General William Barr, "Trump finally found someone who was willing to absolutely commit himself to preserving his presidency, even if it leads to his own downfall — which it inevitably will. Because if there’s one thing we know for sure, sooner or later Trumpism kills everything it touches. Just ask Rex Tillerson, or Paul Manafort, or Jason Miller."

Kent Harrington, a former CIA analyst, wrote:

Last May [2019], Jan Crawford of CBS asked Barr if he worried that his service to Trump might damage his reputation. “Everyone dies,” he said. “I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that ... immortality comes by ... having odes sung about you over the centuries.” Perhaps that response is the best one can hope to hear from an attorney general who is comfortable peddling conspiracy theories to justify otherwise dubious investigations that please his boss.

However, on May 5, 2023, at a City Club of Cleveland lunch, when Geraldo Rivera of Fox News asked Barr if Trump was 'fit' for the presidency, Barr replied: "he's the last person that could actually execute them [his advertised policies] and achieve them." He said Trump lacks "discipline" and "ability for strategic thinking and linear thinking or setting priorities, or how to get things done in the system." Unfortunately: "It is a horror show when he’s left to his own devices." He said Trump will "deliver chaos" that will set back his advertised policies.

As for how Barr may be viewed in the fullness of time, there are historical parallels. The Soviet prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky played a prominent role in the Nuremberg trials, held high academic posts, and became one of his country’s top diplomats. But before that, he was the chief prosecutor in Stalin’s murderous show trials. Today, that is the only thing for which he is remembered.

Anthony Scaramucci, who survived all of ten days as Trump's communications director in mid-2017, announced, two years later, that he had downgraded his opinion of Trump from approval to "neutral." He also used the metaphor of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to describe Trump.

A few days after that, Scaramucci announced he was forming a political action committee against Trump. "He has full-blown, early-stage fascism," Scaramucci said, adding that, "Once he gets hit a couple of times, because he’s a paper-tiger bully, he just starts to unravel like a complete basket case."

John Bolton, Trump's pick for national security advisor, parted ways with Trump after 17 months on the job. It happened because, in Stephen Collinson's words for CNN, "like everyone else in Trump's dysfunctional foreign policy team, Bolton wore out his welcome, standing in the way of his boss' impetuous instincts and seeking a share of the spotlight." Even though, like Trump, Bolton had a "desire to shake up the globe," he also "wanted to cancel President Donald Trump's worldwide reality show."

Bret Stephens argued in the New York Times that Bolton averted three disasters. In formal negotiations, Trump was prepared to make large, specific concessions to (1) North Korea and (2) the Taliban in exchange for nothing in particular. (The latter, notably, "would have set a timetable for U.S. withdrawal [from Afghanistan] to coincide with the U.S. election calendar.") Trump also wanted to withdraw completely from Syria, which would have amounted to an abandonment of (3) Kurdish allies who helped defeat ISIS. However, Bolton also did three things wrong. In Stephens' words: (1) "He disserved the president because he went to work for a man whose core convictions...he knew he deeply opposed. ...presidents are also entitled to advisers who devote their energies to advancing the boss’s agenda, not to stymieing it." (2) "He disserved the country by attempting to disguise the truth about the Trump presidency...By sparing Americans from the consequences of Trump’s impulses, Bolton has made re-election likelier — and, in all likelihood, the very outcomes he labored to prevent." (3) "And he has disserved himself. The manner in which Bolton was dismissed — straight out the door, without even the fig leaf of resignation — is of a piece with the trademark nastiness that has distinguished this president all his life. Bolton could have been under no illusions about the nature of the man he chose to serve. He did so anyway. Now he must be wondering: For what?"

Bolton's acting replacement is the man who has been his deputy since earlier in the year, Charles M. Kupperman, who has known Bolton for decades and who "has been a member of the boards of a number of defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin and Boeing."

See follow-up blog post on Disruptive Dissertation: On public shaming of, and service denial to, political officials

This, also, immediately following Trump's sudden announcement/cancellation of peace negotiations with the Taliban in September 2019.

A Sept. 15, 2019 article in the New York Times discussed the flagging morale of Border Patrol agents:

An agent in Arizona quit last year out of frustration. “Caging people for a nonviolent activity,” he said, “started to eat away at me.”

Lee Drutman wrote on Oct. 3, 2019 in "If Republicans Ever Turn On Trump, It’ll Happen All At Once": "Will Republicans finally break with Trump? ...political science has shown us that big political changes often come suddenly, after long periods of stasis. Looking back, it seems like of course the Soviet Union was bound to collapse. But up until the moment it did — and remember, it fell all at once — almost nobody predicted it." Drutman continued: "It’s not exactly a secret that if congressional Republicans could hold a secret-ballot no-confidence vote,1 they’d probably vote to oust Trump." Drutman cites Timur Kuran’s Private Truth, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, in which Kuran "argues that political regimes can persist despite being unpopular, which is why a government overthrow, when it does come, can often seem so sudden...if multiple citizens rise up in protest of a regime, it signals that it’s OK to protest — which can cause decades-old regimes to collapse all at once." When will we get there? Drutman: "it’s rank-and-file Republican senators up for reelection in solidly red states, like Bill Cassidy from Louisiana or Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma, whom you should watch. If they waver, that will signal that Trump’s days are numbered. Of course, the rub is that neither have spoken out against Trump — in fact, they’ve stuck by him — but that’s the point...Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in particular, has no incentive to break from Trump. After all, his plan for grinding out partisan victories with Trump in the White House involves the same zero-sum attack politics as the president uses. Not to mention, McConnell is also among those red-state Republicans up for election in 2020."

In October 2019, Michael Gerson wrote that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)"and the rest [of Trump's followers and apologists] must swallow the gelatinous pile of offal Trump gives them — all of it — or they are no longer in the club."

Ezra Klein wrote:

His [Trump’s] primary opponents spoke of him in apocalyptic terms. Ted Cruz called Trump a ‘pathological liar,’ ‘utterly amoral,’ and ‘a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.’ Rick Perry said Trump’s candidacy was ‘a cancer on conservatism, and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded.’ Rand Paul said Trump is ‘a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag. A speck of dirt is way more qualified to be president.’ Marco Rubio called him ‘dangerous’ and warned that we should not hand ‘the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.’

And then every single one of those Republicans endorsed Trump.

* * *

Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, commiserated with Dan Senor, a former Bush adviser, over the fact that Trump was ‘unacceptable’ — and then signed on as Trump’s vice president.

Ezra Klein. Why We’re Polarized. New York: Avid Reader Press, 2020. Chapter 7.

In June 2019, Michael Greiner imagined a 2026 election in which other Republicans run for office and in which Trump "will view the slightest deviation from his orthodoxy as a betrayal," making "a double-edged sword" for the party.

On the one hand, the U.S. population is getting more and more liberal, both due to demographics and as a reaction to Trump. This will only push the Trump supporters further to the right, and they continue to make up a majority of Republicans. As a result, his political legacy will be a burden to future Republican candidates.

On the other hand, he will not be a good party soldier, cheerleading from the sidelines much as Barack Obama and even Hillary Clinton have been. He will want the party to be all about him at a time when it needs to focus on its next candidate.

A New York Times editorial on October 18, 2019: "Afraid of his political influence, and delighted with his largely conservative agenda, party leaders have compromised again and again, swallowing their criticisms and tacitly if not openly endorsing presidential behavior they would have excoriated in a Democrat. Compromise by compromise, Donald Trump has hammered away at what Republicans once saw as foundational virtues: decency, honesty, responsibility. He has asked them to substitute loyalty to him for their patriotism itself." * * * "Some Republicans have clearly believed that they could control the president by staying close to him and talking him out of his worst ideas. Ask Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — who has spent the last two years prostrating himself before Mr. Trump in the hope of achieving his political goals, including protecting the Kurds — how that worked out. Mr. Graham isn't alone, of course; there is a long list of politicians who have debased themselves to please Mr. Trump, only to be abandoned by him like a sack of rotten fruit in the end. That’s the way of all autocrats; they eventually turn on everyone save perhaps their own relatives, because no one can live up to their demands for fealty."

In the Washington Post:

On Friday [Oct. 18, 2019], Rep. Francis Rooney (Fla.) hinted he would be open to impeachment, saying he wanted “to get the facts and do the right thing because I’ll be looking at my children a lot longer than I’m looking to anybody in this building.” A day later, Rooney announced he wouldn’t be running for reelection. That’s a personal decision, but we know from other Republicans’ decisions to retire that exasperation with defending Trump has fueled their motivation to leave Washington.

On October 23, 2019, Chris Cillizza wrote for CNN:

With very, very few exceptions, Senate Republicans -- very much including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) -- have a purely transactional relationship with Trump. They believe that he represents a chance to remake the federal judiciary, to remake American tax policy and the like. And they are somewhat (or very) afraid of crossing Trump because of his support within the base of the party and his demonstrated ability to turn voters against those who cross him.

That relationship is not based on any sort of warmth or actual loyalty, however. The reason McConnell and the rest go along with Trump — or refuse to say anything about his repeated abnormal behaviors in office — is because he remains a force who can do things for them and hurt them if they don't.

After Biden's inauguration in 2021, McConnell helped Trump win an another acquittal at his second impeachment trial, but "excoriated him in a Senate floor speech immediately afterward and then in a Wall Street Journal column." A Republican strategist said of Trump: "He has no master plan on what he wants to do, only that he wants to react to McConnell." Reportedly, as of February 2021, Trump was pressuring Senate Republicans to replace McConnell.

This would-be ambassador was so transparently corrupt about the way he was trying to obtain his position that even the Trump administration ultimately had to deny him the job.

In November 2019, Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani made an ambiguous comment to The Guardian that may have been a threat to the president.

When asked whether he was concerned Trump might throw him under the bus, Giuliani responded “with a slight laugh”: “I’m not, but I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid.” Seemingly recognizing how what he said could be interpreted in numerous different ways, his lawyer, Robert Costello, interjected: “He’s joking.” The Guardian left open the question whether the comment “was a joke or a veiled threat.”

A couple weeks later, Giuliani told Fox News that "I’ve seen things written like he’s going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say he isn’t, but I have insurance. This is ridiculous. We are very good friends. He knows what I did was in order to defend him, not to dig up dirt on [former Vice President Joe] Biden." He clarified on Twitter:

TRUTH ALERT:

The statement I’ve made several times of having an insurance policy, if thrown under bus, is sarcastic & relates to the files in my safe about the Biden Family’s 4 decade monetizing of his office.

If I disappear, it will appear immediately along with my RICO chart.

The Trump-Giuliani relationship may not survive the impeachment. Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, told reporters: "He shouldn’t joke, he is not a funny guy. I told him, 'Ten thousand comedians are out of work, and you make a joke. It doesn’t work that way.'" Costello said he made Giuliani call Trump to emphasize that he had not been serious.

Maeve Reston wrote for CNN:

For the last three years, Rudy Giuliani seemed to roam the world with impunity as a kind of rogue ambassador to President Donald Trump, swatting aside concerns from US national security aides and diplomats as he carried out the President's bidding.

But new reporting suggests that the man once hailed as "America's mayor" was simultaneously pursuing his own fortune, and his apparent self-dealing is now under such intense scrutiny that even the President is seeking distance from his personal lawyer.

Wednesday [Nov. 27] marked a terrible day for the former New York mayor when scrutiny on him intensified with new reports on his business dealings from The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The stories paint a portrait of a man who traded on his close relationship with the President as he explored lucrative deals in Ukraine that would enhance the influence of his firm, Giuliani Partners, and his personal wealth.

Johnny McEntee, Trump’s director of presidential personnel, wrote a memo on October 19, 2020, giving reasons why Esper should be fired. (The memo was revealed by ABC reporter Jonathan Karl in 2021.) Several weeks after the memo, Trump fired Esper. Washington Post columnist Max Boot wrote: "The very premise of McEntee’s memo was both sinister and ludicrous — a 30-year-old of no professional or intellectual distinction, whose path to power was carrying Trump’s bags, was making the case for getting rid of a senior Cabinet officer for insufficient loyalty to the president." Trump, argued Boot, will "turn the military into his personal goon squad" if given the opportunity in the 2024 election.

On August 17, 2020, Miles Taylor, formerly an official with the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, endorsed Biden's candidacy. He said: "I left the [Trump] administration on my own terms...because I got to a point where saying 'no' was no longer enough. We were constantly in a position with the President where — it's not that he would just tell us to do things that we would say are inappropriate, unethical, or illegal — it's that he would continue to consistently tell us to do those same things. That was an enormous frustration. And when I realized we weren't going to be able to pull him back from some of these impulses, it meant it was time to go." He was then offered a job he would have liked in a different administration, and he turned it down. He said the family separation policy was announced a few days before he stepped into a relevant role. "That said: family separation...is a textbook example of...government gone wrong." After the government officially ended the policy, "the president would come to us and say...he wanted to double down and implement a deliberate policy of ripping any kid apart from their parents that showed up at the border...That was stunning to me. Frankly, it was one of the most disheartening and disgusting things I've ever experienced in public service." Taylor also revealed that Trump denied wildfire aid to California for political reasons, and tweeted that he wanted to cut off FEMA aid to people whose homes had just burned down. FEMA's lawyers determined that the President's tweets didn't constitute presidential orders. He characterized this as "having to play whac-a-mole with bad presidential decisions, rather than just doing the work of governing." Taylor says that more people in the administration will give similar testimony to the effect that "he's ill-equipped to hold the office that he has and that a second term would be more dangerous than a first term."

"A new investigation from the Washington Post revealed that for the majority of 2017, Ivanka Trump used a private email account to handle government affairs. ... Ivanka claimed that she was unaware of the rules about personal email accounts." (The Cut, November 2018)

Former Rep. Christopher Collins, the first congressperson to endorse Trump's candidacy, was convicted in January 2020 of insider trading and lying to the FBI. He must go to federal prison in March. Initially, he had called the accusation a "witch hunt." Later, he pled guilty and asked for no jail time. He has been sentenced to 26 months.

In December 2019, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that “Ms. [Lisa] Page received more opprobrium than she deserved for her mistakes...but the Department of Justice is not to blame." The next month, however, Rosenstein admitted that he chose to publicize Strzok and Page's text messages. He claimed he did so for Strzok and Page's own good, because they would have been hurt more severely had their text messages leaked slowly rather than all at once.

After the Senate voted not to call witnesses or review evidence in the impeachment trial:

Intimidating judges:

In early 2020, Maris Kreizman wrote of James Comey, "Anonymous," and John Bolton: "...a new wave of exiles (or currently working members) of the Trump administration is...cashing in...ignoring official methods of reporting such abuses while they’re currently happening," and consumers are "rewarding bad-faith publishing efforts." Bolton got a $2 million advance from Simon & Schuster for a book that "contains damning information on Trump’s dealing with Ukraine that might have been useful to have on the record before Trump’s impeachment trial began in the Senate....The American people...deserve to have it for free, not for the list price of $32.50." And though Anonymous "did not collect royalties or an advance," they are "hiding safely behind the scenes even when they could have warned Americans about the country’s erratic leadership a year before the book was published." Kreizman wrote that "it’s particularly demoralizing to watch publishers package the ongoing debasement of our country as entertainment. If Trump’s best political weapon is being at the apex of an infotainment media system that is consumed like cable news, then publishers aren’t obligated to play his game."

Americans' fears (listed in 2014 by Chapman University) now include "corrupt government officials." (You can hear this on the "Ologies" podcast with Alie Ward: Fearology Pt. 1 (FEAR) with Mary Poffenroth (18:57))

In July 2020, Lauren Martinchek predicted that "lawmakers like Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz would not even bother hiding their disdain for the current President when they shared a debate stage just four years ago, and they’ll go back to doing the very same as soon as they determine it’s in the best interest of their careers to do so."

On July 10, 2020, Roger Stone — who had his sentence commuted by Trump — claimed to have recently become a Christian during a Franklin Graham rally. "I stood up. I accepted Christ as my savior. I felt like a cement block had been lifted from my chest...A year from now you may be calling me Reverend Stone! What else am I going to do with all these white suits I own?" he told a reporter. He said that Trump "knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t. They wanted me to play Judas. I refused." He said he expected Trump to show him "enormous fairness and compassion," as God would have done. On July 18, Stone appeared on a live radio show and used a racial slur to refer to the host.

In August 2020, 74 former security officials who served in Republicam administrations signed a letter explaining 10 reasons why they cannot vote for Trump and are instead endorsing Biden.

February 28, 2019 report in the New York Times: In 2018, the CIA and other sources raised concerns about giving Jared Kushner a top-secret security clearance, so White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II wrote an internal memo recommending against it. Nevertheless, Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant the clearance. Previously, Kushner had had only temporary and interim clearance.

Update: See where this ended up:

Sens. Ron Wyden and Jamie Raskin ask DOJ to name a special counsel to investigate whether Jared Kushner is acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Saudi Arabia (via Arthur Delaney) finance.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

[image or embed]

— Beetlejosh Beetlejosh (@joshuajfriedman.com) October 24, 2024 at 3:02 PM

1. Jared Kushner is involved in one of the most brazen and corrupt influence-peddling schemes in history. He calls it a private equity fund. But dig a little deeper, and it looks more like he is selling his influence with his father-in-law to foreign governments for billions. 🧵

[image or embed]

— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) November 13, 2024 at 9:07 AM

One of the hazards turned out not to be moral but epidemiological: Trump disapproved of wearing masks during a pandemic, and in early October 2020, his inner circle at the White House fell ill. The New York Times reported: "President Trump at times told staff wearing masks in meetings to 'get that thing off,' an administration official said. Everyone knew that Mr. Trump viewed masks as a sign of weakness, officials said, and that his message was clear. 'You were looked down upon when you would walk by with a mask,' said Olivia Troye, a top aide on the coronavirus task force who resigned in August and has endorsed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr."

On October 26, 2020, Ronald Sanders, chair of the Federal Salary Council, resigned, saying the president's new executive order was "clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the President, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process."

Now, after the 2020 presidential election, they want more "time" to craft information that seems to support their unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

Asked by Fox News anchor Bret Baier if the country would soon see evidence of Trump's allegations of fraud, [RNC chairwoman Ronna] McDaniel said: "You know Bret, we're working on that. And that’s why I'm saying, give us time." (The Hill, 6 November 2020)

But they are out of time to fix the information around the facts, because they have lost the election.

Kellyanne Conway, however, has been offered a multi-million-dollar book deal.

On December 20, 2020, Jennifer Rubin wrote for the Washington Post:

Former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly — the man who enthusiastically presided over the separation of children at the border; defended President Trump’s lies and accommodation toward Russia; and enabled arguably the most destructive president in our history — told the Atlantic: “The vast majority of people who worked in the White House were decent people who were doing the best they could to serve the nation.” He added, “They’ve unfortunately paid quite a price for that in reputation and future employment. They don’t deserve that. They deserve better than that, because they kept the train from careening off the tracks.”

This is dead wrong. These people are not victims. Their reputations have been besmirched for the best of reasons: They participated in an administration unparalleled in its corruption, meanness, racism and authoritarianism.

Former Republican Senator and Defense Secretary William Cohen says the Republican Party is behaving like circus animals under Trump's control, and "it's diabolical."

There may never be a moment of reckoning with the past. The fascist cult denies that facts exist. The conspiracy theories morph to fit the needs of the moment. As Jared Yates Sexton put it in a January 7, 2021 tweet, the day after the riot at the Capitol: "The lie is water. It finds the path of least resistance." So Trumpists will deny facts, even of a mass event that happened only the day before and was streamed live across the nation and the world. While denying what actually happened, they will project their own ethical failings onto others (whether those responsible parties are real people or imagined "boogeymen"). And they "will use the victory of having shown force and overtaken the Capitol for recruitment and mobilization."

Because "being a Trump supporter is a political identity in itself in a way that wasn’t remotely true for George W. Bush, or John McCain, or Mitt Romney," argues Brian Klaas, and because "the cult of personality that Trump has successfully built around himself," the Republican Party has somewhat boxed itself into a corner. Rising politicians in that party (especially if they are opportunist enough to try it) believe they "need to out-Trump each other." Now "candidates pander to the Trumpian base in increasingly extreme ways to separate themselves from one another." Never mind that it's unethical and personally degrading; it may not even be tactically successful. As long as Republican voters maintain the false narrative that Trump won the election and that fraudulent actors stole the victory that was rightfully his, they will see no need for the Republican Party to regroup and assess its ideals, platforms, and tone. Within their false narrative, the Republican Party did everything right and won more votes, so Republicans don't need to change; it is only that Democratic fraud needs to be exposed and power must be restored to the Republican Party to whom it supposedly rightfully belongs. This presents "impediments to genuine soul-searching for the post-Trump Republican Party." Republican leaders understand the reality that Trump lost the election. "But a large chunk of their voters doesn’t want reform and may even punish those who advocate it. What they want is Trump 2.0." That means those leaders are stuck. They have to pretend to be part of Trump's cult of personality.

In February 2021, the first day of Trump's second impeachment trial "raised a question that goes deeper than Trump’s offenses: Has American democracy become so polarized that reasoned debate is pointless? Are the Republicans so committed to power that it doesn’t even make sense to try to persuade them with evidence and logic? If so," Jeet Heer wrote in The Nation, "American democracy is facing a far-reaching and perhaps terminal crisis."

After the storming of the Capitol, morale dropped among GOP staffers. According to one staffer, all the other staffers they know are "angry and horrified at the lack of accountability their bosses are taking." Another claimed that they had already been miserable under Trump and had hoped that the climate would change: “We have overlooked the ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ comments, the first impeachment, the botched response to the pandemic, the refusal to concede — and I think a lot of us were hoping for a breath of fresh air once Trump left office." This staffer was frustrated that "even when Trump was at his least powerful and on the way out the door, our bosses still chose to stand by him and that is painful.”

This meme explains a lot. When someone brags during his campaign "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," it is not surprising when, five years later as he is supposed to leave office, he incites a violent mob to attack the Capitol building — and furthermore, although the other party votes in the House to impeach him, the members of his own party in the Senate, although they were in the building and were personally at risk during the attack on the Capitol, will not vote to convict him of inciting the violence. (To give artistic credit: The earliest version of the meme I've found is dated February 1.)

When Your Entire Party Has Turned Into A Cult. Trump: 'I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters.' 1/23/16. Five Republican senators: 'He could send a mob into the middle of the Capitol to shoot Congress and we wouldn't vote to convict him.'

When Omarosa Manigault Newman lost her job at the Trump White House in 2017, she did not file financial disclosure forms for two years afterward, and is being called to account in 2022. She was fined $61,000.

Trump has insulted Kellyanne Conway, blaming her for her husband's political opinions, which she does not share. In May 2020, Trump tweeted: “I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband ... but it must have been really bad.” In April 2022, he released a similar statement: “I don’t know what Kellyanne did to him, but it must have been really bad. She has totally destroyed this guy — his mind is completely shot."

When former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien testified to the January 6 House committee about Trump's claims of election fraud, he said that he himself had "acknowledged that there had been no mass election fraud and that Mr. Trump had lost the presidency fair and square," as Michelle Cottle wrote in the New York Times. He, and others like him, were on "Team Normal," in his words. Those who endorsed Trump's baseless claims of fraud were on "Rudy's Team" (i.e., Rudy Giuliani's side). Cottle says "Rudy's Team" is more like "Team Bonkers."

As for "Team Normal":

"Team Normal? More like Team Chicken.

...[Bill Stepien's] tale is sadly similar to those of so many other Trump courtiers. These are the people who could distinguish reality from delusion; they just chose not to do all that much about it."

Stepien "slunk away, coat collar flipped up and hat brim pulled low," Cottle said, having "sold his services and his soul." And for the past year and a half, "he has served as a consultant to the former president’s Save America PAC and signed on to work with Trump-backed candidates who have peddled, or have at least flirted with, the election-fraud fiction."

In January 2023, McKay Coppins told CNN:

“I was taken aback by how often I heard" Republicans say they looked forward to Trump's death, even those who outwardly supported Trump at rallies. "I thought it was kind of a morbid, dark joke at first. But I heard it so often that it started to become clear that this was actually what a lot of Republican believe and it just speaks to the desperation in the party."

In March 2023, HuffPost published this article about "The Moral Dilemma Over Working For Donald Trump."

At the end of May 2023, HuffPost writes:

"Trump once promised he would surround himself “with only the best and most serious people” but has since turned on many of those people, as they have on him.

Last month, for example, he slammed Mick Mulvaney, who served as his acting chief of staff for more than a year, as 'the dumbest person' and a 'born loser.' He's also attacked former national security adviser John Bolton, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former Chief of Staff John Kelly, former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and hand-picked FBI Director Christopher Wray, to name a few."

In June 2023, after Trump's second indictment, Alina Habba says she's "ashamed to be a lawyer."

June 13, 2023: "Michael Cohen Warns Walt Nauta: Trump 'Will Throw You Under The Bus'," Marita Vlachou, HuffPost. Cohen said on MSNBC: "He won’t throw you under the bus simply just to save himself. He’ll just throw you under the bus simply because he can." The evening before the arraignment in Miami, Trump and Nauta dined together at Trump's Doral resort.

July 2023: On July 14, there were be a Republican candidates forum, hosted by Tucker Carlson: "current GOP front-runner Donald Trump isn’t scheduled to appear at the event organized by conservative Blaze Media and the conservative Family Leader organization, whose CEO Bob Vander Plaats said in May that it’s time for Republicans to move on from the former president."

On July 31, 2023, Stephanie Grisham pointed out that Trump often hires people who are vulnerable, in the sense that he's elevating them and they feel like they won't make it if they're thrown back to sea. They don't know any other way to survive.HuffPost:

Grisham added that it would be challenging for someone like De Oliveira to abandon Trump, since he's still employed by Trump and has his legal expenses covered by him.

'You get out into that world without the Trump cushion and it’s very scary and it’s not very friendly, I’ve got to tell you,' she said.

Grisham continued: 'I think it’s a very basic necessity of survival that somebody like Carlos [de Oliveira] wouldn’t turn on Trump.'"

In August 2023, multiple people were identified in indictments, so:

"Predictable finger-pointing has now commenced.

Much of it is aimed at former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, identified in the indictment as Co-Conspirator 3. But there’s now also a sign that at least one co-conspirator might be gesturing back in the direction of Trump and his campaign."

* * *

'Rudy Giuliani had nothing to do with this,' Robert Costello [a lawyer for Giuliani] told CNN. 'You can’t attach Rudy Giuliani to Sidney Powell’s crackpot idea.'"

— "Finger-pointing begins inside Trump team over Jan. 6 indictment" (subscriber gift link), Aaron Blake, Washington Post, August 14, 2023

See also: "‘Abject Panic’: Lawrence O’Donnell Says Trump Allies Already Turning On Each Other," Ed Mazza, HuffPost, Aug 23, 2023

And:

"[Jenna] Ellis raised $200,000 via crowdfunding [for the Georgia election racketeering case], which Litman said “might fund two days of trial.”

“What are they really supposed to do other than get public defenders?” he said, noting that one of the figures in the classified documents case did exactly that by flipping and turning into a witness against Trump and avoiding prosecution as a result."

— 'Perfect Example': Ex-U.S. Attorney Names Trump Insider Who Could Flip Next, Ed Mazza, HuffPost, September 21, 2023

You will be booed: "Asa Hutchinson Booed After Predicting 'Significant Likelihood' Of Trump Conviction" “There is a significant likelihood that Donald Trump will be found guilty by a jury on a felony offense,” said the former Arkansas governor and 2024 hopeful. Shruti Rajkumar, HuffPost, Nov 4, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson, Substack, March 13, 2024:

"The result has been a Congress that can get virtually nothing done and instead has focused on investigations of administration officials—including the president—which have failed spectacularly. Republican members who actually want to pass laws are either leaving or declining to run for reelection. The conference has become so toxic that fewer than 100 members agreed to attend their annual retreat that began today. 'I'd rather sit down with Hannibal Lecter and eat my own liver,' a Republican member of Congress told Juliegrace Brufke of Axios."

He repeated it at a May 11 rally:

"The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? “Excuse me, I’m about to have a friend for dinner” as this poor doctor walked by. “I’m about to have a friend for dinner.” But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations! The late, great Hannibal Lecter. We have people that are being released into our country that we don’t want in our country, and they’re coming in totally unchecked, totally unvetted, and we can’t let this happen. They’re destroying our country."
'Why Hannibal Lecter?' Trump Dodges Reporter's Question After Praising Fictional Serial Killer: Trump bizarrely called “the late, great” Hannibal Lecter a “wonderful man” at a rally Saturday. Graeme Demianyk, HuffPost, May 13, 2024

Hannibal Lecter was still going on at the RNC in July 2024.

“I almost relate it to bodies around him,” said Cassidy Hutchinson.
Ex-Trump Aide Offers Macabre Characterization Of What Happens To All His Loyal Aides: Cassidy Hutchinson also addressed the new indictment of her onetime boss, the former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Lee Moran, HuffPost, Apr 25, 2024

"Conservative-backed group is creating a list of federal workers it suspects could resist Trump plans," Lisa Mascaro, AP, June 24, 2024

Kyle Rittenhouse Says He Isn't Voting For Trump, And MAGA Is Pissed: "MAGA is so mad at Kyle Rittenhouse now they are pulling up his birth certificate to see if he was born a woman, Black, or Indian," one social media user joked. David Moye, HuffPost, Aug 2, 2024

"The reality in America today is that anyone who opposes Trump – politicians, judges, election officials, FEMA workers trying to handle a natural disaster, anyone – faces an avalanche of violent threat. We saw glimpses of this during his presidency, but nothing of this quality. Imagine what it would be like with Trump back in power."

— Thomas Zimmer, "Donald Trump, American Fascist: Trumpism is what a specifically American, twenty-first century version of fascism looks like. And in November, fascism is on the ballot. Democracy Americana, Oct 15, 2024

Sources

"Advice for Those Weighing Jobs in the Trump Administration: Assessing the risks of service." David Frum, The Atlantic, Jan. 28, 2017.

"A Clarifying Moment in American History." Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic, Jan. 29, 2017.

"Beware Trump's Reichstag fire," Paul Waldman, The Week, Feb. 7, 2017.

Allan J. Lichtman. The Case for Impeachment. Dey Street Books, April 18, 2017. p. 21.

"John Kelly and the Dangerous Moral Calculus of Working for Trump", Ryan Lizza, New Yorker, October 20, 2017.

Ex-Bush speechwriter sets low bar for Trump’s SOTU: ‘As long as he doesn’t poke someone in the eye with a fork,’ Sarah K. Burris, Raw Story, Jan. 29, 2018.

Are Trump voters morally responsible for the harms that will follow from his policies? Jessica Wolfendale, ABC AU, 10 Nov 2024

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