President Donald Trump has a loyalty problem. Actually, he has two of them.
The first concerns where his own loyalties lie. Consider these questions: Has he been loyal to the oath he took to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution? Does he respect the separation of powers and the limits on his authority as President? Does he understand that his role is to look out for the interests of all Americans, not just those who voted for him? Or that his mission as leader is not to build self-aggrandizing monuments or to use his position to lavishly enrich himself and his family?
We all know the answers.
Trump’s second loyalty problem involves his expectation of absolute loyalty from those in his orbit. During his first term, Trump’s cabinet and other political appointments didn’t work out as he had hoped. Rather than offering unequivocal fealty, many of these appointees pushed back against his proposed policies, or whims, and ultimately either resigned or were fired.
In his second term, the President has been determined to not repeat this mistake. This time, his inner and surrounding concentric circles of political appointees have obligingly supported a long list of misbegotten decisions. These include his inhumane crackdown on immigrants, his disastrous tariff policies, his gutting of federal programs critical to the health and safety of Americans and the environment, and his protracted, costly, and unlawful war of choice against Iran.
Had Trump not appointed individuals willing to provide fawning approval of his every whim, and instead chosen staff with the intelligence, courage, and skills to challenge his harmful inclinations, this country might not be in the dire straits it’s in today.
Yes, of course the President has a right to include abject loyalty in his hiring criteria, when he selects the thousands of political appointees his administration is authorized to bring on board. It’s not wise, but it is permissible under our system of government.
What he can’t do when hiring career federal employees (and I was one for nearly four decades, serving under presidents from Jimmy Carter to the first Trump Administration) is to apply a loyalty or political affiliation test. And yet, for more than a year, that was exactly what Trump’s Office of Personnel Management was doing—asking applicants for nonpartisan federal jobs to write essays explaining how they would help advance the President’s agenda. On September 11, a federal judge in Massachusetts sided with the unions challenging this practice and ordered Trump to knock it off.
Trump’s demands for loyalty extend far beyond the executive branch. He also requires strict allegiance from Republicans in Congress. Cross him and be prepared to be primaried by a MAGA acolyte. This might not be illegal, but it surely undermines our system of checks and balances.
Even the judicial branch is not exempt from Trump’s loyalty test. That was made abundantly clear in February, when a 6 to 3 majority of the Supreme Court—including his appointees Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch—struck down his massive, unlawful “emergency” tariff regime. While these justices have more often than not sided with the President, his demand for 100% loyalty came through loud and clear.
“Certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they ‘supposedly’ stood for,” Trump posted on Truth Social, referring to Barrett and Gorsuch.
In mid-September, after another 6 to 3 majority of the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempt to control mail-in voting, he lambasted Barrett and Gorsuch again, along with Brett Kavanaugh, for betraying him: “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.”
Yes, Donald Trump has a loyalty problem, but it’s mostly our problem. He’s happy being loyal to his self-interest, and demanding the loyalty of others to enable him to pursue his ill-conceived policies. We’re the ones living with the consequences.
Let’s show the President a different kind of loyalty, a loyalty to the higher ideals to which this country aspires. And one way to do that is to vote in the November election—for candidates who will fight for this vision of loyalty.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.
