Trump's inner circle egg him on
The people who occupied significant roles in the White House
and Cabinet during his first administration — who talked him out of (or
subverted) his illegal and unconstitutional cravings — are no longer there. In
their places are loyalists who will do whatever he wants.
But this conventional view overlooks a more important
explanation.
He’s more extreme this time because he’s attracted people
around him who are also extreme and pushing him to new levels of malevolence.
I’ve served under three presidents and advised a fourth. In
every case, I’ve seen the same pattern: A president acts as a magnet, drawing
into the highest levels of his administration people who not only share his
values but amplify them.
When a president wants to do a decent job — at the least,
respecting democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law — the magnet
produces an administration of people who respect our institutions of
self-government.
But when a president is malevolent, those drawn to him are
among the most fanatical and dangerous in the land.
Richard Nixon — the most malevolent president in recent American history before Trump — drew to the White House a collection of bottom-feeding crooks: H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Attorney General John Mitchell, Chuck Colson, Egil Krogh, G. Gordon Liddy, and E. Howard Hunt. They amplified Nixon’s worst paranoid and criminal tendencies.
Twisted people who surround a twisted president encourage
his malevolence.
They also provide him a chorus of group-think approval.
They embolden one another as they destroy norms for how
White House and Cabinet appointees are supposed to behave.
And they compete for his attention and praise by taking his
twisted values to new levels of malevolence.
Trump didn’t know enough in his first term to surround himself with unethical people. He hadn’t been in politics long enough to have a network of vicious clones who were drawn to him because of his viciousness.
Then, after losing the 2020 election, he had four years to
pull into his orbit some of the worst fanatics in the land — more loyal to him
than to the United States, eager to extend and magnify his fanaticism, obsessed
with white Christian nationalism, who are as, if not more, sadistic, cruel, and
vindictive as their boss.
We are now seeing the result. Stephen Miller’s
anti-immigrant scourge. Russell Vought’s retributive targeting of universities,
law firms, and the media. Kash Patel’s eagerness to investigate Trump enemies;
Pam Bondi’s eagerness to prosecute them. Kristi Noem’s cruelty. Robert Kennedy
Jr.’s paranoia. JD Vance’s misogyny. Marco Rubio’s and Pete Hegseth’s brainless
sycophancy.
Throughout history, malignant leaders have been rendered
more malignant by the malignant people they have attracted.
Think of Hitler’s top henchmen — Hermann Göring, Heinrich
Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer, Karl Dönitz — all of them
as, if not more, fanatical and sadistic than Hitler, eager to carry out his
orders, wielding considerable power on their own to wreak havoc and sow
destruction.
It’s not just that the guardrails are gone in Trump’s second
term. It’s that the people who have been drawn to him and are now surrounding
him are egging him on, competing for his attention and praise by doing even
worse, eagerly destroying democratic institutions and turning America into ever
more of a police state.
The good news is they will all but ensure that he will
overplay his hand. The bad is that, by then, they may have demolished much that
is good about this country.
