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Only the ‘Best’
In 2016, Donald Trump promised to “only hire the best people.” By 2018, he was openly trashing most of them. What Trump demands is absolute personal loyalty. Not to the office, not to the country, but to him.
When Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds endorsed fellow governor Ron DeSantis, Trump issued a statement that said, “Two extremely disloyal people getting together is, however, a very beautiful thing to watch.” Kneel before Zod, peasants.
In the past two weeks, three high-profile individuals associated with the Trump campaign have engaged in various levels of bad behavior that has been met with absolute silence.
First, Laura Loomer, the self-styled “investigative journalist” whom Don Jr. has been promoting as his father’s next press secretary, doxxed Riley Gaines for endorsing DeSantis. Gaines appeared at a DeSantis event and was compensated for her travel and expenses and that was reported to the FEC. Loomer, who sticks her head up Trump’s rear for free, tried to paint this as a scandal and published Gaines’ home address on X (formerly Twitter), exposing her to Antifa and the rest of the transgender crazies.
Then last week, convicted felon and still Trump advisor, Roger Stone called Casey DeSantis the “C” word. Not illegal, of course, but crude and an indication of the contempt Trump & Co. have for women. That she is a loyal wife, a mother of young children, and a cancer survivor is just icing on that crap cake.
Last night, it was reported that Ryan Fournier, a co-founder of Students for Trump, was arrested for pistol-whipping his girlfriend. I guess we should be grateful that he didn’t use the business end of that gun on her.
We could hope that the other co-founder of Students for Trump will take up the slack. Oh, wait. That guy was John Lambert, and back in 2021, he was sentenced to 13 months in prison for fraud, pretending to be a New York City attorney and bilking people out of thousands of dollars. He’s still working out his supervised release and may not be available.
Only the best people. And as long as you bend the knee you’re A-Okay.
Published in General
Lotta guilt-by-association there.
And how hard would it be to disassociate?
That’s the whole point, Drew. There is nothing too disgusting for Trump and Trumpland that it cannot be excused or ignored provided the perp shows the proper level of fealty.
“You must denounce!” is a demand that leftists always make, built on the foundation of “guilt by association.”
I mean, if you want to go there, sure. Don’t be surprised when people decline to play this game.
When you make it a point to repeatedly assert that you only surround yourself with the best people, you invite both guilt and praise based on those associations.
That’s become the whole basis for our decent into nastiness. We must not be decent human beings because decency is weakness. Assault with a deadly weapon? Do you love Trump? Then it’s all good!
So what do you think of this guilt-by-association that you claim to see?
Also, so often when Trump made a mistake, he didn’t state “The buck stops here” but rather prattled on about how he was given bad advice.
Well, maybe he should have treated governing the nation the same way that he treated private business decisions.
For example: He had team of lawyers help him on most important business decisions, including whether he should enter the 2016 presidential race as a Dem or a Republican. The lawyers said the Dem primary & convention would be controlled by the Clintons. So Trump knew by 2015 he would run as a “R.”
But when it came to the most important decision of his presidency, whether to declare COVID a national emergency, he blithely listened to Fauci’s explanation that declaring the infection to be an emergency was no big deal. It turned out that doing this meant that DoD, their guy Fauci, and FEMA were running the show. But Trump never apologized other than to say Fauci misinformed him.
This one decision cost the USA the full steam ahead economy, as well as allowing governors and mayors to enforce lockdowns and masking mandates. I’ve yet to hear him either accept any blame or apologize.
If anything has shown to be true about former President Trump over the past six years, it is that he does not hire the best people on way too many occasions. He doesn’t miss all of the time, most certainly. Steven Miller, all of his economic policy folks, and his press secretaries were absolute standouts. These were all very important people. One could argue in Trump’s defense that he was not of Washington, D.C., and not only had little depth of experience with personnel but was being back-stabbed by McConnell and many other long-term Republican operatives who were actually trying to undermine Trump personally, along with his policies. My hope, considering his chances are extremely high for winning the Republican nomination, is that he has learned many things and established ties with many people over the past six years that will help him be even more effective in a second term. I know none of these people mentioned in this post, but none of them seem very significant with the exception of Loomer, if, indeed she is projected for press secretary. In that role, she has mighty tall shoes to fill.
Because I really admired GW (and I still do), I had to learn to read between the lines in the mainstream media stories during GW’s administration. It’s now a habit. :)
I’ve never heard Trump use the word “loyalty,” which isn’t saying much since I’ve heard only a handful of his speeches anyway. But I’ve been curious about it ever since people started describing Trump as a maniacal demander of personal loyalty. It didn’t sound like him, but the speeches I’ve heard were campaign speeches and he wasn’t in that angry negative mode. People who follow him on Twitter (now X) probably know him differently than I do.
At any rate, I’ve been looking randomly for direct quotes in which he said anything to the effect of “I demand strict loyalty to ME and ME Alone!” I’ve not found any quotes that rise to that level of insanity. Not even close. He does often use the term “disloyal” in describing people. But it’s very broad usage when he does so. Trump sees himself as representing a branch of the conservative movement, one that believes in constitutional justice, for example, which would prohibit the cruel and unusual punishment meted out to the J6 protesters, to Trump’s family and friends and associates, and to Trump himself. So “loyalty” to him could mean loyalty to a movement, not to him personally. I don’t know, but it’s quite possible.
Here’s a page of direct quotes related to Trump’s use of the word “loyalty.”
Loyalty is something of value to me too. Pence takes the cake on the disloyalty front. If you work for a person or a company and you take a paycheck, if you stop wanting to support that person or that company, you quit. You don’t spy on your boss (Pence’s taking notes during private phone conversations with Trump, notes so he use them later–why else would he have been writing them down) or pretend to be supportive when you are not. In all things, be honest. Loyalty is a form of honesty to me.
Yes. I’ve never understood “He demands loyalty!” as a negative thing. If you’re running a business, you want those in your employ to be loyal to you and your business. Why would you keep anyone who was working against you?
You’re doing a lot of gear-shifting there.
Loyalty to your business is not always loyalty to you. The two can easily conflict. People who can’t discern the difference are not good at business or politics.
You assert that as if it was an absolute.
You betcha.
If you have a “yes-man” working for you, one of you is redundant. However, in the end, who takes the heat for bad decisions, the advisor or the boss? If an employee has his say, and the decision goes against him, he should either get on board or resign. If he tries to have it both ways by undercutting the decision and refusing to resign, fire the twit. On the spot.
In the UK all government officials swear “by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law.” We don’t have a king. Our oath is beyond the temporary occupant of the Oval Office and it is to the country and to the Constitution.
Did Mike Pence work for Donald Trump? Or did he work for us? When did we make the transition to “The United States of Trump?”
Trump even expects loyalty from other world leaders. When Bibi Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden after the 2020 election Trump went off on him. “The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake. He was very early — like, earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him.”
He demanded loyalty even before he was president. Speaking about John McCain (of whom I was never a big fan) in 2015 Trump said, “I’m a loyalist,” Trump said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe when McCain had criticized his tone on illegal immigration. “I’m a person that like if somebody is with me, I’m with that person. And John McCain was very disloyal to me.” What the hell did Trump do for McCain that engendered that level of personal loyalty?
And, of course, there’s DeSantis. “When I hear he might run, you know, I consider that very disloyal,” Trump said. “But it’s not about loyalty, but to me it is, it’s always about loyalty.” Trump and his acolytes insist that Trump pushed DeSantis over the finish line in his first gubernatorial campaign. But a Wall Street Journal exit poll after that race showed the difference was 100,000 African-American women that liked his stance on school choice. Nobody can tell me 100,000 black women give a rat’s patoot about whatever Donald Trump thinks.
It sounds clever, but of course a “yes-man” must have someone to say “yes” TO. A “yes-man” alone does nothing.
“The goal is to portray Trump as deviant, even when he’s doing the same thing as everyone else.”
Of course everyone demands loyalty. Of course it’s deviant when Trump does it too, let alone when he talks about it openly instead of settling scores behind the scenes or in dishonest ways.
Well, Trump is pretty good at both business and politics, doncha think?
Guilt by association.
Mind reading (“always” seems to result in the most uncharitable characterizations, go figure).
Taking someone else’s word for it.
Simply incorrect assertions.
None of this is new or healthy, but you can rage on EJ. Eventually the Orange Monster will go away and peace and good will return to the kingdom where you’ll live happily ever after.
Man, that’s a great summation. Where’s it from?
Yes!
My own amateur opinion on the matter of Trump’s view of loyalty (since I don’t actually know him, the people, or the specific situations where it’s come up) is that Trump is mostly a counter puncher. That so many are baffled by his counter punches is mostly due to most of us being oblivious to how even seemingly small words or actions are received by and affect others.
Also, a punch doesn’t have to be final. Reconciliation is possible. How many have been open to that? How many essentially set fire to the bridge?
I’m going to say this now, although I resnt EJ and his ilk demanding it.
It’s not ok to unjustifiably pistol whip anybody, even if the pistol whipper supports Trump.
It’s not ok to defraud, even if the fraudster supports Trump.
However, you can shove your disassociation demands right up your tuckus. There’s more baggage in that term than it should be asked to carry.
Glen Reynolds, arrived at via Althouse from last week some time.
My fear is that he has learned nothing and will not be able to attract the type of people that will make him at all effective in a second term.
My hope is that I am wrong.
I am with you, EJ. I think he is more concerned about his ego than he is about the state of the country. If he was really concerned about the disaster we are heading into he would support the person on our side most likely to win which isn’t him. Destroying or attempting to destroy possible opponents is all about his ego. Attacking or condoning attacks on people like Reilly Gaines who is a very important spokesperson for the right is unconscienable and highly destructive to our side. Those are behaviors much more native to the left from which Trump arose a long time ago but never seemed to totally free himself of the taint.
Left unsaid is the Establishment working hard to not work for him and undermine him.
It is not like Trump had the sort of support other GOP presidents would get.
Birds of a feather…
I’ll offer this observation: Had 98% of Repubs been subjected to what Trump has suffered in the last few years, they’d be hiding under a bed somewhere curled up in the fetal position and sucking their thumbs. It may be all there is to admire about Trump on a personal level, but I admire that strength and determination. His motivations may not be as pure as the driven, but I don’t give a damn. Add to that the facts that several GOPe pond scum have said that they won’t support Trump should he win the nomination, and you have an all-but-guaranteed Democrat victory for the White House in 2024.
And what “ilk” is that? People with decency? Or people who have enough of the megalomaniac and want someone who knows how to attract talent and move the ball forward?
This is, was and always shall be about judgment and competence. Which of those do view as expendable? Loomer is still in his inner circle, Stone is still in his inner circle and so far, he’s pretty damn quiet about Fournier.
What’s your “ilk?”