Everything we have seen since the election suggests that one thing and one thing only will matter in Donald Trump's administration: Loyalty.
Nothing that's decided in a Trump administration will be a measure of good ideas or efficacy or even competency. Loyalty will reign supreme. We know this by the sacking of Chris Christie, who had been heading Trump's transition team for months. But Christie was an enemy of Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner because as a U.S. attorney, he prosecuted and jailed Kushner's father. And now we are hurtling toward the inauguration with a transition team that spent most of the week in complete disarray, thousands of open positions that Trump’s deputies are having trouble filling, and an atmosphere that's been described as a "knife fight."
It's worth mentioning that the time of transition from one administration to the next is one of our country's most vulnerable moments, as entirely new occupants of the White House try to find the light switches. That couldn't be more true right now. But long-term, what’s more worrisome is the notion that fealty to Trump and his kids will be the defining aspect of his administration and approach to governance—if governing is really even a consideration for him. Eliot Cohen, a GOP defense hawk and W. alum who opposed Trump, may have summed it up best in his explanation for why he stopped advising people to take administration posts after originally trying to help the transition team identify candidates. Cohen wrote:
Trump was not a normal candidate, the transition is not a normal transition, and this will probably not be a normal administration. The president-elect is surrounding himself with mediocrities whose chief qualification seems to be unquestioning loyalty. He gets credit for becoming a statesman when he says something any newly elected president might say (“I very much look forward to dealing with the president in the future”) — and then reverts to tweeting against demonstrators and the New York Times. By all accounts, his ignorance, and that of his entourage, about the executive branch is fathomless. It’s not even clear that he accepts that he should live in the White House rather than in his gilt-smeared penthouse in New York.
We all knew that Trump was a self-obsessed narcissist who had no interest in the actual job of being president, let alone any idea of what it entailed. But now that it's clear that being faithful to Trump will be the organizing principle of his administration, we are looking at a faster race to the bottom than maybe we had even imagined.
What this could mean is that anyone who tries to take a principled stand of any kind that defies Trump will be immediately at risk of being replaced by someone who has sworn allegiance to Trump, no matter how stupid or incompetent they may be. The loyalty litmus test doesn't just open up that possibility: it makes it inevitable. It creates an atmosphere where everyone is looking over their shoulder rather than concentrating on their jobs.
For instance, MSNBC's Richard Engel reported last week that generals have been studying the U.S. Constitution to determine if they would be required to follow what they might consider an "immoral and illegal order," like rounding people up and deporting them.
To some, that may seem alarmist and to others, it probably doesn't. But Engel raises an important point and it’s worth taking his scenario a step further—what happens to someone who disobeys Trump? In an administration where loyalty reigns supreme, Trump's minions find a way to sideline or remove that person and put someone else in charge who will follow orders.
If you think the military example is too far-fetched, you can apply it to any other agency. The Department of Homeland Security civil servant who refuses to implement a crazy deportation scheme. The Justice Department attorney who declines to make what they deem to be a blatantly unconstitutional argument in a court of law. The CIA operative who rejects waterboarding. Once government employees witness a few people being drummed out of their jobs, they will begin to weigh everything against the prospect of losing their livelihood. Far too many government workers could face a choice between sidelining their integrity and falling in line or quitting.
In fact, during the campaign, then-Trump transition chief Chris Christie started pushing the idea of loosening the laws to make firing civil servants easier.
"One of the things I have suggested to Donald is that we have to immediately ask the Republican Congress to change the civil service laws. Because if they do, it will make it a lot easier to fire those people," Christie said.
He said firing civil servants was "cumbersome" and "time-consuming."
At the time, Christie was talking about purging Obama appointees who had been converted to civil servants. But that's really just a footnote to the fact that they were already "drawing up a list" of government employees to fire and imagining how they could streamline that process. Don't think for a second that the likes of Trump and his chief advisers would hesitate to try to make good on that. As Christie noted, Trump revels in firing people and nothing was more clear during the campaign than his penchant for retaliating against anyone who crosses him.
This all may sound paranoid and perhaps it is, but we must remain vigilant until the incoming administration proves us wrong. This past week hasn't done anything to inspire confidence. To the contrary, it suggests a parade of horrors is heading our way guided by something even worse than a terrible ideology—loyalty to a single person. It kicked off with an internal coup mounted by a Trump family member who is now seeking a White House appointment in contravention of federal law. By week’s end, a string of loyalists had been named to top posts at the White House and in the Cabinet: campaign aide Steve Bannon, GOP chair Reince Priebus, Sen. Jeff Sessions, and retired Army Lieutenant General Mike Flynn among them.
Perhaps one defense against this scheme is the fact that Cabinet appointees must be confirmed by the Senate, albeit by a simple majority now. As Matthew Yglesias writes:
Even with an absolutely first-rate group of Senate-confirmable executive branch appointees, the practical problems with having elected a president with no knowledge of or interest in public policy will be considerable.
But if Trump is allowed to stack the Cabinet with yes men, cronies, and sycophants, then the danger becomes severe. [...] We cannot allow personal loyalty to Donald Trump to be the decisive factor in staffing the executive branch. Personnel is policy, and if fealty to Trump determines the personnel, then fealty to Trump will also be the policy.
Democratic senators in safe seats are going to have be loud about Trump’s nominations, just like Sen. Elizabeth Warren was on Friday. Democrats don’t have enough votes to block them, but perhaps some moderate Republicans can be persuaded to vote down the most egregious picks. All in all, it’s not particularly promising, but it’s worth raising hell along the way to at least sound the alarm bells about how dangerous this administration is shaping up to be.