Trump's cult of loyalty breeds incompetence and corruption

Monica Crowley, a former Fox News personality who is now Trump’s chief of protocol, apparently left behind in a public area of an Alaskan hotel documents describing confidential planned movements of Trump and Putin during their Friday meeting in Alaska.

That’s nothing compared to Emil Bove, Trump’s new nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, who reputedly told subordinates at the Department of Justice that they should tell the courts “f--- you” and ignore any court order blocking the deportations of Venezuelan migrants declared to be gang members.

Then there’s Billy Long, a former auctioneer and Republican congressman who Trump nominated less than two months ago to head the Internal Revenue Service, with little background in tax policy beyond promoting a fraud-riddled tax credit. Long has already been fired after clashing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Long was the seventh person to head the IRS this year.

Let’s not forget E.J. Antoni, whom Trump just nominated to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics after firing former BLS chief Erika McEntarfer for presiding over a disappointing jobs report earlier this month.

Antoni is that rarity who has drawn harsh criticism from economists on the right as well as the mainstream for being ignorant, unprincipled, and incompetent. He recently called it “good news” that “all of the net job growth over the last 12 months has gone to native-born Americans.”

I haven’t even mentioned the towering ineptitude of Trump’s Cabinet picks, such as Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Kristi Noem. Or the flagrant cruelty and wild negligence of Trump assistants Russell Vought and Stephen Miller.

How to explain the rise of so many inept and unprincipled people?

Easy. They could never succeed on their own merits. As soon as their brainless incompetence became apparent — likely as soon as they took the first job that required some degree of intelligence and integrity — they were fired.

So they learned that the if they wanted to be rewarded with promotions, money, and power, they could not rely on the normal processes and systems of recognition for jobs well done. If they were to make anything of themselves, they must instead become a---lickers, lapdogs, and sycophants.

They must latch onto someone who values loyalty above integrity or competence, someone for whom fawning obsequiousness is the most important criterion for being hired and promoted, ideally someone who cannot tell the difference between a groveling toady and a knowledgeable adviser.

Enter Trump.

History is strewn with the wreckage of dictatorships that have attracted and promoted incompetent lapdogs lacking talent or integrity. As Hannah Arendt explained in her classic The Origins of Totalitarianism:

Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

Early in his career, Trump apprenticed himself to Roy Cohn, an unprincipled lawyer who taught the young Donald how to gain wealth and influence through ruthless bullying, profane braggadocio, opportunistic bigotry, baseless lawsuits, lying, and more lying.

Yet as Trump’s “fixer” with politicians, judges, and mob bosses, Cohn remained utterly loyal to Trump and his father, Fred.

Years later, in his first and bestselling book, The Art of the Deal, Trump drew a distinction between integrity and loyalty. He preferred the latter, and for him, Roy Cohn exemplified it. Trump contrasted Cohn with

all the hundreds of ‘respectable’ guys who made careers out of boasting about their uncompromising integrity but have absolutely no loyalty …. What I liked most about Roy Cohn was that he would do just the opposite.

Cohn died a disgrace, disbarred by the New York State Bar for unethical conduct after attempting to defraud a dying client by forcing him to sign a will amendment leaving Cohn his fortune.

People who climb upward by sacrificing their integrity to slavish subservience almost always fall on their faces eventually. Blind ambition trips them up. They cannot explain or defend their behavior by relying on principled competence because, like Roy Cohn, they are unprincipled and incompetent to their cores.

The people they latch onto meet similar fates but for a different reason.

Leaders who value loyalty above all else find themselves surrounded by sycophantic crackpots and fools who will not provide leaders objective or useful feedback about their actions — no warnings beforehand and no criticism afterward. All they get are a---licking commendations —“Wonderful idea, sir!” “Brilliant execution, sir!”

These cocoons of flattery seal off such leaders from the real-world consequences of what they do — which inevitably leads them to make grave mistakes. Some of those mistakes eventually cause their downfalls.

This perverse symmetry — the certain demise of grovelers because they’re incompetent and unprincipled, and the inevitable downfall of those to whom they grovel because they never receive useful and accurate feedback — marks the endpoint of all totalitarian systems. It’s the path on which Trump now treads.

This is not necessarily cause for hope. If history is any guide, many innocent people will suffer before the incompetent grovelers and the vain objects of their groveling meet their inevitable fates. America and the world are already suffering.

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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.