A Warning

Everywhere you look within the walls of the White House are shrines to our democracy. On one end of the main floor, George Washington’s commanding portrait hangs in the East Room for all to see. First Lady Dolley Madison famously rescued this national treasure before the British set fire to the building during the War of 1812. On the other end, guests are greeted in the State Dining Room by Abraham Lincoln’s likeness hanging above the fireplace, one of the most valuable paintings of the sixteenth president. The stately rooms in between, famously restored and redesigned by Jacqueline Kennedy, are filled with priceless artwork, furniture, and symbols of our history.

Upstairs is the president’s private residence, where every commander in chief since John Adams has lived with his family. Notable guests stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, which the martyred president once used as a working office, or the Queen’s Bedroom, where Winston Churchill rested during wartime visits to Washington. On the ground floor, special guests can tour the White House library, the China Room, the Map Room used by President Roosevelt to monitor sensitive developments during the Second World War, and the Diplomatic Reception Room, where acclaimed world figures have been welcomed to our nation’s capital.

Most interest is usually reserved for one room in particular. To get there, you walk out of the White House residence to a building next door: the West Wing. Built in the early 1900s to accommodate a growing staff, the West Wing houses the offices of the president and senior advisors, the Situation Room, the Cabinet Room, and more. The Oval Office is its crown jewel. Itself a historic splendor, the room is iconic, from the presidential seal carved into the ceiling to the Resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria in 1880 made from the timbers of a salvaged ship. It is the same desk where Harry Truman displayed a plaque that read “The buck stops here” and where John F. Kennedy’s young children sometimes played while their father worked.

The Oval Office fills visitors with a sense of respect. This is where our leaders make life-and-death decisions, shape the direction of our country, and address the people. Ronald Reagan spoke from behind the Resolute desk after the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, honoring the memory of those lost. “We will never forget them,” he said, “nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’” George W. Bush calmed a grieving nation after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, telling Americans from the same room that “a great people has been moved to defend a great nation… the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world, and no one will keep that light from shining.” Whether you are there for a tour, or whether you work for the president, it is hard to shake this quiet feeling of reverence, no matter how many times you enter the room.

That is, until the silence is broken.

“It’s a hellhole, okay? They don’t let you say ‘shithole’ anymore. But that place is a hellhole and everybody knows it.”

“Watch them start to choke like dogs.”

“This place is kind of sexy, isn’t it?”

“I don’t fucking care. Ooh ooh ‘excuses, excuses.’ Just stick it to them. I promise you, they will be kissing our asses afterwards.”

“I’m hotter than I was then, okay? Because you know you also cool off, right? You do. But I’m much hotter.”

“It is very unfair to me. And it’s presidential harassment frankly. You can’t harass a president.”

“Sweetie, your face looked very tired on television. Have you lost weight?”

“I think I’ve done more than any other first-term president ever.”

“If you’re going to cough, please leave the room… Do you agree with the cough?”

“I think it’s probably, uh, I want them to think whatever they think, they do say, I mean, I’ve seen and I’ve read and I’ve heard, and I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs, do I believe it? Not particularly.”

“We have the worst laws and the stupidest judges.”

“This guy, have you seen him? ‘My Pillow.’ He’s unbelievable. He buys all the airtime on TV. It’s terrific. And he’s a big, big Trump supporter.”

“This is one of the great inventions of all times—TiVo.”

“You’re saying it’s MY fault? It’s all fucked, and it’s your fault.”

These are the sounds bouncing off those rounded walls today, or on any given day of the Trump presidency. Some of these have been said with television cameras in the room and others with the doors closed. All of them reflect the real Donald Trump. Not everyone sees the full Trump, especially the one who is red-faced, consumed with fury, and teetering at the outer limits of self-control. Visitors are sometimes greeted with something they don’t expect.

Many people, including those with a low opinion of the president, tend to be pleasantly surprised when they first encounter him in this place. They don’t mind that he has no filter. In fact, there is something refreshing, even charming, about a politician just saying whatever pops into his or her head. He can also be funny. Sometimes he will delight in calling up officials on speakerphone and making jokes at their expense to the amusement of staff sitting on the couches. When so many politicians cling to clichés and talking points, one who is routinely straightforward and indiscreet is kind of disarming.

Those who want to see the best in President Trump, as we tried to do when the administration began, can write off his unorthodox behavior and strange stream-of-consciousness commentary as the result of putting a “disruptor” in the White House. Besides, we used to tell ourselves, there have been a number of chief executives who’ve acted unscrupulously in office. If those Oval walls could talk, they would recount Lyndon Johnson’s vulgar comments and crude advances, John Kennedy’s and Bill Clinton’s assorted trysts, and Richard Nixon’s efforts to obstruct justice and seek vengeance against his enemies.

Trust me, though. This is not the same. In the history of American democracy, we have had undisciplined presidents. We have had incurious presidents. We have had inexperienced presidents. We have had amoral presidents. Rarely if ever before have we had them all at once. Donald Trump is not like his predecessors, everyone knows that. But his vices are more alarming than amusing. Any entertainment derived from seeing this sort of irreverent behavior in the West Wing quickly wears off and is replaced by lingering dread about what comment, tweet, or direct order might come next.

The character of a president should be of the utmost concern for citizens. We are ceding day-to-day control of the government to that person, after all. Along with it, we are delegating decisions that affect our children’s futures and our personal well-being. That is why it’s every American’s responsibility to assess the occupant of the Oval Office and consider the leader’s disposition and moral qualities, especially when deciding whether that person remains suited for the role. Before we look at any other aspect of Trump’s presidency, this is what we must do.

To judge a person’s character, we first must know what it is, how to measure it, and ultimately why it matters.

Defining Character

The debate about character is a philosophical one, specifically a branch of philosophy known as “ethics.” Ethics is the study of how a person should act, particularly toward others. That is where character comes in. People have written volumes on the subject and how it should be defined, but you know it when you see it. A person of character is someone who is upstanding, who is reliable, who carries him- or herself with dignity. A basic definition says character is “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual,” but it’s not enough to have good morals. Your behavior must spring from them. Simply put, your moral code is your “software”—your belief system—that operates your “hardware”—your body and its actions.

The important question when looking at a president is: What should those moral qualities be? What are the ideal traits we expect a leader to demonstrate?

The question of character consumed the Ancient Greeks. Their greatest philosophers, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all asked themselves, “What makes a man ‘good’?” A rough consensus emerged about core elements. These qualities came to be known as the “cardinal virtues”: wisdom, temperance, courage, and justice. They were deemed to be the behaviors a person needed in order to reach high moral standing.

A few hundred years later, another thinker took these virtues a step further. Cicero, a revered Roman luminary, was interested in more than just a man’s character. He wanted to explore a statesman’s character. The Roman Republic was in crisis, overrun with arrogant and dishonorable men, so Cicero decided to examine what moral qualities were needed in great leaders. Influenced by the philosophers before him, he wrote a seminal work, De Officiis (or “On Duties”). In the form of a letter addressed to his son, Cicero spelled out how a public servant should behave. His tome has since inspired great figures throughout world history, including America’s Founding Fathers.

What does this have to do with Donald Trump? Well, Cicero gave us a useful guide for measuring a leader’s character. His four-part rubric will sound familiar: (1) “understanding and acknowledging truth”; (2) “maintaining good fellowship with men, giving to every one his due, and keeping faith in contracts and promises”; (3) “greatness and strength of a lofty and unconquered mind”; and (4) “the order and measure that constitute moderation and temperance.” In short, it was a version of the cardinal virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. His formula is as relevant in today’s fractured political climate as it was during the rockiest days of the Roman Republic, which is why we are going to use it to assess the current president.

Before we inspect Trump’s character, we need to ask ourselves whether it matters at all. As I said, the United States has been led by men who displayed less-than-model behavior during their presidencies, to put it mildly. They cheated on their wives and the public. They broke their promises. Yet these executives still managed to accomplish admirable feats to advance civil rights, spur economic growth, and defend the country against foreign enemies. Can’t Trump still do great deeds without being a man of impeccable character? If Trump is flawed, or deeply flawed, does it really make a difference?

The answer to both questions is “yes.”

Great deeds can be done by imperfect men. We just need to decide whether it’s worth it. Unscrupulous presidents have been successful at times, but it came at a cost. Was it worth it to elect James Buchanan, for example, a president who delayed the nation from plunging into civil war, but only by defending the institution of slavery and protecting the slave-holding interests of the South? In hindsight, most would say no. He should have had the spine and grit to confront the scourge of slavery. Buchanan is now considered to be one of the worst American presidents.

Our leaders don’t need to be superheroes. Most are far from it. However, we should invest in someone whose virtues outweigh their vices. A president must be equipped to do more good than harm for the people. His or her character may not inform every single decision, but it will shape their overall record, which is important because we depend on our president for a lot. We rely on the president to manage the largest enterprise in the world, the US government; to lead the nation through crises, whether it’s a natural disaster or an attack; and to set an agenda to move the country forward. Finally, we rely on the president to be a role model. Those who are exalted get emulated. When we put the chief executive on a pedestal, young people in particular will learn from the leader’s behavior, setting the tone for future civic engagement.

A man’s character is tested when he’s given power. That much we know from history. President Trump has been in power for several years, and he’s been thoroughly tested. The results are revealing. It’s been said that character is a tree, and reputation its shadow. The character of the president casts a long shadow across all Americans, and in time, his reputation will become our own. As you read this chapter ask yourself: Is this who we are? If not, is this who we want to be?

The President’s Wisdom

When I contemplate President Trump’s “wisdom,” I’m not talking about encyclopedic knowledge. Cicero said true wisdom doesn’t require knowing all the facts up front. Rather, it consists of “learning the truth,” an eagerness to seek the facts and to get to the root of an issue. He warned it is wrong to claim to know something you don’t, or to waste time on frivolous issues. It is “dishonorable to stumble, to wander, to be ignorant, and to be deceived.” In other words, a leader should not fall for “fake news” and assume something is true when it’s not.

Does Donald Trump possess these essential characteristics of wisdom?

Let’s start with a curious mind. Trump doesn’t have a deep bench of knowledge about how government works. He’s never served in it, and he’d never run for any office prior to the 2016 campaign. It would be unfair to expect him to understand all the nuances of the legislative process or how a large bureaucracy functions. What is troubling about the president is not that he came into office with so little information about how it runs. It’s that he’s done so little to try to learn more in order to do his job.

Donald Trump is not a curious person. He barely reads, if at all, and he scolds officials who come to brief him with anything more than the most succinct reading material possible, as noted previously. “It’s worse than you can imagine,” former economic advisor Gary Cohn reportedly wrote in an email. “Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

During the campaign, candidate Trump variably touted and dismissed his own reading habits. He proclaimed himself a great advocate of the Bible, remarking in February 2016 that “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” He was unable to point to a single Bible verse that he found inspiring, almost certainly because he’s never actually read it. I’ve never heard him mention scripture of his own accord, nor has anyone else I know. When pressed further about his reading habits, Trump once said he had no time to dive into books. “I never have. I’m always busy doing a lot.” At one point, news host Megyn Kelly asked him about the last book he read, to which Trump responded, “I read passages. I read areas, chapters. I don’t have the time. When was the last time I watched a baseball game?”

The lack-of-time argument is dubious. Looking each morning at the president’s daily schedule, any of us could tell you he carves out more than enough time to do what he wants. The demands of the job rarely keep him away from the golf course. Both of President Trump’s predecessors, Bush and Obama, were voracious readers. Trump himself frequently stays up late in the residence, and he often doesn’t start the day in the Oval Office until 10 or 11 a.m. Rather than consume books, he spends his time bingeing on cable news, tweeting, and making phone calls. In his own words, Trump says he doesn’t need to read to make informed decisions because he acts “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already have], plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”

The sheer level of intellectual laziness is astounding. I found myself bewildered how anyone could have run a private company on the empty mental tank President Trump relies upon every day to run the government. On television, a CEO-turned-showman can sit around a desk and bark orders at subordinates and then go to commercial. In real life, a successful CEO has to absorb a lot of information, about the economic climate, about his or her competitors, about product and consumer trends. How can you manage a sprawling organization if you won’t read anything? Not very well, it turns out.

The president does claim to be highly intelligent, though. He has been touting his intellect for years and loves to boast about his great brain in private meetings at the White House. In 2013, he tweeted: “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest—and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.” In 2016, when asked during the campaign whom he was consulting on foreign policy, he responded: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain, and I’ve said a lot of things… My primary consultant is myself, and I have, you know, I have a good instinct for this stuff.” On the contrary, outside advisors who helped him with debate prep were mortified by his lack of understanding on the subject. In 2018, he took to Twitter again to burnish his cognitive credentials: “My two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” he posted in January 2018. “I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star… to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius… and a very stable genius at that!” Intelligence is one of those qualities that, if you insist you have it, you probably don’t. Nonetheless, Trump is known to interrupt briefings with assertions along the lines of, “Yeah, I get it. I’m pretty smart, okay?”

The president frequently claims to be an expert on issues about which, in reality, advisors will have found out he knows very little. Here is a sample from a much larger list put together by astute observers:

On campaign finance: “I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I’m the biggest contributor.”

On the courts: “I know more about courts than any human being on Earth.”

On trade: “Nobody knows more about trade than me.”

On taxes: “Nobody knows more about taxes than I do.”

On ISIS: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.”

On the US government: “Nobody knows the system better than I do.”

On technology: “Technology—nobody knows more about technology than me.”

On drone technology, specifically: “I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have.”

On the contrary, I’ve seen the president fall flat on his face when trying to speak intelligently about most of these topics. You can see why behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an “idiot” and a “moron” with the understanding of a “fifth or sixth grader.” Folks have been forced to publicly deny those specific quotes, usually with non-denial denials. These are the tamest descriptions used internally to express exasperation with the commander in chief. People normally tack a string of expletives onto the front and back ends of their assessments.

You don’t always get this level of candor. Even in private, officials are afraid to express their opinions about the president because they don’t know whom to trust. In one instance when we were all on the road, a high-level aide waited until we were thirty thousand feet in the air, everyone around us was asleep, and we were out of the country to share his own daily anecdotes of how alarmingly uninformed the president was. The man was a wreck, he lamented, and had a juvenile view of complex subjects. Trump was all over the map when he spoke and was unfocused when it came time to sit down and talk about serious issues. I assured him that was the general experience.

Trump defenders will be tempted to write these off as the musings of Never-Trumpers, but that is not the case. We are talking about people who came into office committed to serving the commander and carrying out the mission. I am not qualified to diagnose the president’s mental acuity. All I can tell you is that normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness. He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity. Those who would claim otherwise are lying to themselves or to the country.

The president also can’t remember what he’s said or been told. Americans are used to him denying words that have come out of his mouth. Sometimes this is to avoid responsibility. Often, it appears Trump genuinely doesn’t remember important facts. The forgetfulness was on display after the president was briefed on a major Category 5 hurricane approaching Florida. “I’m not sure I’ve ever even heard of a Category 5… I don’t know that I’ve ever even heard the term,” he told reporters. White House aides were baffled. He’d been briefed on four other Category 5 hurricanes during his time in office. Was he forgetting these briefings? Or more problematic, was he not paying attention at all? These are events that affect millions of Americans, yet they don’t seem to stick in his brain.

You don’t need to be a presidential appointee to witness his irregular mental state. Just watch any Trump rally. While giving a speech on energy production one day, the president made an errant comment about Japan, complaining that they “send us thousands and thousands—millions!—of cars, [and] we send them wheat. Wheat! That’s not a good deal. And they don’t even want our wheat. They do it to make us feel that we’re okay, you know, they do it to make us feel good.” Ignoring the fact that trade with Japan was irrelevant to the speech, the comment didn’t make sense. Wheat is not a top US export to Japan. It’s not even one of our main agricultural exports to the Asian nation, as appointees in our Commerce Department later pointed out. Also, his characterization isn’t a coherent way of thinking about how countries purchase goods. Nations don’t buy our products on behalf of their people, and they don’t do it to make us “feel good.” Trump makes such statements all the time, leading to our next point.

The president flunks Cicero’s “fake news” test badly. The Roman philosopher says it is dishonorable to stumble ignorantly when it comes to the facts and to be deceived. Sadly, Trump has built a reputation on disinformation. Before he was elected, he was a regular booster of Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind the website Infowars. “Your reputation is amazing,” Trump affectionately told Jones in one appearance on his show. This, of course, is the same Alex Jones who suggested that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was faked and that the Apollo 11 moon landing never happened.

Trump was also one of the most visible adherents of “birtherism,” perpetuating (false) suspicion that Barack Obama was not born in America and fearmongering that he’d lied about his religion. “He doesn’t have a birth certificate,” Trump told Laura Ingraham in a 2011 interview, “or if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me—and I have no idea if this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be—that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim.’ And if you’re a Muslim, you don’t change your religion, by the way.”

Among many other conspiracy theories, Trump suggested without evidence that Senator Ted Cruz’s dad was involved in the Kennedy assassination, that Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered, that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough might have been involved in a former intern’s death, that a former Clinton advisor’s suicide could have been something more nefarious, that Muslim Americans near New York City celebrated in the streets after 9/11, that vaccines cause autism, and more. External observers can barely keep these lists of his claims updated. Internal observers are no better off. We wonder, does he actually believe these conspiracies? Does he just say this stuff to get attention? I can’t get into his head, but my guess is a little bit of both.

Serious people throughout the White House cringe when they hear him raise these subjects. Trump will wrap his arms around bogus claims like they are old friends, and he doesn’t care if the person spewing them is a fraud, as long as their words serve whatever purpose Trump has in mind at the moment. One of his favorite sources for news analysis is Lou Dobbs, a once-respected Fox host whose late-night show is now riddled with conspiracy theories and wild speculation about current events. The president goes to bed with Lou’s ideas floating in his mind, whether it’s conjecture about liberal billionaire George Soros or ideas for new Justice Department investigations. We know this because he regularly brings Lou’s ideas into the Oval Office the next morning, demanding they be implemented the way Lou said they should be. I can’t think of another elected leader in this country who is so easily lured in by obvious carnival barkers.

The president spreads false claims almost daily. He is the nation’s most prominent re-tweeter of “fake news” while simultaneously being its biggest critic. In fairness, every president gets facts wrong once in a while. The difference is that those presidents seemed to care when they misspoke. They didn’t recite sham information every day as a matter of course without regard for the consequences. Yet after making a demonstrably untrue statement, the president displays zero remorse that he has done so. He’s comfortable being a huckster of half-truths.

Both his appointees and the public hear misleading statements from the president so often that we’ve become desensitized to them, from an early claim that his inauguration was the largest-attended in history (this was easily debunked) to his insistence that the special counsel’s report exonerates him (it explicitly does not). We will explore the president’s tenuous relationship with the truth in more detail. For now, though, we can safely say that Trump doesn’t meet Cicero’s standard for someone who reveres and seeks the truth, someone who isn’t easily deceived or doesn’t spread misinformation.

A wise man he is not.

The President’s Sense of Justice

When I refer to “justice,” it’s not about law and order. Cicero defined the concept as a way of characterizing how an individual treats others. Does the person maintain good fellowship with other people? Does he or she give everyone what they deserve? And does the individual keep faith in contracts and promises? These are the qualities of a “just” person. Cicero adds to the mix that this type of person also displays “beneficence and liberality,” i.e., they are kind and generous.

Donald Trump certainly thinks a lot about justice. So much so, in fact, that the president has tweeted about something being “fair” or “unfair” nearly two hundred times since taking office. His concern tends to be about whether he is being treated fairly personally. “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!” he tweeted after the show mocked a White House press conference in February 2019. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!” The president was insinuating that television networks needed to be investigated and punished for poking fun at him. Thankfully no one was dumb enough to follow up with the Federal Communications Commission to put them on the case.

He spends a lot of time talking to staff about perceived injustices. Trump will complain about his coverage, his critics, and anything else that he believes is unfair. Then he will send White House aides on an endless quest to “fix it.” The president might want an aide to get on the phone to scold a television commentator who’s been disagreeing with him or to tell a foreign leader that we’re “done” dealing with their country because Trump doesn’t like what they’ve said about a White House policy. It’s gotten so tiring that aides will acknowledge the gripe and pledge to remedy it, while letting it drop to the very bottom of (or off) their to-do lists because the problem is impossible to fix, pointless to address, or requires a counterproductive solution.

No venue is off limits for his complaints of injustice. Shortly after assuming the duties of commander in chief, Trump traveled to Central Intelligence Agency headquarters to speak to America’s covert workforce. His remarks were bookended with complaints about unfair news coverage. “As you know, I have a running war with the media,” he told the audience. “They are the most dishonest human beings on Earth.” All of us watching it winced. The president was making his comments in the most inappropriate setting, not just because he was at the CIA, but because he was standing in front of the agency’s memorial wall for fallen officers. President Trump did the same four months later in front of hundreds of US Coast Guard Academy cadets, turning part of their commencement ceremony into a rant about the press. “Look at the way I’ve been treated lately!” he remarked, going off script and shaking his head. “No politician in history—and I say this with great surety—has been treated worse or more unfairly.”

When it comes to his treatment of others, it’s difficult to say the president meets Cicero’s criteria. In fact, Trump is better described as “ruthless” than “just.” This is not solely my assessment. It’s his own self-perception. “When someone attacks me, I always attack back… except 100x more,” he tweeted in 2012, describing his attitude of unequal retribution as “a way of life.” Trump echoed the sentiment in his book The Art of the Deal, writing that when he believes he is being treated unfairly, “my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard.”

Trump’s hit-hard philosophy is not reserved for those who have legitimately wronged him. The president picks fights indiscriminately. The volume of examples is breathtaking. Look no further than his Twitter account on any given week, or a short digest of the news. One moment he might be attacking soccer star Megan Rapinoe, and the next he is mocking the prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen. Other times, he is assailing his own top officials.

The attacks on his hand-picked chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, are a recurring example. Trump regularly launches unprovoked broadsides against Powell and his independent agency, which the president is frustrated that he doesn’t control. In separate Twitter outbursts, Trump suggested the Federal Reserve chairman “cannot ‘mentally’ keep up” with central banks in other countries and asked followers which was a “bigger enemy” of the United States, Powell or China’s dictator? All of this because Powell’s agency has been candid about economic indicators that show the president’s policies have been risky.

Giving nicknames to his targets is a favored tactic, too, allowing the president to turn attacks into instant memes. He road tests the insulting monikers with friends and is elated he has a new one to give to Dan, the social media aide. There’s Da Nang Dick (Senator Dick Blumenthal), Pocahontas (Senator Elizabeth Warren), Low Energy Jeb (former governor Jeb Bush), Slimeball (Jim Comey), MS-13 Lover (Speaker Nancy Pelosi), Dumb as a Rock Mika (MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski), the Dumbest Man on Television (CNN’s Don Lemon), and so on. Often Trump hones in on physical features, using names like Fat Jerry (Representative Jerry Nadler), Little Marco (Senator Marco Rubio), and Dumbo (for his former Secret Service director). Other acid-tongued presidents have had words for people they didn’t like, but I can’t think of any who regularly went out of their way to humiliate people with childish nicknames. If there is any silver lining, its that he typically keeps the R-rated ones within the West Wing.

There are no two ways about it. Trump is a bully. By intimidating others, he believes he can get what he wants, not what is fair. It’s a philosophy he brags about. He regales staff with stories about filing meritless claims in court against other companies in order to coerce them to back down or to get a better deal. That’s how you get them to do what you want. During the 2016 campaign, journalist Bob Woodward asked Trump about President Obama’s view that “real power means you can get what you want without exerting violence.” In his response, Trump made a revealing confession: “Real power is through respect. Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, fear.”

President Trump shows no mercy. Political opponents are wartime opponents, and there should be no clemency. Trump remains fixated on his previous presidential rival years into his tenure, continuously disparaging and demeaning her. It might be a different situation if he expected to face off again with Hillary Clinton, yet she appears to be finished with public office. Don’t get me wrong. No one in the Trump White House is a fan of Hillary Clinton, but we started to find the president’s chronic animosity toward her to be a little weird. He has tweeted about Clinton hundreds of times since taking office. He has even flirted with using the powers of his office to investigate and prosecute her, as we will discuss. Electoral defeat is not enough; Donald Trump wants total defeat of his opponents.

Cicero said “justice” is to be measured by whether someone keeps promises, too. Sadly, Trump’s past is rife with allegations of stiffed contractors, unpaid employees, broken agreements, and more. An investigation by USA Today found he’d been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the span of three decades, many of which included claims by individuals who said he and his companies failed to pay them. His businesses also received repeated citations from the government for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act and failing to pay overtime or minimum wage.

The trail of broken contracts runs parallel to another Trump trait, his lack of generosity. Kindness and liberality are part of Cicero’s justice checklist, but they are not a part of Trump’s character. His philanthropic history is full of empty words and questionable practices. The president’s surrogates claim he has given away “tens of millions” to charity over his career, yet investigations by journalists have found the cash donations to be far less than he boasts.

Most of Trump’s charitable giving was apparently done by the Trump Foundation. Rather than fund it himself, the businessman reportedly used outside donors to fill the foundation’s coffers, allowing him to write checks with his name on them without diminishing his own wealth. This is not unheard-of. Other personal foundations are boosted by outside donations. But in December 2018, the foundation was forced to dissolve after a state investigation in New York accused it of “a shocking pattern of illegality,” including “functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Trump’s business and political interests.” In one instance, he used ten thousand dollars in money from his charity to buy a six-foot oil portrait of himself. So much for the spirit of giving. That’s not to say Trump doesn’t donate his own money. He’s made a big show within the White House of his decision to forego the $400,000 presidential salary, periodically giving away his paychecks in grand fashion to highlight his magnanimity. Whether it’s at the Department of Transportation or the Surgeon General’s Office, he brags about it on Twitter and in person. Trump has gone as far as to insist recipients stage photo ops with the checks—prominently featuring his name, signed in a big Sharpie—to show their gratitude. I don’t recall other presidents calling attention to their generosity like this so regularly. You should see the awkward reaction from agency heads who realize they are expected to humbly exalt the president when he throws pocket change their way, after burning through millions in their budgets in ways they wouldn’t have recommended under any other president. As one joked to me, at least it’s a way for him to pay the taxes he probably owes the American people.

Together, these examples paint a clear picture. Donald Trump is not a paragon of justice. He is not worried about maintaining “good fellowship” with people, treating others fairly, keeping his promises, or demonstrating generosity. While he has sought to cultivate the image of an unselfish billionaire, he is not. Many of us who’ve joined his administration recognize he is a vindictive and self-promoting person, one who spends inordinate time attacking others to advance his interests. Those qualities translate into governing. As a result, we have all learned the hard way that the president’s modus operandi emphasizes combat over peacemaking, bullying over negotiating, malice over clemency, and recognition over true generosity. In sum, he is the portrait of an unjust man.

The President’s Courage

Cicero says courage is the “virtue which champions the cause of right.” The president believes he is the champion of great, righteous causes. He carries the banner on any number of public issues with his fight-to-win style. A courageous person takes both credit and blame when they are the leader, yet Trump refuses to do the latter. When his team loses, Donald Trump is nowhere to be seen. That’s when he shows his true colors. Look at any legislative fight the administration has had with Congress. If we were on the side that failed, the president did everything to avoid blame for fear of being labeled “the loser.”

The atmosphere created by his craven attitude is dispiriting to the team. I remember during the president’s first year how often he promised we were going to reform the US health care system, a topic of major focus during the campaign. Trump pledged to repeal and replace Obamacare, which was replete with problems and distorting the marketplace. It looked like Republicans had the votes in Congress, but when the effort inexplicably collapsed, the president didn’t show courage by taking the fall. He pointed fingers at “weak” senators who voted against repeal and privately blamed staff. Little has happened on the issue since. His “I’m not it” demeanor has been copied by those beneath him, creating a culture where people scurry away from problems to avoid shouldering the blame. Scott Pruitt was remembered for this during his tenure as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, where he blamed staff for his misuse of government funds rather than take responsibility. He was ultimately forced to resign.

Bravery comes in different forms. It’s not just a willingness to take a popularity hit when something doesn’t go the right way. It can be far more serious. In some cases, it means actually putting your life on the line. I don’t know how many times Trump has been in such a position (most people rarely are in their lives), but the one example we have is telling.

At the height of the Vietnam War, when others were joining the US military to serve their country, he sought to avoid the draft. Trump received five deferments: four for education, one for medical reasons. The excuse? “Bone spurs” in his feet. The injury was concocted, according to the daughters of the podiatrist who made the diagnosis, as well as the president’s former lawyer, who recounted Trump saying, “You think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam.” Don’t fool yourself into believing this goes unnoticed by the men and women he commands in the United States military or the veterans who didn’t have a convenient way out of Vietnam. They would have gone to war with or without an excuse, and they deserve better than the boasts of a man who stayed home.

Bravery is not the only component of courage, so it is unfair to judge the president on that score alone. Cicero suggests that a courageous person also is someone who is not swayed by the masses—“He who is carried by the foolishness of the ignorant mob should not be counted a great man”—and someone who is not “conquered by pleasure” and greed—“Nothing is more the mark of a mean and petty spirit than to love riches.” Fortitude is also important. “It is the mark of a truly brave and constant spirit that one remain unperturbed in difficult times, and when agitated not be thrown, as the saying goes, off one’s feet, but rather hold fast to reason, with one’s spirit and counsel ready to hand.”

Thus, aside from bravery, the checklist for a courageous person includes resistance to the mob mentality, avoidance of obsession with money and pleasure, and stability through crises.

On the first account, it would be difficult to describe the president as someone who is not carried away by public passions. As we will discuss later, he fuels rather than avoids mob behavior. And he is demonstrably obsessed with public opinion. This is second nature to a man who spent years obsessing over TV ratings. Our tweeter in chief survives on a diet of “likes” and “retweets.” Analysis of his feed shows that he has mentioned opinion polls almost every single month since becoming president. It’s not rare for a meeting about economic growth or national security to include stray comments about recent poll numbers.

His favorite polls are, predictably, any that show him ahead, regardless of how dubious the sourcing. Trump blows his top when outlets report his unpopularity, especially those that he thinks should be in his camp, such as Fox News, when their professional polling operation accurately reflects his unpopularity. Polls and polling to him are demonstrations of loyalty, not scientific measures of the country’s mood. They aren’t data points to help feed into deliberations, as with any other politician on earth; they are only meant to feed his vanity. If they don’t, then they must be wrong. We know where such an attitude inevitably leads—failure. Margaret Thatcher, a giant of modern history to whom Trump could never be favorably compared, once warned, “If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.” The president’s craving for high approval ratings is ironic, because he does little to deserve them.

As for whether or not he is “conquered” by money and pleasure, I will again let Donald Trump speak for himself:

“I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line.”

“The point is that you can’t be too greedy.”

“Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich.”

“You have to be wealthy in order to be great.”

Trump’s love of money is second only to his love of luxury writ large. His expensive personal tastes and extravagant lifestyle are well documented. They were on full display for America his first week in the White House. Days into the administration, Trump used one of his first major interviews as president to brag to the New York Times about his new famous home. “I’ve had people come in; they walk in here and they just want to stare for a long period of time,” he said. Trump touted the building’s many rooms and priceless artwork, not to mention the impeccable service. He woke up to buffet spreads of fruit, pastries, and treats. The staff stocked all of his favorite snacks. And the phones, he said, were “the most beautiful phones I’ve ever used in my life.” “It’s a beautiful residence, it’s very elegant,” he gushed to the paper.

He reserved his most unintentionally revealing remarks for when the Times asked about the Oval Office, which he’d already redecorated with new drapes and a rug. Trump told a story about a recent visitor. “The person came into the Oval Office and started to cry. This is a tough person by the way. But there is something very special about this space,” he told the paper. “They see the power of the White House and the Oval Office and they think, ‘Yes, Mr. President.’ Who tells you no?”

Lastly, Cicero defines courage as the mark of someone who is “unperturbed in difficult times,” a quality that I cannot assign to President Trump. When faced with tough challenges, he becomes unglued and bombastic. The fallout isn’t always contained within the White House. It explodes weekly into public view. Aides have stopped counting the number of press conferences, interviews, and events that have gone completely sideways because the president is so unmoored by a problem, whether it is a personal spat or negotiation with Congress.

When he is angry about an issue, Trump will let the frustration in his mind boil over, no matter where he’s at or what he’s doing. It might be the most straightforward event. “Person A will speak,” an aide will brief him. “Person B will introduce you, Mr. President. And then you will deliver the following written remarks.” She hands him a short speech. Trump will glance at the page, cross the words out with a big black Sharpie, and then take the remarks in a different direction. If the press is in the room, the direction he tends to go is off the deep end of the swimming pool. He’ll change the order of events on the spot and launch into a tirade. That’s how an event about tax reform can turn into an endless rant about “millions and millions” of illegal voters ruining the democratic process.

When faced with foreign policy dilemmas, his tendency is to puff up his chest and feign toughness, not to keep his cool. For instance, rather than dismiss incendiary adversaries, Trump tries to outdo them: “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” In response to Iranian saber-rattling, the president tweeted, “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran. Never threaten the United States again!”

These outbursts might be cathartic in the moment, but they tend to aggravate the situation. Egging on unstable dictators risks a misunderstanding that can spiral into a crisis. At a minimum, the above examples led to prolonged public feuds that distracted from the issue at hand or delayed our ability to respond effectively to international events.

Aristotle once wrote that “he who exceeds in confidence when it comes to frightening things is reckless, and the reckless person is held to be both a boaster and a pretender to courage.” Trump is not brave, nor unswayed by the crowd, nor uncommanded by money and pleasure, nor stable through crises. He is a “pretender to courage,” and that should give everyone pause.

The President’s Temperance

Finally, we must judge Trump’s “temperance,” which is easier to do than the other virtues, for it is the most obvious. Cicero explains the characteristic as someone showing “restraint” and “modesty,” and “being seemly.” Said another way: “conducting oneself in an inoffensive manner.” Cicero adds that such a person is also not careless. “One must ensure, therefore, that the impulses obey reason… that we do nothing rashly or at random, without consideration or care.” He concludes that men of temperance handle criticism well and are not readily provoked.

It should be evident by now that Trump is one of the more offensive public figures in recent times. The president has difficulty showing restraint and lashes out without warning. His behavior is quintessentially unseemly, from crude rhetoric and vulgar jokes to immodest public reactions. There are far too many examples, so we will choose one category. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his attitude toward women. Many in the Trump administration are put off by his misogynistic behavior, which began well before the election.

How does Trump talk about women? Sex appeal. Beautiful piece of ass. Good shape. Bimbo. Great in bed. A little chubby. Not hot. Crazed. Psycho. Lonely. Fat. Fat ass. Stupid. Nasty woman. Dog. Ugly face. Dogface. Horseface. Disgusting. These are the types of comments he makes. Trump did not spare his opponent—the first female presidential nominee of a major US political party—of his sexism either. “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband,” he tweeted in 2015, “what makes her think she can satisfy America?” At a campaign stop in Ohio the next year he remarked, “Does she look presidential, fellas? Give me a break.” I don’t care if you supported Hillary Clinton or not. There is no denying the smoldering sexism heaped onto these words.

At times, his sentiments border on what many women today would call predatory. Trump once purportedly made the following statement, referring to himself in the third person: “Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.” (Here again I can’t resist citing Margaret Thatcher, who dealt with men like this: “Power is like being a lady,” she remarked. “If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”) In 2013, Trump opined on the tens of thousands of unreported sexual assaults in the US military, tweeting: “What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” And of course, he famously described to NBC’s Billy Bush his efforts to win over a married woman and how he approached seduction in general. “I don’t even wait,” he said. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

As president, the inappropriate comments about women haven’t abated. I’ve sat and listened in uncomfortable silence as he talks about a woman’s appearance or performance. He comments on makeup. He makes jokes about weight. He critiques clothing. He questions the toughness of women in and around his orbit. He uses words like “sweetie” and “honey” to address accomplished professionals. This is precisely the way a boss shouldn’t act in the work environment. Trump’s commentary on specific women in his administration sometimes will happen right in front of them. After one such instance, an official came to me, exasperated, to commiserate. “He is a total misogynist,” she complained. “This is not a healthy workplace.”

I’m not trying to say women who work for Trump are victims who can’t handle themselves. Women have had to deal with creeps long before Donald Trump came into office. They don’t need “safe spaces” set up in the West Wing. Still, his displays of misogyny are unusual and unsettling to women who at times feel they are given different treatment than their male counterparts. When it’s about female leaders outside the administration—TV hosts or public figures—word gets around about the president’s offensive remarks and asides, and we bemoan in private another deep character flaw over which we have no control. Not even his family is off limits, although sharing his last name usually preserves them from the worst, though not the weirdest, comments.

Shifting public attitudes appear to have had little effect on his views toward sexual harassment. Indeed, Donald Trump is like the Fred Flintstone of the “Me Too” era. He’s been accused of sexual misconduct by roughly two dozen women, and his strategy is to shred their testaments to his inappropriate behavior. In an exchange between the president and a friend about inappropriate conduct, journalist Bob Woodward recounts Trump saying: “You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead… You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to push back hard. You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you. Never admit.” Understood, Mr. President. This quote didn’t escape notice by the women on your staff.

Cicero says temperance demands forethought and doing nothing “at random.” Yet the president is notorious for his rash decision-making, as discussed throughout this book. Trump boasts of making tough calls based on his “gut instincts” in the moment, rather than good information and a clear strategy.

Then there are the distractions. It’s no exaggeration to say we have a commander in chief who is channel-surfing his way through the presidency. Meetings are constantly interrupted by TV. Conversations are sidetracked by commentary about TV. Early morning phone calls are made from the residence about what he saw on TV. He displays fury at what is not on TV, including lieutenants who avoid going on cable networks to defend him. Trump takes notice when they skip the Sunday shows or pre-scheduled appearances to avoid having to answer questions about his latest antics, and he holds it against them. The president, as has been amply documented, is obsessed with television, and segments he doesn’t like can derail entire workdays across the administration. It’s his gluttonous, vanity-pleasing digestion of TV coverage about himself that leads to the most embarrassing outbursts.

I recall one bright Tuesday morning, when the president was still in the residence. A Twitter alert popped up on my phone. Trump was venting about something he’d evidently seen on cable news. In that moment, he could have chosen to talk about the meeting he’d had the day before with the Brazilian president. Or the funerals that were taking place in New Zealand after a mass shooting by a white supremacist. Or the fact that it was his son’s birthday. Instead the president was going off on George Conway, the husband of his senior advisor Kellyanne Conway, whose critiques of the president were making minor news.

“George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!” Rather than focus on issues that mattered that day, he let Mr. Conway’s criticism distract him completely. He redirected the news cycle toward total nonsense. Not to mention the fact that he openly derided the spouse of one of his employees, another workplace red flag.

These flare-ups are constant. They come at the worst times. For instance, on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the president couldn’t bring himself to hold off on politics for the morning to honor the victims and their families. He lashed out at Democrats and media outlets. “In a hypothetical poll, done by one of the worst pollsters of them all, the Amazon Washington Post/ABC, which predicted I would lose to Crooked Hillary by 15 points (how did that work out?), Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas and virtually all others would beat me in the General election,” he tweeted at daybreak. “This is a phony suppression poll, meant to build up their Democrat partners.” “Damn it,” I thought, “can’t we just focus for a few hours?” Other times the White House might be in the midst of responding to a national crisis, but a fly on the wall will find the president is far more interested in responding to “the haters” online than doing his job.

Calm leaders are able to let criticism wash over them. President Lincoln claimed to avoid reading personal attacks altogether. When he did encounter a particularly strong critique of his presidency, he would sit at his desk and compose a fiery refutation. After that, he would get up and walk away without sending it. That is not the Trump style. The president takes all criticism personally. He cannot imagine letting it go unanswered. Unlike Lincoln, he does not see temperance as a virtue. He hits “send.”

I still remember the gnawing ache in the pit of my stomach. The quiet tension. The sunken faces at work. We were zombies roaming the administration. No words had to be exchanged. The day we all knew was coming had arrived. The day that any remaining questions about President Donald J. Trump’s character were definitively answered. For some, it was a turning point. There are many episodes that capture Donald Trump’s character, but this one stands out in my memory.

On August 12, 2017, organizers of what was called a “Unite the Right” rally gathered to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia. That was their excuse for getting together, at least. They welcomed well-known white supremacist groups, including neo-Nazi and neo-Confederacy organizations as well as the Ku Klux Klan. The local media covered the lead-up to the rally extensively. On the previous evening, white supremacists conducted an unauthorized march through the University of Virginia campus, where they chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” “white lives matter,” and “blood and soil.” They were met by university students who had stood together around a statue of Thomas Jefferson to oppose the group. The encounter turned violent, only exacerbating the unease in the city before the larger event was scheduled to take place the next day.

A counterprotest to the “Unite the Right” rally was organized, representing a wide swath of religious, ethnic, and other interest groups, as well as concerned local citizens. Violent clashes again followed. In the afternoon, the scene turned deadly. A self-identified white supremacist from Ohio deliberately rammed his vehicle into a crowd of counterprotestors, sending bodies flying into the air. More than thirty people were reported injured, and one woman, Heather Heyer, was killed. The city declared a state of emergency. The crisis in Charlottesville became an international news story.

It is impossible to know exactly what information Donald Trump absorbed about this event, the first real test of his ability as president to respond to civil unrest in our country. He weighed in from his golf course in New Jersey, stating that there was “no place for this kind of violence in America.” That was not all. He condemned the hate and “the violence on many sides.”

On many sides.

What on earth did he mean by that, I thought, when he uttered the words. Trump seemed to suggest the counterprotestors were also to blame. He failed to specifically denounce the extremist groups. In fairness, I considered it was possible the president, like others, didn’t want to get ahead of the facts about the incident since we didn’t know who all of the victims were. I knew deep down, though, that the truth wasn’t good. He didn’t want to admit it because the violent group was a pro-MAGA crowd.

The bipartisan outcry was immediate. One of the president’s staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, joined a number of his colleagues in urging the president to clarify his remarks and condemn the hate groups by name. Meanwhile, white supremacists hailed Trump’s statement in their own publications, because they also saw it as a defense of their cause.

On Monday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions labeled the incident an “evil” act of domestic terrorism. White House staff frantically worked to get the president to approve a new statement to make clear he, too, was opposed to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. In the meantime, top CEOs began resigning from administration advisory councils in protest of the president’s ambivalence, including the heads of Under Armour, Intel, and Merck. Although he would later inform reporters that his first statement in Charlottesville’s violent aftermath was “beautiful,” the president yielded and gave a new public statement singling out the hate groups.

On Tuesday, it took a turn for the worse. During a press conference at New York’s Trump Tower meant to be about US infrastructure, the president went off on a rant about Charlottesville and seemed to cast aside the revised statements issued the day before. He condemned the vehicular homicide, but then he opined that the “Unite the Right” rally included some “very fine people” and that “the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.” The dazed, resigned look on Chief of Staff John Kelly’s face went viral; for good reason.

Those of us watching it live had to pick our jaws up off the floor. What was he talking about? It was hard for anyone to imagine “very fine people” innocently stumbling across a neo-Nazi rally that was widely publicized in advance. “Very fine people” seemed highly unlikely to join marchers who carried signs with swastikas and bellowed anti-Semitic slogans. David Duke and Richard Spencer, both well-known white supremacists, were not “very fine people.”

Trump did not stop there. He defended the alt-right demonstration, comparing the removal of the Confederate leader’s statue to bringing down those of the Founding Fathers. “This week, it is Robert E. Lee… I wonder, is it George Washington next? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” He again blamed “both sides” for the violence, including the counterprotestors that he labeled the “alt-left.” “Do they have any semblance of guilt?” he asked. This was the real Trump speaking, not the scripted one.

Donald Trump has been accused of being a bigot; whether it is of conviction or convenience is debated. I personally have never believed the president is racist in his heart of hearts. But what difference does it make if the effect is the same? When he makes statements that encourage racists and knows full well he is doing so, it is wrong. More damning than that is his aloofness. The American public can see that the administration is not doing enough to counter racially motivated violence. Why is that? Because ultimately the man at the top doesn’t show interest. In the minds of Trump boosters, problems such as white supremacy are an invention of the Left to push an identity-politics agenda. As a result, the president is reluctant to act, hesitant to lead the charge on an issue that might alienate some of his supporters, all the while ignoring a deadly brushfire sweeping the hearts and minds of a small but menacing faction here at home.

The sense of disappointment throughout the administration was palpable after Charlottesville. We felt the president’s reaction revealed an uglier side of his nature: the shallow and demagogic politician, prone to self-inflicted disaster. So many of us were already frustrated by the president’s handling of his job. Now, purposefully or not, he was channeling the views of bigots, who were in turn excited that an American leader was sticking up for them. Once people like David Duke are praising you, a normal person quickly figures out they’re on the wrong track and corrects course. Not Donald Trump.

Of all the crazy, embarrassing statements we were enduring weekly, his comments about Charlottesville took the cake. It was repugnant. I thought of how the Republican Party, which once helped propel the civil rights movement, now had as its mouthpiece a man whose words fed racial intolerance. I wondered, would he learn anything from this? Could he learn anything from this? And how the hell do I stick around?

I know that’s a question many of you are asking: Why didn’t anyone leave? God knows it would’ve been easy. We all have draft resignation letters in our desks or on our laptops. That’s the half-teasing, half-true advice you get on day one in the Trump administration or immediately following Senate confirmation: “Be sure to write your resignation letter. You may need it at a moment’s notice, or less.” Some of us did consider resigning on the spot. One journalist reported a cabinet member saying he would have written a resignation letter, taken it to the president, and “shoved it up his ass.” The sentiment was shared. But in the end, no one angrily stormed out. There was no protest resignation.

“Why do people stay?” a close friend asked me at the time. “You all should quit. He’s a mess.”

“That’s why,” I responded. “Because he’s a mess.” It was true for a lot of us. We thought we could keep it together. The answer feels more hollow than it used to. Maybe my friend was right. Maybe that was a lost moment, where a rush to the exits would have meant something.

The mood in the administration darkened in the months ahead. The controversy left a permanent bruise on Trump’s presidency. We were only partway through our first year, yet I feared—and knew—it was a harbinger of more to come. It was also the moment when I received the answer to that lingering question I had about him. The question was not whether Trump was a model leader. Such a conclusion would have been laughable by that point. The question was whether the presidency would at least instill in this man the ability to be a bigger person than he was, whether he could rise up to meet the moment. That was my hope.

Not long after, as I was walking the State Floor of the White House, I scanned the portraits of American leaders adorning the corridors. One thought started to grip me and never left: Donald Trump does not belong among them. He isn’t a man of great character, or good character. He is a man of none.