A Warning

Donald Trump was the unwanted candidate. Ask any official serving in the Trump administration today if he or she supported the real-estate magnate when he threw his hat into the ring. In an unguarded moment, chances are they will tell you no. Many will admit that, in the field of seventeen Republican primary candidates in the 2016 race, Donald Trump was their seventeenth pick, dead last. His candidacy was a stunt.

When people don’t have to take something seriously, they ridicule it. When they do have to take it seriously, they criticize it. As a candidate, Trump was ridiculed from the start. His comments were outlandish, so it was easy to joke about him. The mockery became feverish critique as soon as onlookers realized he might have a shot at the nomination. It was a clown car that became a slow-motion auto accident—funny at first, but soon horrific.

As we’ve discussed, conservative commentators tended to be candidate Trump’s most formidable critics. They didn’t believe he was one of their own. Elected officials in the Republican Party were even harsher.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie said the candidate lacked the credentials for the nation’s highest office. “We do not need reality TV in the Oval Office right now,” Christie lamented. “President of the United States is not a place for an entertainer.”

Senator Ted Cruz lambasted him as a “narcissist” and “utterly amoral.” Cruz argued that voters could not afford to elect someone so unfocused and social-media-obsessed. “I think in terms of a commander in chief, we ought to have someone who isn’t springing out of bed to tweet in a frantic response to the latest polls.”

Representative Jim Jordan, a leading conservative and one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus in the US House, wished Republicans in Congress had acted sooner to “avoid creating this environment” that allowed someone like candidate Trump to rise.

Texas governor Rick Perry labeled Trump “a cancer on conservatism” and a threat to the nation’s future. “The White House has been occupied by giants,” Rick noted. “But from time to time it is sought by the small-minded—divisive figures propelled by anger, and appealing to the worst instincts in the human condition.” Perry said the businessman was peddling a “carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense” and that he was running on “division and resentment.”

Senator Lindsey Graham told American voters: “This is not about who we nominate anymore as Republicans as much as it is who we are.” He bemoaned that the party had not taken the long-shot candidate more seriously. “Any time you leave a bad idea or a dangerous idea alone, any time you ignore what could become an evil force, you wind up regretting it.” The senator said he would not vote for the man, whom he called a “jackass” and a “kook.” Those who know Lindsey understand that he wasn’t using those words lightly. He meant them.

John Thune, one of the top-ranking Republicans in the Senate, expressed reservations throughout the race, but after the Access Hollywood scandal, he said the party no longer needed its candidate. “Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately,” he tweeted in the wake of the scandal, with only weeks until the vote.

Many other elected conservatives chimed in throughout the campaign, calling the Republican nominee a “bigot,” “misogynist,” “liar,” “unintelligent,” “inarticulate,” “dangerous,” “fraud,” “bully,” and “unfit” for the presidency.

One Republican had especially blunt words as the clock ticked down to Election Day. He said he only supported Trump out of antipathy toward Hillary Clinton. “I’m doing so despite the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being.” Donald Trump is “absolutely not” a role model, the conservative leader declared. In fact, he is “[one] of the most flawed human beings ever to run for president in the history of the country.”

The speaker was South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney. Roughly twenty-four months later, Mick would become Donald Trump’s third chief of staff.

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote what might be described as one of the earliest and most incisive “self-help” books of all time. Book Two of the tome opens with this advice:

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own… and so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness.

Trump appointees would be wise to tape the emperor’s words at their bedsides, for life has gotten uglier inside the administration. Looking right and left, we can see the Steady Staters are mostly gone. What remains are more defenders than do-gooders in the political ranks; obsequious pleasers outnumber thoughtful public servants. One of the most visible signs of the devolution is the unwillingness of people around the president to stand up to him.

It’s important that advisors speak truth to power. Presidents have enough flatterers in their midst. What they need more than anything are people willing to present unvarnished facts and to challenge bad decisions. This is essentially what the Steady State tried to do. If advisors feed “spin” to the president instead, it’s a triple loss. The aide fails in his or her duty, the commander in chief is poorly served, and the country is worse off for it. Further still, making decisions based on fiction and not fact can create new problems for a president to solve, becoming a vicious cycle of misinformation-turned-mistake.

The Trump story is briskly moving into a fictional universe. Sometimes aides are afraid to tell President Trump what is really happening, or they buoy his belief that he can take actions that, in reality, he cannot. The result is that President Trump makes more untrue statements than he would otherwise and takes ill-advised courses of action detrimental to the nation. Staff don’t want to deliberately mislead him. More often than not, they make these mistakes because they want to seem supportive of Trump’s agenda, even when it doesn’t comport with reality. I can’t overstate how precarious it is for a president’s advisors to become an assemblage of servants.

Consider President Trump’s response to Hurricane Dorian, when he incorrectly stated that Alabama was in the storm’s path at a time when it wasn’t. The president refused to admit he was wrong and his information was outdated. He spent days unloading at the White House to anyone in earshot, insisting he was right about where it could have gone and whom it could have hit. The fury didn’t take long to spill into public view. Trump whipped out an old poster board of the storm track in the Oval Office, which had been marked up with a Sharpie to make it look like the storm was still projected to hit Alabama. Trump was mocked further, which infuriated him more. All the while Americans in the storm’s path wondered what the hell their president was doing. I could only shake my head.

Rather than urge him to issue a short correction, too many aides in the West Wing were eager to help him perpetuate the lie. Trump made phone calls to get the answers he wanted. They heeded the call. He told them to issue statements disputing reality. They did. He asked for data points to make it seem like he’d been right. They complied. By the end, it was like a game of Twister gone wrong; the truth was so tied up in knots, no one knew what the hell we were talking about anymore. The poor folks at the weather agencies were badly demoralized by their first exposure to the common-yet-frightening White House spin cycle.

A conservative time traveler from 2016 would find the whole charade amusing, if it weren’t so serious. “Didn’t you fools hear the warnings?” he or she might say. “Republicans anticipated this. We predicted this is precisely what a Trump administration would look like!” They would be correct, of course. GOP leaders were accurate in describing the man and prophetic in forecasting the outcome of this presidency. The validity of their words hasn’t changed. What changed is their minds.

Gun Fight

Donald Trump brought an assortment of hangers-on into the White House. He collected assistants throughout the years, building an island of misfit apprentices. During the campaign, he gathered more. His operation was a magnet for third-rate talent, attracting the political equivalent of amateur day traders, the kind who liked to walk the line between risk-taking and indictments. They all tried to come into the White House with President Trump, but luckily, mature voices stepped in to push many of the lackeys aside. For a time it worked. But in Trump’s world, the descent of good people is as absolute as the law of gravity. The rise of the Steady State was followed by its inevitable fall.

Today a third category of advisors is ascendant: the Apologists.

The shift occurred at the end of year two. As the Steady State crumbled, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney was tapped as acting chief of staff, coming a long way from vehement Trump critic to close presidential aide. Despite telling colleagues he was not interested in the job, he angled for months to get it. Mulvaney is a survivor. He saw opportunity as John Kelly’s star dimmed. The acting chief confided in friends not long after taking the position that he didn’t understand why Kelly loathed it so much. The perks were great (he became especially fond of visiting Camp David), and he got to be in the thick of it whenever he wanted, while stepping back when he didn’t.

Mulvaney brought a new approach to managing the West Wing. He didn’t manage it. His guiding maxim was: Let Trump be Trump. Mick’s outlook—don’t challenge the president’s impulses, just make them work—represented a sharp departure from his predecessor. No longer would officials play back-in-the-box with the president’s awful ideas. Instead, we were urged to focus on making bad ideas more palatable, to soften their rough edges. This kept the president happy and his acting chief of staff out of Trump’s line of fire. The only problem with the approach is that Trump has not changed since the time Mulvaney blasted him as a “terrible human being.” So, in effect, Mulvaney’s raison d’être is to help a “terrible human being” be maybe a little less terrible, if he can swing it. If not, well, that’s okay, too.

With the guardrails gone, “year three” of the Trump administration might as well have been announced as “season three.” Old controversies previously averted struck back with a vengeance, and the cast of characters grew seedier. Aside from the Syria withdrawal, the president resumed his “shutdown” mantra. With fewer and fewer aides to persuade him otherwise—and a chief of staff eager to accommodate—Trump decided to close the government and demand more money for his border wall. Few in the administration or in Congress supported the plan. It was senseless for a variety of reasons, namely that it didn’t appear the president had the leverage he thought he did.

The result was a foreseeable disaster. Nobody in the White House had a plan for ending the impasse, and nobody wanted to be responsible for finding one. “This place is so fucked up,” an official on the ad hoc shut-down team complained weeks into the government closure, as everyone else watched helplessly. “There is literally no one in charge here.” As evidence of the bedlam, Vice President Pence was scheduled to lead White House negotiations to cut a deal. Rather than sit down with members of Congress who could broker a path forward, a meeting was arranged between Pence and their staff members. The legislators were out of town on recess. It was an embarrassing display that Pence had to endure with a smile. He was, unfortunately, used to that.

Pressure mounted on the president to give up. Government employees were missing paychecks, and even junior aides around the White House fretted about making ends meet. Many of us thought the whole ordeal was a waste of time and worried about the compounding effects across government. Information was shared with the president about the growing consequences of a prolonged government closure. Then the media reported that US airports would soon take a hit, snarling travel across the country. That did it. Shortly after, the president caved and reopened the government with little to show for the debacle. Trump didn’t secure the “billions” of dollars he demanded for his wall and wound up with a political black eye to kick off the new Congress—a very bad and very avoidable start to the year.

We’ve continued down this dirt road, with one unforced error after another. Decisions that had previously been teed up carefully for the president, such as the future of the US presence in Afghanistan, are now being shanked into the rough. Donald Trump is so anxious to withdraw from the country that he nearly brought Taliban leaders to Camp David for a summit to agree to a deal on the eve of the September 11 anniversary, infuriating Trump appointees who weren’t informed. Remember, we’re talking about the same people who harbored the terrorist group that murdered nearly three thousand Americans and who are responsible for killing or injuring hundreds of US soldiers. They don’t deserve to step on US soil, let alone be welcomed by the president of the United States at a retreat used to huddle with American allies. Yet there are fewer people left to reject the folly of these ideas, and those that do are written off by the president as disloyal.

The demise of the Steady State also means the culture of the executive branch has returned to a darker place. Infighting, which surged in the early months of the administration but eventually leveled out, has returned with a literal vengeance. You may think you have an ally, only to find the same person talked to the president about your potential firing. Ambitious staffers are jockeying for position as more people are either purged or flee the building. Vacancies mean potential promotions, creating an incentive for overzealous climbers to undercut their colleagues in order to advance. Staffers threw sharp elbows to make their way into Mulvaney’s office, and in places such as the Pentagon, mid-level political appointees fought for jobs to get in close proximity to General Mattis’s replacement, acting secretary Pat Shanahan, and then later to his replacement’s replacement, Mark Esper, who took the job when Shanahan was unceremoniously kicked out by Trump.

First-time hires are naive about the level of drama until they encounter it. I remember a new Trump appointee attempting to assert independence from a questionable White House policy by leaking internal deliberations to the press to distance himself. The problem was that he threw a more veteran and ruthless political staffer under the bus. “That was a bad move. He brought a knife to a gun fight,” a communications aide said after reading the news article. “That fucker will be dead by morning.” If the Trump administration is good at anything, it knows how to eat its own.

The cannibalistic culture is deterring good people from coming on board. Mick has struggled to source qualified, outside candidates for essential positions that would have been sought by big-name politicians across the country only a few years ago. Making matters worse, Trump prefers to go with his gut on new appointees. He is too impatient to vet candidates to determine whether they are the right fit for the job.

The result is that the president’s tweet-picked nominees shrink in the spotlight and appear unqualified—because they often are. Consider the time the president announced Texas congressman John Ratcliffe would be his nominee as director of National Intelligence. The congressman had no real intelligence background. His only qualification was that he was a staunch defender of the president on television. Ratcliffe withdrew himself when it became apparent that the Republican-led Senate didn’t share Trump’s enthusiasm.

With the president’s four-year term hitting the homestretch, gun fights and rivalries are thinning the herd. As a result, the administration has lost its real leaders, and unsavory figures are racing to the forefront. The public doesn’t recognize many of their names yet, but they will eventually. You will see them get subpoenaed and watch them testify. History will record the rise of the Apologists, and, one day, perhaps one day soon, chronicle their fall.

Why the Worst Get on Top

In the midst of the Second World War, Austrian intellectual Friedrich Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, describing how free societies descend into totalitarianism. Hayek’s tenth chapter, “Why the Worst Get on Top,” offered a description for how “the unscrupulous are likely to be more successful in a society tending toward totalitarianism.”

It’s not accurate to say Donald Trump is a dictator. Commentators who make such claims shouldn’t be taken seriously. However, it’s fair to say the president possesses clear authoritarian tendencies like very few presidents before him. Trump’s attempt to mimic the strongmen he admires has certainly led us to take steps down the road Hayek mentions.

The Austrian thinker listed three main reasons why, over time, an authoritarian personality is likely to be surrounded not by the best “but rather by the worst elements of any society.” President Trump’s inner circle has increasingly checked each of those boxes.

First, Hayek explained, an autocrat needs a group with questionable morals. The cohort will also tend to be undereducated. “If we wish to find a high degree of uniformity in outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive instincts prevail.” Check.

Second, the autocrat must expand the size of the subservient group. He “must gain the support of the docile and gullible, who have no strong convictions of their own but are ready to accept a ready-made system of values if it is only drummed into their ears sufficiently loudly and frequently.” Check.

Finally, Hayek said, authoritarian types need to weld the group together by appealing to their basic human weaknesses. “It seems to be easier for people to agree on a negative program—on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of the better off—than on any positive task. The contrast between the ‘we’ and the ‘they’ is consequently always employed by those who seek the allegiance of huge masses.” Check.

The end result is the core team will be faithful in implementing the leader’s policies. “To be a useful assistant in the running of a totalitarian state,” Hayek wrote, “it is not enough that a man should be prepared to accept specious justification of vile deeds.” He must be prepared to carry them out. “Since it is the supreme leader who alone determines the ends, his instruments must have no moral convictions of their own. They must, above all, be unreservedly committed to the person of the leader.” Ultimately, their willingness to act in ways they know are wrong becomes their route to a promotion.

Hayek’s characterization doesn’t apply to everyone who serves in the Trump administration, yet there are echoes in his words of what has happened to our team. Unquestioning followers have floated to the top, stitched together by the president’s enmity toward “others”—criminals, immigrants, enemies in the media, job-stealers. His internal coalition stays united because of what they stand against, not for. They clap politely when he talks about something like supporting America’s veterans with better care, but they roar with laughter and approval when he blasts a left-wing first-term congresswoman from New York City, an evil liberal trying to revive socialism in America.

The real question is, what motivates Trump’s Apologists to support him even when his behavior is wrong? Why do his boosters take to the airwaves, performing verbal gymnastics to defend immoral statements or conduct? Some of them are the same people who stood on the train tracks with their hands in the air trying to stop Trump from becoming president. So what turned them into Trump’s human shields? Hayek’s words above offer a partial explanation, but I want to flesh them out further. During my time in the Trump administration, I have witnessed three primary motivations for what a passerby would call brainwashing. Power, tribal allegiance, and fear.

Trump Apologists see him as a means to personal influence and advancement. They want to be close to power. They are eager for stature they wouldn’t gain otherwise and are willing to excuse Trump’s actions to get it. Even then-candidate Trump’s most pointed critics, such as Texas governor Rick Perry, were willing to cast aside their existential warnings about the future of the country in order to snag comfortable positions in his cabinet. Perry is an actual conservative who was the longest-serving governor in his state’s history. Now he doesn’t spend too much time extolling conservative values and largely tries to avoid the president’s attention or ire inside the administration. Others pretend they weren’t interested in joining but secretly wish they’d been picked for similar positions.

For some appointees, the “power” they want is financial. Aides openly discuss how one political position or another will translate into post-government dollars. Some believe an ongoing connection to Trump World offers opportunities for a small windfall in the political afterlife. Perhaps they can go work for his company, or maybe Jared and Ivanka will take aides with them into the private sector and build something with their star power. These are hardly the motives the American people expect to animate their public servants. Others who do leave the administration are often bought off with a high salary at the Trump campaign or at a super PAC to pacify them. So far, that’s worked pretty well, becoming standard practice for President Trump, who dangles future offers for disaffected lieutenants to keep them quiet. Omarosa Manigault, who claimed she was offered a six-figure salary to stay on the team, was a vocal exception.

For many elected Republicans, abandoning their concerns and supporting the president has brought them the power of influence. They can ring up Trump when they need a few minutes on the phone to talk about their pet project, fly with him on Air Force One to be photographed at a major event, or get name-checked in an approving Trump tweet with a hundred thousand “likes.” It will help them shore up their base and avoid primary challengers. Because it’s easier to win with the bully on your side.

Blind devotion is another factor. The president demands unyielding loyalty from his subordinates, even if that runs afoul of their job descriptions. “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty,” he told Jim Comey. He has the same expectation for many other positions that are supposed to be semi-independent from the political sway of the White House, whether it’s a spy agency head or the Fed chair. These roles have autonomy for good reason. Not in Donald Trump’s mind. He wants to see signs of personal submission, and he gets it, or the other person is in the firing line.

We were all unnerved by an early cabinet meeting, when one by one members of the administration took turns offering extravagant praise of the commander in chief on national television. A more secure person would have called a halt to the cheesy compliments—“We thank you for the opportunity and the blessing you’ve given us,” then chief of staff Reince Priebus gushed. Donald Trump basked in it, like a potentate accepting offerings from grateful peasants. If you go back and watch the video, you’ll notice a few cabinet members declined to offer personal tribute, instead praising their workforces. They withheld the Trump flattery, and now they are gone.

One superb political study out of Brigham Young University found that “group loyalty is the stronger motivator of opinion than are any ideological principles.” Many people around the president and in the GOP support him because he is at the helm, not because of what he believes. In fact, they support him regardless of what he believes. He has created a true cult of personality. Whether he is right or wrong, the tribe must protect him, even if that means forsaking their principles.

Finally, some are motivated by fear—of criticism, of reprisals, and of job loss. A culture of fear is what we would expect from a leader with authoritarian tendencies. In his own words, Trump embraces fear as a management tool. He enjoys keeping aides on their toes with Game of Thrones intrigue about possible terminations, or by threatening allies with severe repercussions if they break with him. Republicans have seen the consequences when someone takes on the party’s Goliath. He takes no prisoners.

Potential defectors saw what happened when Trump set out to ruin his former senior aide Steve Bannon after Bannon spilled unflattering details in a book about the president. Aides were banned from speaking to him and ordered to go on television to denounce him. Trump sought to destroy his role at Breitbart News, his support from Republican donors, and his friendships with anyone seeking to do business with the administration. Trump will go after family members of turncoats, too, as he did with relatives of Michael Cohen and Anthony Scaramucci.

Thus, the weak-natured in the administration and the GOP have become more compliant.

Smiling and Nodding

How do you identify a Trump Apologist? They often display a telltale trait: smiling and nodding at the wrong time.

Put them in a room with the president and watch as he strings together unrelated sentences, as his tone changes, as his face contorts, and as he declares he is going to do something very, very good (but that reasonable people know is not good at all, and perhaps very bad). Watch as he gestures his hands to those around the room, enlisting them by extension in his declaration, whether they willingly endorse it or not. Then scan the room. The bobbing heads and forced grins are Apologists. You can see for yourself on television because the president invites the press to cover these conversations, as a means to display his total dominance of those around him.

There are two separate types of unsavory Trump appointee. Both belong to the same genus, the Apologist, defined by their shared willingness to excuse the inexcusable. But each is its own species with distinctive characteristics. The first species is the Sycophant. The second is the Silent Abettor. The intermingling motives—power, tribalism, and fear—are what keep both species nodding in agreement.

The Sycophant is a true believer. He or she fell for the president’s message right away and admires Trump to the point of literal brand loyalty. They would purchase Trump Steaks or Trump Vodka if they could (no longer on sale). If he produces it, the Sycophants will buy it. Today, they patronize the Trump International Hotel down the street from the White House, where they lap up drinks as thirstily as they do the president’s talking points. When he mocks people less powerful, they laugh; when he comes up with a derogatory slur for an opponent, they call him “brilliant” for appealing to the masses in a way no one else can. The Sycophant’s motives are a combination of “power” and “tribalism,” which is why, when the president asks them to do something wrong-headed, they won’t flinch. His ethics are their ethics.

You often see these folks on television. Almost everyone gets asked to do media on behalf of the president at some point. Most of those who agree to do so, though not all of them, are the Sycophants. They will happily carry Trump’s toxic water for him, indifferent to the beating taken by their reputations for defending untruths and inventing new ones. To some of the best of them, it might start as a genuine desire to push back against unfair reporting and to promote the president’s better policies. Before long it becomes a way of life. You cross a moral and logical Rubicon to serve Trump’s media cravings. I haven’t seen anyone who has made this journey ever come back.

The Silent Abettor is a lousier form of Apologist than the cheerleading Sycophant. At least the Sycophant, however delusional, believes he or she is acting virtuously, living up to values of Trumpism. The Silent Abettors know what’s happening is wrong. They are aware an impetuous man is presiding over the executive branch. They watch him flip-flop with the change of a channel, or unveil shoddy decisions instantaneously with a few keystrokes, CAPS LOCK on, extra exclamation points for emphasis. And they say nothing. Their motivations are a combination of “power” and “fear,” and they will do what President Trump wants because they have subordinated their beliefs to a short-term, naked self-interest. The Silent Abettor is a species that is all too abundant in the Trump administration.

While it is indeed disturbing that we’ve elevated someone so ill-informed as Trump to the nation’s highest office, what’s depressing is how many people around him and in the Republican Party are remaining quiet when their voices are needed to make the difference between poor policy and good government. They don’t necessarily need to speak out publicly against the president to have an impact. They just need to speak up in his presence, in the meetings that count, or among fellow administration officials. Silent Abettors should realize saying something is in their self-interest because, if they don’t, they’ll be the next ones at a microphone defending an unconscionable decision.

Trump Apologists will be the first sent out to denounce this book. The president will direct them to deny any of the characterizations or episodes contained herein. They are used to it, as they have been denying stories they know are true for years. I wonder, though, would those same people stick by their denials about the reckless and politically charged official actions the president has taken if they were put under oath? I suppose that’s another question for Congress to consider.

Members of the informal Steady State are not guilt-free in this. We all wish we did more to confront wrong-headed decisions early on. There were times we could have acted and didn’t. Still, many members of this cohort have found ways to push back against what’s inexcusable. That might mean sucking it up and getting into an argument with Trump or one of his close allies. It might mean alerting others about what was coming down the line, or it might mean publicly breaking with the president on an issue.

Those who keep their heads down will live to regret it. Cautionary tales are plentiful. Go no further than the president’s homeland security leaders, who, in a sickening display of bad judgment, conceded to a policy that increased the number of children ripped from the arms of their parents at the US-Mexico border. It left a stain on their reputations, their department, and the country. It was a seminal moment of Trumpism gone too far and a lesson for others. Trump’s character rubs off on people who came into government to do what is right. Before long, they find themselves supporting and defending policies they never imagined they would.

I know more than a handful of people who set “redlines” for their time in the Trump administration, boundaries they would refuse to cross or behavior they wouldn’t tolerate from the commander in chief. They would quit, they told friends, if those conditions were triggered. Then I’ve watched the same people breeze right over those redlines, shamefully rationalizing and justifying themselves along the way.

The rise of Apologists inside the Trump administration should matter to voters. These people are his clones, displaying many of the traits we’ve come to detest in Trump and carrying his marching order into all areas of government. They validate him when they should be challenging him to think critically. Voters should take into account the major policy decisions the Apologists will help the president make if he’s reelected, as well as the caustic behaviors and prejudices these aides will be reinforcing in Trump’s ethos. Those who ignore it are effectively joining the death march of thoughtless followers, smiling and nodding along the way.

The Crickets of Capitol Hill

If you’ve walked around the US Capitol Building on a summer night, you know it’s one of the most beautiful sights in America. The grounds are lined with greenery and dotted with hundreds of trees from across the United States. According to the architect of the Capitol, the landscaping is deliberately designed to “hide views of the Capitol except from specific angles to show off the building’s architecture at its most majestic and inspiring vantage points.” It does that and more. During the day this place is frenetic, enveloped by the sounds of our national discussion, but at night, it is quiet. You can hear little more than the crickets as you admire the brightly lit white dome, a citadel rising above the forest around it.

Congress is where the presidency is fiercely examined and ardently debated. Legislators, regardless of party, have an obligation to monitor the executive branch. They should do so fairly and respectfully, but above all they should do so. Unfortunately, on one side of the aisle, it sounds like nighttime on Capitol Hill. All you hear is the crickets. Republicans are hesitant to criticize the president when he deserves it, and if they can’t applaud him, they just go quiet.

More so than Trump’s current and former aides, it is important for voices on Capitol Hill and in the Republican Party to speak up about the president’s conduct. These people will continue to lead the country long after Trump is gone. They should be the umpires of the executive branch, calling the balls and strikes as they see them. Yet Congress has been overtaken by the invasive species, too, the Sycophants and the Silent Abettors.

All of the GOP officials I quoted at the outset of this chapter have since evolved from critics to Apologists.

For instance, Senator Ted Cruz, who once labeled Trump immoral and ill-suited for the presidency, now tells rally-goers that the president’s decisions are “bold” and “courageous”—that he’s proud “to have worked hand in hand with President Trump.” Representative Jim Jordan, who lamented the environment that allowed Donald Trump to rise within the party in the first place, is one of his Capitol Hill attack dogs, taking to cable news to champion the president’s record. Trump returns the praise. “What a great defender he has been,” he said of Jordan, calling the congressman “a brave, tough cookie.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, who said he’d never vote Trump, equating his candidacy with a “dangerous idea” that morphed into an “evil force,” told interviewers a few months after the inauguration: “I am like the happiest dude in America right now.” He said the president and his team are what he’d “been dreaming of for eight years.” The senator was positively giddy about Trump’s foreign policy. “I am all in. Keep it up, Donald. I’m sure you’re watching.”

The same transformation has happened to more public servants than I can count. They’ve forgotten their oath is to the US Constitution, not to a man nor to a political base. Consequently, the Oval Office has become a welcome sanctuary to members of Congress who say the magic words: “Yes, Mr. President.” Those who stand up to him, a small number, to be sure, aren’t welcomed back. The servile attitudes are a danger to the presidency, to the Congress as an independent branch, and to our democracy.

Think about the time the president dismissed a string of poor countries as “shitholes” in a private meeting with Cabinet officials, aides, and members of Congress. The public outcry over Trump’s remarks—he was quoted as saying, “Why do we need more Haitians, take them out,” and that we needed less immigrants from “all these shithole countries” in places like Africa in favor of places like Norway—led to a prompt denial from Trump himself. “That was not the language used,” he tweeted. Trump demanded aides and allies to support him on this, which they did. Former homeland security chief Kirstjen Nielsen told the press she did not “hear” him use those words, and Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue went on television to flatly deny that he said “shithole” when referring to the mostly black nations. First they attacked Democrats for misrepresenting the meeting, and then it was reported that they believed Trump said “shit house” rather than “shit hole,” which allowed them to deny it on a technicality.

Of course, everyone in the room knew that Trump had used crude words to describe those foreign countries. We’ve heard him make comments like that all the time, and he’s actually harkened back to the term “shithole” in private since. So why did people go out and pretend otherwise? To please their patron. Ironically, after forcing people to stand behind Trump’s denial, the White House basically conceded that Trump used vulgar language about the poor non-white countries, with Sarah Sanders telling reporters, “No one here is going to pretend like the president is always politically correct.”

History has shown the consequences of a climate where officials focus more on attending to “the principal” than heeding their own first principles. Studying in London in the mid-1700s, one of America’s soon-to-be Founding Fathers, John Dickinson, was struck by how a follower mentality had infected Great Britain’s once-revered political capital. “Such is the complacency these great men have for the smiles of their prince,” he wrote of English public servants, “that they will gratify every desire of ambition and power at the expense of truth, reason, and their country.” The environment led to widespread corruption, disputed elections, and a nation that ultimately went to war with itself. Donald Trump is America’s smiling prince.

Republican detractors today are a dwindling band. Those who stick their necks out deserve credit, though they’ve rarely gotten it from Trump voters. On the Senate side, Mitt Romney issued a Washington Post op-ed critical of the president and vowed to maintain an ongoing appraisal of Trump’s conduct, writing, “A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect… And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.” On the House side, Representative Justin Amash has been a staunch critic of the president and called on Americans to join in “rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us.” His attacks have isolated him from the Republican Party, which he ultimately announced he was leaving.

Some leading Republicans have sought to atone for their past public support of Trump. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan once said he would never defend Trump, but he wound up having to do so weekly as the top Republican in Congress. Now out of office, he described his attitude toward the president much more candidly with journalist Tim Alberta:

I told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy to help him get his mind right. Because, I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government… I wanted to scold him all the time. Those of us around him really helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time. We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was.

Ryan is the rare former official willing to speak up. Many have remained quiet outside of government, although their experiences align closely with those of the former Speaker. They share the concerns outlined in this book. They have more to add, if they’ll find the courage. But even those who’ve dared to say something still feel deep down that it’s not enough. Because it’s not. No one is immune. Anyone aiding the Trump administration is, or was, one of his Apologists. They’ve all waited too long to speak out and haven’t spoken forcefully enough. Myself included.