In the Trump Cabinet Room, a Failure of Spine and Moral Conviction

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at Tuesday afternoon’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, might have emerged only slightly seared had he not on many occasions invoked a heretofore-unheard of version of after-the-fact executive privilege, demurring to an alleged Justice Department policy that appears to have sprung from the Attorney General’s forehead. Whether Mr. Sessions will be vindicated in his defense of such a policy—a policy that suggests that Presidential privilege can be claimed by a surrogate even in the absence the President’s claiming it—remains a question for the Congress and the White House to sort out.

But what Mr. Sessions’ testimony really revealed was a sad and dark reflection of the previous day’s events in the Cabinet Room. On Monday, President Trump assembled his full Cabinet for the first time, and, with camera’s clicking and video broadcasting, he encouraged each Cabinet Secretary to sing his praises for the public’s consumption. It was one of the most awkward, saddening, displays of spineless and morally-deficient behavior I have ever seen.

The Washington Post’s John Wagner wrote in this morning’s edition,

“The effort to buck up the boss drew immediate notice on social media, with some comparing Trump to King Lear. In the opening of the Shakespeare play, the aging king of Britain, having decided to step down from the throne, asks his three daughters to tell him how much they love him.”

There was available to editorialists so much low-hanging fruit of juicy derision and tangy ridicule dangling above the Cabinet table, that no one bite could possibly be enough to sate our desire to consume such easily available Trump-flavored snacks.

So I will defer from taking my bite from the easy fruit of the meeting, and reach a bit higher on that surreal tree to note two things I believe are far more disturbing, though they may not have been as visible:

1. The chilling effect of the transparently-scripted adulation on the existing and potential pool of senior federal officials and staff, and;
2. The sad show of moral decay of men and women who are, outside their government roles, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, neighbors, friends and community pillars.

As to the first.

The federal government operates on trust—the trust of the citizens in their elected representatives and in the men and women who head the vital services that assure the continuity of our democracy. We trust that these officials will exercise, to the best of their abilities, their sworn duties, forsaking all other influences beyond those authorized within the four corners of the Constitution. This is the most legally-binding trust that exists in our democracy. 

I swore to uphold that trust many times over my 35 years of federal service. I know that my son, a former federal employee, swore to it in his federal service. My father and my father-in-law, military officers, swore the same oath when they promised to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

So, too, do the members of the President’s Cabinet swear that oath; and by doing so, they are Constitutionally-bound to recuse themselves from the direct influence of the President if that influence runs counter to the moral, ethical, and legal duties of their offices. And, I will add, if such influence runs counter to their own moral and ethical values.

What we saw on Monday—that morally-corrupt show of obsequiousness and bile-in-the-throat fealty—served as a wicked-bright flash across the universe of government. It illuminated this truth: To any and all current or future candidates for high federal office, the price of attaining such office will be more than a pound of flesh—it will be your very soul. 

From the Secretary of State, to the Attorney General, and on down the list, the members of Trump's Cabinet prostrated themselves before a false and evil god, whose aims for America are calculatingly disruptive and ultimately disastrous. His deceit and deceptions will entangle us with our enemies, and separate us from our friends.

For every Cabinet Secretary who uttered those words of loyalty yesterday—thereby confirming the President’s power over them—I can only hope that thousands of men and women considering federal service for all the right reasons, turn away from that blinding light, and devote themselves instead to defeating the corruption that is seeping out of the White House with the stink of backed-up sewage.

As to the second.

I cannot comprehend how any member of the Cabinet could go home Monday night and face their families, their neighbors, their communities, their country—their own religions—having given up whatever moral fabric they had left with which to cover themselves. 

Had my children, my wife, my friends, and those members of my community who have any good feelings toward me, witnessed me uttering such blatantly-forced words of adoration to the very face of a man who has proven himself unworthy of trust (personal and public) over and over again, their estimation of my character would suffer almost beyond repair. They would have good reason to question my moral and ethical judgment from that point on.

How do we tell our children to stand up against a bully when they see examples of moral turpitude and fear of reprisal from grown men and women—who should know better—writ large across every news and cable channel? 

Not that the President’s Cabinet is entirely populated by saints-turned-sinners—there are a number of Secretaries at that table whose incoming credentials were questionable to begin with, and what they did on Monday was totally in character. 

But in the main, the display of twisted loyalty, clearly intended to send a message to Trump’s base that James Comey was an administration traitor, looked only like the sham play it was, and as the curtain came down and the press ushered out, Americans of conscience were left with an image that cannot be un-seen…an image of moral decay, ethical failure, and craven cowardice.

Putin's Goal: Destabilize, Demoralize, Deconstruct Democracy

Earlier this week, I answered this Quora question: 

Why would Russia be interested in interfering in the US election? Just for the Heck of it? What is their desired outcome?

We need to be clear on one point right from the start: Russia’s leaders and operatives don’t do anything for “the heck of it.”

One of the favored tactics of any authoritarian regime or dictatorship is to offset an opponent’s center of gravity, disorienting them, sowing confusion, and causing them to constantly adapt their offensive and defensive strategies on the fly. Such off-center disorientation exposes an opponent’s structural weaknesses (vulnerable voting systems, for example, or gaps in cyber technology and infrastructure systems, or division among policy makers, or insecurity among the citizenry).

But, rarely is the obvious or overt move the one the opponent should focus on, and nowhere is this more true than in the 2016 election meddling. What Russia achieved by probing and playing with the U.S. election process was not in and of itself Russia’s long-term goal, and I’m relatively sure the U.S. intelligence services are well aware of that.

The Russians are masterful manipulators of other nations’ centers of gravity. Vladimir Putin wakes up every morning looking forward to a new day of fomenting disorientation and discord throughout Western governments. You have to remember that Putin, like so many Russian/Soviet leaders before him, plays the long-game…he has all the time in the world (relative to the West’s election cycles and ever-changing executive and legislative officials) to push, probe, violate, incite, worry, gnaw at, and undercut the opposition’s confidence at all levels of democratic society.

What Putin is seeing now is a West that is dividing, cracks opening up between the U.S. and our allies, increasing levels of anxiety and frustration beginning to undercut the confidence that once bound all Western nations into one unbreakable stronghold. 

[as an amendment to my original response, given the latest news that the Russians may have helped foment the oil emirates from Qatar through "fake news" generated by Russian-backed hackers, it's important to note that sowing discord in the West is just one aspect of Putin's larger strategy to imbalance U.S. alliances.]

Trump’s election, allegedly doused with some form of Russian stink, has tainted the public’s trust, wound up the media to a fever pitch, driven a wedge deep into our representative government, and resulted in a shift in our national center of gravity with long-term effects felt far beyond our shores.

If we don’t get past this, and focus on the real threat posed by Putin to subvert Western democracy, he will achieve the deeper Russian goal of destabilizing Europe, and creating a yawning chasm of security and economic dysfunction between us and our friends.

Trump's Abdication Breaks the Bonds of Cooperation

Some broken hearts never mend, 

Some memories never end, 

Some tears will never dry, 

My love for you will never die*

When I’m faced with difficult decisions, moments of sadness, or when I’m contemplating the state of the world in tumultuous times, I often turn to country music, and its vulnerable and open-hearted lyrics in order to calm the swirl of my thoughts. In particular, I find solace and inspiration in the songs of Don Williams, whose voice defines the word mellow, and whose lyrics can hook a melancholy heart from the depths of despair and bring it to the surface of the soul. It was, therefore, to Don Williams I turned the other day when the news of the world sank my heart to a place so deep I didn’t think it would ever have the will to surface again.

As I cycled through my William’s playlist, “Some Broken Hearts” placed its barb very deep in my sadness, and Don began to reel it up so that I could look at it and try to understand the cause of the pain. Here is what I saw.

The last abdication to capture the world’s attention via public media occurred December 11, 1936, when England’s King Edward VIII gave up his throne to marry American Wallace Simpson “the woman I love.” In acknowledging the moral and political weight of his choice between his sovereign heritage and the love of his life, Edward said, “I have made this, the most serious decision of my life, only upon the single thought of what would, in the end, be best for all.”

On Thursday, June 1, 2017, a global audience watched and listened to another abdication, this one totally devoid of any moral contemplation or love, one fully freighted with the base metal scraps of political hatred, not only of the preceding administration, but of more than half of our fellow citizens, of our country, of our allies, of the world community, and of the planet itself. Despite his Bannon-penned assertion that “As President, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens,” there was on Donald Trump’s selfish mind no single thought of what would, in the end, be best for all.

The statistics Trump threw out in defense of his decision were cherry-picked, chaotically massaged, and typically, willfully, misinterpreted. They were spurious at best, with no thicker foundation than a wet Kleenex upon which he attempted to place the authority of his office, saying, “It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- along with many, many other locations within our great country -- before Paris, France.”

Youngstown mayor John McNally shot back, “The U.S. withdrawal away from the agreement is not going to create more jobs in the Youngstown area, not going to create jobs in Mahoning County.” Bill Peduto, the mayor of Pittsburg, retorted, "What you did was not only bad for the economy of this country, but also weakened America in this world." Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, quickly joined in, saying, “That is why President Trump is committing a mistake with dramatic and fatal consequences.”

It is heartening to see the outpouring messages of climate solidarity pouring like a freshening stream from cities and states, corporations and entrepreneurs, and other nations who know full well that only if America is fully-engaged in the global climate debate will all Americans—not just those who support Mr. Trump—benefit in the long run. Thank you, President Macron, for your words of familial and historical support: “France believes in you; the world believes in you.”

It is to his credit that Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, made good on his word to step down from the President’s economic advisory council, tweeting, “Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.” Bob Iger, Disney CEO, also withdrew from the panel, saying, "Protecting our planet and driving economic growth are critical to our future, and they aren't mutually exclusive." Both men’s statements reflected the worries of an expanding list of American-based multinational corporations which expended an extraordinary amount of advertising dollars in full-page ads urging the President to back away from the abyss of his own making, an abyss from which coal might be extracted, but not much else.

But, selfish man that he is, unimaginative man that he is, intellectually vacuous man that he is, duplicitous man that he is, arrogant man that he is, shallow man that he is, and dangerous man that he is, Mr. Trump refuses to believe that beyond the horizon of his ignorance is a specter of calamity already taking bites out of the planet as we know it.

Trump does not want to hear anyone tell him that the cancer of pollution is metastasizing rapidly far beyond our geographic and economic borders. He does not want to be told that it is too late to excise just the American portion of the diseased tissue with a scalpel fashioned of coal. By withdrawing from the Paris Accord, Trump abdicated any chance for the United States to help shape Earth’s health profile as a respected, generous, and compassionate partner in the international effort to diagnose the symptoms of climate change, to share the data with the world’s best and brightest minds, and to join in a globally-agreed-upon treatment that may give generations to come a more hopeful prognosis.

In his climate abdication message, President Trump made clear his love of self over love of country and globe, and let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that what is best for him and his base is more important than what is best for us all.

No matter how hard Trump tries to break us, I will say, “It will take a long time for my heart to mend, longer still for the memory of June 1 to end, and though my tears may never dry, my love for Earth will never die.”

*©Don Williams, “Some Broken Hearts.”