Why Trump wants to form a helpless couple | Robert Reich

Last week, Trump officials Documents are reportedly left Describes a confidential plan for the Trump-Puding meeting in a public area of ​​the Alaska hotel.

Trump is the new nominee for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which is said to be Tell the subordinate Ministry of Justice They should “consider telling the court ‘fuck you’” without regard to any court orders that prevent planned deportation.

Then there was Billy Long, a former auctioneer and Republican congressman, nominated by Trump and identified as an IRS leader less than two months ago, “there are very little backgrounds in tax policy. In addition to promoting fraudulent tax credits”. Long has been fired after clashes with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Long is the sixth leading the IRS this year.

Let’s not forget EJ Antoni, who Trump nominated to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics after firing former Chief Erika McEntarfer earlier this month.

Antoni is a rare man, and he is severely criticized by economists on the right, and is also mainstream criticism because it is ignorant, nothing more than propaganda and incompetent. he Latest celebration “All net work growth over the past year is attributed to locally born Americans.”

I haven’t even mentioned the towering incompetences of the Trump Cabinet, such as Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Robert F Kennedy Jr and Kristi Noem.

How to explain the rise of so many incompetent and incompetent people?

Simple. They will never get their own merits. Once their incompetence is obvious–once they take away the first job that requires a certain degree of intelligence and integrity, they are likely to be fired.

So they learned that to get rewards for promotions, money and power, they cannot rely on normal processes and recognition systems to do their jobs well. If they were to do anything themselves, they had to be little butts, knees and mushy people.

They must seize someone who values ​​loyalty for integrity or ability, in order to be hired and promoted, the most important criterion is ideally those who cannot tell the difference between a grove-footed toad and a knowledgeable consultant.

Enter Trump.

History swept the wreckage of dictatorships that attracted and promoted incompetent people who lack talent or integrity. As Hannah Arendt explains in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism:

The power of totalitarian power always replaces all first-class talents, and no matter their sympathy, those cracks and fools who lack wisdom and creativity are still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

Trump gave himself early in his career to Roy Cohn, an unscrupulous attorney who taught young Trump how to gain wealth and influence through cruel bullying, blasphemy, opportunistic paranoia, unfounded lawsuits, lying and more.

However, when Trump is with the “repairers” of politicians, judges and mob bosses, Cohen remains completely loyal to Trump and his father Fred.

Many years later, in his book The Art of Transaction Trump has a difference between integrity and loyalty. He prefers the latter, and for him Cohn illustrates it. Trump brings Cohen to

All “respected” guys are engaged in their professions out of boasting about their uncompromising integrity, but absolutely no loyalty… What I like most about Roy Cohn is that he does the opposite.

Cohn was sentenced to dying for immoral conduct and signed a will to sign an amendment to the will, which caused Cohn’s wealth to commit immoral behavior and thus died in the shame of the New York State Bar cancellation of immoral behavior.

People who sacrifice their integrity to enslave slavery almost always fall on their faces. Blind ambitions drive them away. They cannot explain or defend their behavior by relying on principled capabilities because like Cohen, they are irrelevant to the core.

The people they locked in encountered similar fates, but for different reasons.

Leaders who value loyalty find themselves surrounded by sled cakes and fools. As a result, they did not receive objective or useful feedback about their actions—without any warnings and criticisms in advance. All they get is praise- “Good idea, sir!” “Excellent execution, sir!”

These cocoons of flattery avoid the real consequences of what they do, which inevitably leads them to make serious mistakes. Some of these mistakes ended up causing their failures.

This improper symmetry-some demise of grippers, because they are incompetent and insignificant, and because they will never get useful and authentic feedback, it marks the path of all totalitarian systems. This is the path Trump is now on.

This is not necessarily hopeful. If history is any guide, many innocent people suffer before the incompetent graffiti, while the futile objects of graffiti achieve their inevitable fate. The United States and the world are already suffering.

• Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a columnist for the Guardian of America. His newsletter is robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Short: My American Memoirs, is now available