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People Lost Their Integrity When They Served in the Trump Administration
They risked their integrity, and they lost the bet
Around the time of the 2016 election, I noticed some essays that warned people not to serve in the Trump administration. They’d be risking their own integrity, so went the admonition.
I was never a Trump supporter, but I took a sort of detached curiosity in this topic. It intrigued me in part because it was a prediction about what would happen to those people. All the rest of us would have to do to learn the answer was to wait.
I kept a list of some incidents. Years later, with only three weeks to go until Trump may be voted into office again, it seems it’s finally time to share them. I saved them for this moment. Sometimes we forget what happened until we reminisce.
There were early consequences for Trump admin officials
Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort resigned several months before the November 2016 election over concerns about his connections to Russia. Following the Mueller investigation, he was convicted of federal crimes and would have spent four years in jail if not for the covid pandemic and then Trump’s presidential pardon in December 2020 at the end of his term.
Upon Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Republican commentator and former Bush speechwriter David Frum warned of four personal risks to anyone who might work for the new administration: exposure to Trump’s financial crimes, his befriending of dictators, his demands to enable his lies, and his general disregard for the law.
Frum asked:
So maybe the very first thing to consider, if the invitation comes [to work for the Trump administration], is this: How well do you know yourself? How sure are you that you indeed would say no [to ethically compromised behavior]?
And then humbly consider this second troubling question: If the Trump administration were as convinced as you are that you would do the right thing — would they have asked you in the first place?
Those are ethical questions.
