Craves Loyalty, but Offers None [View all]
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMAY 12, 2017
... at moments of crisis .. Americans get the clearest glimpses of a president’s character, and this week they had the chance to learn a good deal about .. Trump ...
... Trump’s actions and the disclosures by those close to him revealed this president to be an insecure, fearful man who can’t eat or place a phone call without a backdrop of fawning aides. Rather than cultivate experienced, strong-minded advisers who might challenge his views .. Trump prefers to govern by impulse and edict, demanding absurd pledges of “loyalty” ..
Americans learned .. Trump gave his bodyguard’s opinion on the Comey matter as much weight as any adviser’s ... They saw that he was comfortable humiliating aides by flatly contradicting their accounts of his decision-making.
They saw .. he has a limited understanding of, or respect for, the constitutional responsibilities of public officials. During a .. dinner in the White House, in which .. Trump apparently tried and failed to extract a vow of loyalty from .. Comey, the president gave no sign of grasping the federal statute binding both men: “Public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws and ethical principles above private gain.” To .. Trump, “loyalty” meant abandoning an investigation into foreign interference in the last election ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/opinion/president-trump-craves-loyalty-but-offers-none.html
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