The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
At last we know precisely why so many people in only twenty-five months of the Trump presidency have come and gone in the President’s administration. It is because none of them was there long enough to learn what Michael Cohen calls “the code.”
In his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Michael Cohen indirectly explained why the Trump administration cannot ever run smoothly. Unless someone has worked for Mr. Trump for several years (and not a single high-ranking White House official has done so except for Jared Kushner), new personnel on the Trump “team” will never understand that that their primary task is to protect the President.
The highest loyalty of Trump Administration officials is not to the nation; it is to the nation’s President. And the President expects that from them without having clearly explained to them that is their primary task.
Michael Cohen made that abundantly clear when he told the House Oversight Committee, “Everybody’s job at the Trump Organization is to protect Mr. Trump.” Now that Donald Trump is the chief executive of the United States of America, everyone’s job in the Trump Administration is also to do everything they can to prop up Mr. Trump.
The problem is that Mr. Trump has never directly told that to anybody in the White House. He just expects them intuitively to know it. But they could not figure it out, because no outsiders have been in Trumpworld for a sufficient amount of time to comprehend his code. He expects people to do everything he wants without his ever letting them know exactly what he wants. If he told them, he might be held liable or culpable, and that he has always avoided at all costs
For that reason have so many ex-Trump Administration officials written so-many tell-all books. Having never been instructed in unmistakable terms by the President that their first priority was to protect him against all allegations inside or outside a courtroom, once they were fired or they resigned, they felt free to spill the beans. Therefore, how could he feel betrayed by them when they never hung around him long enough to learn his secret modus operandi?
Michael Cohen, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka know what he wants. Through years of trial-and-error, they learned the code in order to survive. But the scores of high- and lower-level people who have come and gone in the White House could not quickly discern the labyrinthine way Mr. Trump operates, and so they are gone.
Michael Cohen and other long-term members in the Trump Organization have been displayed surprisingly lengthy loyalty to their boss. However, the Mueller Report and the House Intelligence Committee will test the resolve of Trump Administration leaders. Whether Trump loyalists shall continue their fealty will be severely challenged as other witnesses appear before Congress and perhaps in isolated courtrooms across the land, but especially in the Southern District of New York.
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC.
More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.