{"id":7067969,"date":"2026-09-27T03:11:06","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T03:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/activist\/donald-trumps-loyalty-problems-progressive-org\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T03:11:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T03:11:06","slug":"donald-trumps-loyalty-problems-progressive-org","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7067969","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump\u2019s Loyalty Problems &#8211; Progressive.org"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/progressive.org\/downloads\/23271\/download\/TrumpLoyalty1.jpg?cb=8bcd49898a3abdf44351a55bdff72860\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"lead\">President Donald Trump has a loyalty problem. Actually, he has two of them.<\/p>\n<p>The first concerns where his own loyalties lie. Consider these questions: Has he been loyal to the oath he took to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution? Does he respect the separation of powers and the limits on his authority as President? Does he understand that his role is to look out for the interests of all Americans, not just those who voted for him? Or that his mission as leader is not to build self-aggrandizing monuments or to use his position to lavishly enrich himself and his family?<\/p>\n<p>We all know the answers.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s second loyalty problem involves his expectation of absolute loyalty from those in his orbit. During his first term, Trump\u2019s cabinet and other political appointments didn\u2019t work out as he had hoped. Rather than offering unequivocal fealty, many of these appointees pushed back against his proposed policies, or whims, and ultimately either resigned or were fired.<\/p>\n<p>In his second term, the President has been determined to not repeat this mistake. This time, his inner and surrounding concentric circles of political appointees have obligingly supported a long list of misbegotten decisions. These include his inhumane crackdown on immigrants, his disastrous tariff policies, his gutting of federal programs critical to the health and safety of Americans and the environment, and his protracted, costly, and unlawful war of choice against Iran.<\/p>\n<p>Had Trump not appointed individuals willing to provide fawning approval of his every whim, and instead chosen staff with the intelligence, courage, and skills to challenge his harmful inclinations, this country might not be in the dire straits it\u2019s in today.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, of course the President has a right to include abject loyalty in his hiring criteria, when he selects the thousands of political appointees his administration is authorized to bring on board. It\u2019s not wise, but it is permissible under our system of government.<\/p>\n<p>What he can\u2019t do when hiring career federal employees (and I was one for nearly four decades, serving under presidents from Jimmy Carter to the first Trump Administration) is to apply a loyalty or political affiliation test. And yet, for more than a year, that was exactly what Trump\u2019s Office of Personnel Management was doing\u2014asking applicants for nonpartisan federal jobs to write essays explaining how they would help advance the President\u2019s agenda. On September 11, a federal judge in Massachusetts sided with the unions <a href=\"https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/hiring-retention\/2025\/11\/unions-sue-trump-administration-over-loyalty-question-added-to-federal-job-applications\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Link opens in new window (challenging)\">challenging<\/a> this practice and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/politics\/articles\/2026-09-11\/us-judge-blocks-trump-administrations-loyalty-question-for-job-applicants\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Link opens in new window (ordered)\">ordered<\/a> Trump to knock it off.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s demands for loyalty extend far beyond the executive branch. He also requires strict allegiance from Republicans in Congress. Cross him and be prepared to be primaried by a MAGA acolyte. This might not be illegal, but it surely undermines our system of checks and balances.<\/p>\n<p>Even the judicial branch is not exempt from Trump\u2019s loyalty test. That was made abundantly clear in February, when a 6 to 3 majority of the Supreme Court\u2014including his appointees Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/supreme-court-tariffs-trump-0485fcda30a7310501123e4931dba3f9\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Link opens in new window (struck down)\">struck down<\/a> his massive, unlawful \u201cemergency\u201d tariff regime. While these justices have more often than not sided with the President, his demand for 100% loyalty came through loud and clear.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCertain \u2018Republican\u2019 Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad, completely violating what they \u2018supposedly\u2019 stood for,\u201d Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/a-timeline-of-trump-criticizing-his-own-supreme-court-justices-12445796\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Link opens in new window (posted)\">posted<\/a> on Truth Social, referring to Barrett and Gorsuch.<\/p>\n<p>In mid-September, after another 6 to 3 majority of the Supreme Court rejected Trump\u2019s attempt to control mail-in voting, he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/trump-attacks-supreme-court-justices-he-picked-for-rejecting-his-push-to-restrict-mail-ballots\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Link opens in new window (lambasted)\">lambasted<\/a> Barrett and Gorsuch again, along with Brett Kavanaugh, for betraying him: \u201cThese are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Donald Trump has a loyalty problem, but it\u2019s mostly our problem. He\u2019s happy being loyal to his self-interest, and demanding the loyalty of others to enable him to pursue his ill-conceived policies. We\u2019re the ones living with the consequences.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s show the President a different kind of loyalty, a loyalty to the higher ideals to which this country aspires. And one way to do that is to vote in the November election\u2014for candidates who will fight for this vision of loyalty.<\/p>\n<p><em>This column was produced for <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/progressive.org\/op-eds\"><em>Progressive Perspectives<\/em><\/a><em>, a project of <\/em>The Progressive<em> magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump has a loyalty problem. Actually, he has two of them. The first concerns where his own loyalties lie. Consider these questions: Has he been loyal to the oath he took to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution? Does he respect the separation of powers and the limits on his authority as President? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7067970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[2709,12795,15483,59550,21046,23788,13391,46470,12903,11678],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7067969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-donald","tag-donald-trump","tag-loyalty","tag-michael-felsen","tag-opinion","tag-politics-government","tag-problems","tag-progressive-org","tag-trump-administration","tag-trumps"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Donald Trump\u2019s Loyalty Problems - Progressive.org - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7067969\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Donald Trump\u2019s Loyalty Problems - Progressive.org - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"President Donald Trump has a loyalty problem. 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