Blind Loyalty

Susan Estrich on May 22, 2025

How could they do it? How could they manipulate his schedule and control his appearances so that no one outside the circle of loyal insiders would see the man we saw the night of that debate?

They were loyal.

In politics, I learned this definition of loyalty. "Loyalty is not about standing by a friend/the candidate/the boss when they're right. That's just good judgment ... "

Right or wrong. The closer you get to power, the more you see; loyalty is the price of admission. Everyone has limitations, strengths and weaknesses. When you're loyal, you recognize them and work around them; you protect the principal, especially from himself.

One of my favorite stories my old friend the late, great Paul Tully used to tell recruits to campaigns was about your commitment to the candidate. It's like a bacon and egg breakfast. The chicken was involved. The pig was committed.

Biden's top aides were committed to him.

They did their jobs well enough that the Democratic Party rallied around an (unfairly) unpopular president who had all but promised not to seek a second term, and anointed him.

They had, no doubt, been doing it so well for so long that they managed to convince themselves that they could keep doing it for another term and that the country would be better for it than Trump. That was, obviously, wrong on all counts: wrong in the sense that they overestimated their skills, they could not protect him from himself; and wrong about him being able to beat Donald Trump. And it answered the wrong question.

Loyalty and commitment are rightly valued until and unless they blind you to the greater good, in this case of the country. Blind loyalty is no better than following orders. Their failing was not that they couldn't pull it off, but that they even tried.

Blind loyalty is precisely what Donald Trump is demanding. It is the measure by which he judges people, the ticket for admission to insider status or to the Cabinet. The result is that he is surrounded by sycophants. And he demands it not only from those who he holds close, but from Republicans in Congress, who know better than to be "disloyal" to the president. Never have demands for loyalty to a president been so blatantly marked up in dollars to be spent against you.

I know there are more than a handful of Republicans in Congress (and literally, all it would take is a handful) who believe that this president is a dangerous man who is shredding the Constitution, driving the economy into recession, giving tax cuts to the wealthy, destroying the planet, attacking our allies and cozying up to our enemies, and whatever else you can add to the list, and making a fortune while doing it. I know there are Republicans as troubled as I am by Trump and his administration's flouting of the rule of law. And yet, their voices are muted. They are as blindly loyal as Biden's aides were, with no excuse except the selfish one of self-preservation.

Presidential politics is, ultimately, transparent. You can run, but there is a limit -- albeit being tested now -- to how long you can hide. Blind loyalty has no place in the White House. There is a higher calling, certainly there. There is a Constitution to uphold. The loyalty of the Biden inner circle ultimately did not hold. There were enough leakers to fill two books and counting. Ultimately, the history of this moment will be written, and the heroes will be those who had the courage and character to stand up for something more than Donald Trump Inc.

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.