Unless you want to be publicly humiliated, spend thousands or millions in legal costs defending yourselves, don't take any job he offers unless you enjoy going bankrupt and being a
mas·och·ist
ˈmazəkəst,ˈmasəkəst/
noun
noun: masochist; plural noun: masochists
- a person who derives sexual gratification from their own pain or humiliation."the roles of masochist and mistress"
- (in general use) a person who enjoys an activity that appears to be painful or tedious."what kind of masochist would take part in such an experiment?"Because in Trump's world loyalty goes only one way: Towards him and that's all.He will leave you twisting in the wind with a legal rope around your neck.
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Trump on Sessions's fate: Time will tell 02:12
Story highlights
- Flynn, Sessions and Spicer ran into a high-pressure salesman with an apex predator's eye for weakness
- They wound up in a world of hurt after accepting high-level jobs offered by Trump
Michael D'Antonio, a CNN contributor, is the author of the book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success" (St. Martin's Press). The opinions expressed in this commentary are his
(CNN)General Michael Flynn bought in during what you could call the pre-opening sales period, when an eager purchaser could get the best deal.
He joined the Trump campaign early and became national security advisor to the President. Jeff Sessions was another early-purchaser, becoming the first senator to stand up for Trump. He was named attorney general. Sean Spicer was a latecomer, but anted up his credibility. It bought him the job of White House press secretary.
Today, Flynn is in legal peril after being forced to resign after 23 days
on the job after the White House was warned he had misled the
administration about his contacts with Russians. Freshly unemployed,
Spicer faces professional disgrace after expending much of his
credibility in support of Trump's myriad lies and having a new man installed above him. And Sessions is being undermined by the President, who has hit him with a barrage of humiliating social media posts, including, "Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes."
Although
each of the President's loyalists has suffered in a unique way, their
experience with the President has followed a pattern. Flynn, Spicer, and
Sessions were players in the game of politics and policy who never
quite earned superstar status. Then came Trump, with his billionaire's
swagger and his private aircraft, insisting that the old rules no longer
apply. He offered them sudden promotions that likely fulfilled their
long-life dreams. The deals were too good to pass up, so they bought.
How
did the President's men, each blessed with enough competence and
intelligence to at least reach the big leagues, wind up in such a world
of hurt? The answer is that they ran into a high-pressure salesman with
an apex predator's eye for weakness and an instinct for exploiting it.
Throughout
his life Trump has demonstrated he is a keen student of human nature
who reduced men and women to certain basic drives. In his view, people
were, like him, interested mainly in money, sex, power, and attention.
He is a man who unashamedly says, "I'm very handsome" and openly admits, "I'm a greedy
person." In my encounters with Trump he made it clear that he felt I
shared his values. At one point he flattered me, a bearded, bald man,
for my appearance and at another he talked about how it would benefit me
if I wrote about him in a positive way.
If
it doesn't occur to Trump that some people can't be bought with money
or flattery it may be because it often seems like these techniques work.
"I play to people's fantasies," he explained in his book "Trump, The Art of the Deal." "People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do."
Trump's
method for making people excited begins with setting the proper mood.
As a businessman he put his name in huge gold letters over the entrance
to the tower where he kept his office. He decorated the interior to look
like the Hollywood version of a modern mogul's lair and filled it with
young women with movie star looks, who addressed him only as "Mr.
Trump." It was the next best thing to working in the Oval Office and
being called "Mr. President."
Deal seekers and job applicants who entered Trump's world found themselves confronted with the classic techniques of high-pressure salesmanship.
Confusing chatter, emotional manipulation and a charming sort of
friendliness all combine to make a target drop his or her guard. Trump's
preposterous honesty about things like his greed and his clumsy/folksy
pattern of speech combine to create a sense of familiarity and even
common cause.
With the voters, Trump built a relationship based
on a shared sense of anger at politicians (even though he had become
one). Ambitious operatives seeking to advance found in Trump a possible
shortcut to the top. Flynn, Spicer and Sessions were not likely to reach
the highest ranks on their own, but Trump gave them the chance to
become instant superstars and thus defy all those who may have once
considered them each second-rank. They may have felt that the appeal of
such a great reward justified the risk of signing up with a leader whose
own record was so tarnished -- by bankruptcies, scandal, and lies --
that sober-minded people, including great numbers of mainstream
Republicans, avoided him.
Individual
voters invested only their hopes and a ballot in President Trump. Some
may be feeling misgivings about the choice, but politics and policy are
not, for most, all-consuming interests. The same cannot be said for
those who threw in with a President who seems to demand loyalty to him
-- personally -- as a condition of employment.
James
Comey, whom Trump appeared to admit to firing because of his commitment
to an impartial probe of the Trump campaign and Russia's meddling in
the 2016 election, testified that the President said, "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty."
Comey, whose commitment to the Constitution was obviously greater than
his commitment to Trump, didn't satisfy the demand and was soon
dismissed.
What made Comey choose
the system over the man? It's most likely that he didn't fit Trump's
assumptions about the motivations that drive people to succeed. As a
public servant Comey wasn't making much money, at least by Trumpian
standards, and he didn't come in for much admiring commentary about his
appearance.
He
was powerful, but that power was held by his office, not the man. In
the end, Comey was like a potential customer who brings a supply of
sales resistance into every encounter with someone who wants to sell him
something. Simply put, his sales resistance was so highly developed
that none of Trump's high pressure techniques worked.
For
a better sense of how much Comey differed from the men who have
suffered as they made their deals with Trump, consider how much each of
them compromised to make their arrangements work. Flynn so wanted to be
Trump's national security advisor, especially after being fired by President Obama, that he risked omitting key information from his government paperwork.
Spicer
was so eager to stand at the podium in the West Wing briefing room that
he was happy to double down on presidential lies to such a degree that
he became a laughingstock. And Sessions, whom no other president was
likely to name to the office of attorney general, so loves his job that
he has tolerated Trump's repeated public criticisms. To a man, they
confirmed the President's worst assumptions about the nature of
ambitious men.
The man whose hiring led Spicer to quit, Anthony Scaramucci is himself a super salesman
and a willing buyer of the Trump sizzle and shine. He debuted with such
an outpouring of affection for his new boss that it almost seemed like
he had been offered not a job, but a place in the Trump family. However,
Scaramucci is, by all accounts, independently wealthy and he is so good
at cultivating attention on his own that he may not need the reflected
glory the White House offers. With these two qualities, he may endure
longer than anyone who would have accepted the job because he or she
really needed it.
Most recently rumors are swirling about Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's unhappiness
with Trump's behavior. Always more Comey than Flynn, Tillerson is a man
who was already a star (as CEO of Exxon) when Trump recruited him.
Accomplished and confident, he doesn't need the job to fill his purse,
or satisfy his ego. For these reasons, he may be gone even sooner than
Sessions.
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