A recurring pattern in the first Trump administration was that, periodically, even some of the most ideologically extreme conservatives in government—people like Jeff Sessions or Bill Barr, say—would lose their jobs because even they retained some baseline adherence to the rule of law or the independence of their offices that Trump could not tolerate.
Sessions, for instance, was fired for not wanting to directly involve himself in a legal matter that affected the administration. Barr, likewise, fell afoul of Trump in the final months of the administration by refusing to back up Trump's bogus claims of election fraud, or to conjure phantom evidence of electoral malfeasance out of nothing.
So far, that hasn't happened much in the second Trump administration. There have been plenty of firings, to be sure—Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem—and one suspects there will be a few more now that the administration needs a fall guy for their party's stunning electoral defeat in the midterms.
But generally, none of these people has lost their jobs so far over some matter of principle. Pam Bondi gave an obscene and disgraceful show of bootlicking fealty to Trump in a congressional hearing shortly before she lost her post. Noem—meanwhile—was fired, if anything, for leaning a little too much into the role of maniacal Trumpist.
So far, then, no one in the second Trump White House has lost their position because they had too much integrity.
Unless—that's what finally happened yesterday.
I would never have thought that Harmeet Dhillon would fall into Trump's bad graces. As far as I could see from the outside, she fulfilled her task loyally of subverting the whole function of the federal civil rights division, turning it inside out, and transforming what was supposed to be an enforcer of desegregation and racial equality initiatives into an arm of the MAGA culture war.
But apparently, all this wasn't enough for Trump. There was one line that Dhillon wasn't quite willing to cross.
During a recent 60 Minutes appearance, Dhillon "downplayed the prevalence of voting by undocumented immigrants," in the New York Times's telling. Apparently, this showed insufficient loyalty and obedience, by Trump's reckoning.
As the Times puts it: "Her response was noted in the White House, which had enlisted Ms. Dhillon to appear on the show in the first place. Mr. Trump watched the interview and was upset that Ms. Dhillon underplayed the threat posed by illegal voting and let other administration officials know about it, according to two people with knowledge of the situation."
Now, Dhillon has resigned from her post.
Does she have the honor of being the first Bill Barr of the second term? Was there some line of independence, integrity, and adherence to the rule of law and a shared set of facts that even she was not willing to cross?
Time and again, one thinks that Trump will be content merely to fill his executive offices with ideological cranks and culture warriors. But no, that's not nearly enough for him. He doesn't just need right-wing zealots. He needs right-wing zealots who will gladly lie and cheat on his orders.
He needs people who will file three bogus indictments against James Comey, or four, if he asks for it.
He needs people who will prosecute a former Olympian for carrying a paint chip, if Trump needs a scapegoat for his own construction failures.
He needs people who will subpoena election worker to spin up a false narrative of vote rigging, if that's what Trump demands in order to sow doubt about the integrity of the election.
He needs people who will say that "illegal immigrants" stole the election, even in the face of a total absence of any evidence suggesting as much, if that's what Trump wants them to say.
He needs people, in short, who are willing to "go the whole length of want of principle," to borrow a phrase from William Hazlitt (who was speaking here of the Quarterly Review, in one of his essays in The Spirit of the Age).
Trump apparently demands a staff team that, to quote the Hazlitt passage in full, are "impervious alike to truth and candour; that, hood-winked itself, should lead public opinion blindfold; that should stick at nothing to serve the turn of a party; that should be the exclusive organ of prejudice, the sordid tool of power; that should go the whole length of want of principle in palliating every dishonest measure, of want of decency in defaming every honest man; that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be 'ugly all over with hypocrisy', and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners."
In short, he aspires to an executive branch made up entirely of Todd Blanches, Bill Pultes, and Kash Patels. And he seems to be close to getting it.
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