How The Media Are Lying Right Now: Trump’s ‘Loyalists’ Edition

So much of what the news media do as it relates to Trump isn’t to explicitly lie (though they do that plenty) but to abandon previously accepted understandings about the way our government and politics work. They then adopt new concepts and insist that the largely normal, mundane thing Trump does is scary or, at minimum, cause for concern.

Two columns in The New York Times this week serve to reinforce the mind-numbing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump plans to fill his administration with unchecked “loyalists,” the implication being that Trump intends to function purely based on selfish interests rather than govern on behalf of Americans. This is a perfect example of the media asserting that something unremarkable is actually a fearsome veer from “democracy.”

Under the headline “Democrats Don’t Have a Shortcut Out of the Wilderness,” Times columnist Thomas Edsall pretended he was about to write on the rudderless party just trounced in an election due to unpopular policies. But nah, it was only a pretext for him to quote a bunch of Democrat academics to repeat how dangerous Trump is. Regarding Trump’s promise to remove ineffectual leadership in the U.S. military, which has seen recruitment plummet in recent years, Edsall quoted a professor to say that such restructuring would be “just an excuse to purge officials who might be expected to be less loyal to Trump.” The professor anticipated that Trump will “engage in selective punishments and purges on a scale we really have not seen before.”

The same day the Times published Edsall’s column, it published a similar one by Jamelle Bouie, headlined “A Political Reckoning Will Come for Trump, Too.” What Trump wants in his administration, wrote Bouie, “are deputies and subordinates who will show a special and specific loyalty to him, above and beyond everything else.”

The originality oozes from every page.

There is nothing alarming about a president who expects loyalty from the people he selects to implement his agenda, the very thing that voters chose him to do in a process otherwise known as “a democratic election.”

A president filling his cabinet with reliable individuals who won’t take it upon themselves to undermine the agenda or thwart attempts to execute it is how any effective organization works. When interviewing for a job, a potential employee wouldn’t make himself more attractive by declaring himself independent from the company’s mission. He would be the first one ruled out for the position.

When they bemoan the concept of “loyalists,” they’re bemoaning someone who will do as he’s told because that person understands and has enthusiasm for what’s expected of him. The problem for Bouie and Edsall is that they don’t agree with the Trump agenda. And what do you know — that’s why they won’t be asked to work on its behalf! That goes for anyone else who shares their view.

This lame and tired narrative also suggests that the media don’t understand how American government works, though, again, it’s more likely they have simply abandoned their faith in it because a new party with a different governing vision is in power.

The whole point of this system is that no one person or branch of government holds all the power to do everything, which means a branch frequently either has to work with the others or else win the legal argument that it does in fact hold exclusive authority on a given policy issue. That usually plays out with the presidency asserting itself, only for an opposing party — a state, a political organization, a private citizen, etc. — to attempt to block it in court. Opposition is supposed to come from the outside. The media would rather it come from within.

Admittedly, it would also be my preference that a Democrat administration be sabotaged by its own members and officials, but they seem to have their house in order so it tends to not happen that way.

Trump is right to fill out his administration with “loyalists.” That’s how the executive part of the federal government is supposed to work. The media know that. They just want the incoming executive to fail.