I know what Bolton is going through very well because Trump did the same to me. After I criticized him, the president started calling me a “nut job” and said I “wheedled” my way into his campaign. He and his administration officials did the same thing with his attorney Michael Cohen, his Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and his Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

The obvious truth is that Trump can’t simultaneously be the great leader and manager he says he is and then consistently flay every employee who manifests an independent opinion about something. Trump is either incapable of managing and working with the “best people,” or he is not hiring them. Or maybe it’s a hybrid: He has fired or forced the resignation of the best, and the ones who remain have become intimidated sycophants. It’s what you would expect for a man whose temperamental management style is: Nobody else can shine, and whatever I say, even on a whim, is the final word. His tweet about Bolton on Wednesday openly admitted he didn’t listen to the national security adviser.

The way to create more power is by giving it away and empowering staff to achieve your goals. But Trump is incapable of this. He has hobbled the executive branch and made it extremely difficult for the Cabinet departments and agencies to coordinate. He has left most of these agencies understaffed, and the heads of the agencies are afraid to do things because of the president’s fickleness. Nobody feels empowered and they worry if they make a mistake, the president will come hunting for their heads.

AD

AD

It’s especially difficult when the officials in charge come up against extragovernmental policy efforts, like the one Trump had Rudolph W. Giuliani running in Ukraine — the one that resulted in the recall of the ambassador to Ukraine, over Bolton’s objection. Trump relies on (highly uninformed) instinct and eschews any sort of process.

If Trump were the head of a public company, its board would immediately terminate and replace him. But politics is different. There, people tolerate the boss, even embrace him. Trump aides rationalize this work to ourselves in a cycle that I call Trump Employment Syndrome. The typical person who has worked for Trump or who currently supports him at one point found him very odd. Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo, Kellyanne Conway, Lindsey O. Graham, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and I all have one thing in common: We have each made public statements against then-candidate Trump and criticized his bizarre taunts and misbehavior.

But when Trump won, we tried our best to see the positives, beginning a process of cognitive dissonance and moral equivocation. “Yes, it is impossible to justify the bullying, the ranting and inappropriate sociopathic behavior and the in general lifetime of immorality,” we tell ourselves. “But he is the president of the United States, and we are eager to serve.” Respect for the office of the presidency allows us to normalize what he is doing. We also have issues related to human weakness and are attracted to power, even when we have previously been people of ethics and principles. (While I thought I was helping the president and constantly giving him the benefit of the doubt, my wife was very disturbed by it and saw it exactly for what it is.) Lastly think of the judges, deregulation and tax cuts and the president’s own words about how your 401(k)s (or 409(k)s if you are typing too quickly) are rising “beyond your wildest expectations.”

But all of this comes to a head in the third stage of Trump Employment Syndrome, which is binary: Eventually, after you’ve realized you can’t mitigate the worst outcomes or moderate the president at all, you must either disavow your self-worth and personal integrity or else stand up and speak out. Bolton chose the latter when he resigned (even if Trump says he fired him) and then spoke out. People in the former category understandably don’t want to weather the tweet storms from the president and his acolytes, so they remain compliant, despite the pleadings of their loved ones who aren’t in the cult or broke free.

AD

AD

I predict many of these people who are stuck in stage two will regret their stage three choice when with the demagogic fever one day breaks. This national nightmare will eventually end, and when it does there will be lots of lives that will need to be repaired and plenty of apologies rendered. Until then, we will endure more disinformation campaigns against people like Bolton.