Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell just suffered a significant political blow at the hands of the man he long enabled, former President Donald Trump. Last week McConnell came out in support of the all-important so-called border bill – only to have Trump subsequently bury it. The result: McConnell’s influence over his Republican colleagues has been further weakened, an indicator he is finally reaping what he sowed. Unlikely Trump would’ve been reborn without McConnell’s enduring enablement – both during Trump’s presidency and after.
Peter Navarro is another Trump Enabler, previously described as “a trade advisor” to the former president. Navarro stayed loyal to the last – doing what he could to keep Trump in office long after it became clear that he had lost the 2020 election. But like McConnell, Navarro has been summoned to pay the piper. He has just been sentenced to four months in prison for defying a House subpoena relating to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
Enablers are followers – but of a particular sort. In my book, The Enablers: How Team Trump Flunked the Pandemic and Failed America, I define them as “followers who allow or even encourage their leaders to engage in, and then to persist in behaviors that are destructive.”* I write that given the enabled are leaders, their destructions have implications not only for them but, crucially, additionally, for others, sometimes for many, even millions of others.
McConnell is a character in the book, described as an Enabler who was key to Trump’s political survival. “There was a moment at which the senator’s support for the president was pivotal. McConnell personally and politically protected Trump during the first impeachment trial, which made it possible for the president to finish his term without the proceedings upending or even significantly impairing him.”
Navarro is also in the book, described as a Trump toady, always obligingly and obsequiously saying only what the president wanted to hear. Why? Because Navarro needed, desperately needed, to be a player. To be part of the action. To have proximity to power.
Since Trump left the White House, different Enablers have taken different paths. Some, like McConnell, have continued, whatever they privately think, publicly to support the former present. Others made different choices. Others chose to speak out against the man they once served.
In a perfect world these recovered Enablers would have spoken out earlier, would frequently say their piece, and would do so forcefully. But, in this imperfect world, I’ll take what I can get. Speaking truth to power and about power – especially power that persists – is better than staying silent.
Examples:
- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, Mark Milley: “We don’t take an oath to a king or a queen or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.” (September 2023)
- Attorney General under Trump, William Barr: “The fact of the matter is he is a consummate narcissist, and he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk.” (June 2023)
- White House Chief of Staff under Trump, John Kelly: “A person who has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” (October 2023)
- U.N. Ambassador under Trump – and later his opponent for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley: “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t ever let that happen again.” (January 2021)
- White House national security advisor, John Bolton: “By the time I left the White House I was convinced he was not fit to be president… I think it is a danger for the United States if he gets a second term.” (June 2023).
Bad leadership is impossible without bad followership. Bad leaders are impossible without bad followers. Like bad leaders, bad followers are accountable, responsible for their actions. But when bad followers have second thoughts and, as a result, break publicly away from the bad leaders they once faithfully followed … well, it can’t hurt.
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*Cambridge University Press, 2021.