Trump Goes to War. And These Are His Advisers?
By Frank Bruni
"Mr. Bruni is a contributing Opinion writer who was on the staff of The Times for more than 25 years.
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When an American president makes an especially weighty decision, there’s some small comfort in knowing that seasoned, steady aides were in the mix, complementing the commander in chief’s instincts with their expertise.
President Trump dropped 15-ton bombs on uranium enrichment sites in Iran with Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence and Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary.
I, for one, am not comforted.
By some reports, Hegseth wasn’t consulted all that much — which, I suppose, is its own perverse solace. Trump apparently learned his lesson when Hegseth decided that a Signal group chat was the proper venue for an emoji-laden pep rally about imminent military strikes against the Houthis; clue Hegseth in on the Iran plan, and he might wind up divulging it in the form of charades on “Fox & Friends.”
And Gabbard? Her relationship with Trump is strained, to say the least; he told reporters on Air Force One to pay no heed to her statement several months ago that Iran wasn’t close to or all that focused on developing a nuclear weapon.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump blurted. Apart from how warm and fuzzy that brushoff must have made Gabbard feel, it spoke volumes about the limits of Trump’s confidence in — and use for — her.
So why did he give her such a crucial job? And how did Hegseth land an even bigger one?
Because Trump wasn’t judging prospective senior administration officials on their demonstrated fitness for their positions. Any old president can do that. Shock artists like him want to show how far outside the lines they’re willing to color. The kookier the crayon, the better.
And would-be despots make sure that the people just below them really and truly owe them. Gabbard; Hegseth; the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel; so many of Trump’s other flunkies — if not for him, they’d never enjoy the titles, the offices, the attention, the entourages they do. That primes their loyalty. It greases their sycophancy.
But while it was one thing to mull the lunacy of many of Trump’s personnel choices as they strutted through Senate confirmation hearings, it’s quite another to confront their inappropriateness when an impulsive, mercurial president takes a risk this enormous, commencing the kind of military intervention he long railed against, in a combustible region that he previously expressed such wariness about.
I found myself transfixed by the tableau late Saturday night when, in nationally televised remarks from the White House, Trump announced that the United States had attacked Iran. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Hegseth all stood around him with such strenuously blank expressions, such erect postures, it was as if they’d been turned into automatons and feared that any tiny twitch might be interpreted as doubt or disagreement.
If you’ve any doubts about the culture of flattery cultivated by Trump, I direct you to that recent text that he got from Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Israel, the ally pressing hard for America’s help in defanging Iran. It’s astonishing that Trump posted the text on social media — that he’s so eager to exhibit his acolytes’ praise, so insecure. But it’s no less astounding than the amplitude of Huckabee’s adoration. An evangelical Christian pastor, Huckabee wasn’t offering Trump diplomatic counsel. He was giving him an ecclesiastical massage.
Huckabee wrote that God had saved Trump from an assassination attempt “to be the most consequential President in a century — maybe ever.” “The decisions on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anyone else,” he continued, in the best prose equivalent of genuflection that I’ve ever read. He added: “I am your appointed servant in this land and am available for you but I do not try to get in your presence often because I trust your instincts. No president in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945.” What a mammoth broom it must take to sweep that much history under the rug.
Concerns about who’s advising a president and how well they’re doing that certainly predate Trump. Most presidents seek affirmation, most have no trouble getting it, and all are pliable because all are human. Vice President Dick Cheney infamously egged on President George W. Bush. President Joe Biden’s protectors shielded him from the truth of his declining health and falling polls.
And the advisers with Trump’s ear right now include people of greater acumen than Gabbard and Hegseth. I’d put Vance and Marco Rubio in that group.
But from the moment they pledged their fealty to Trump, they grew less serious by the week. To track their time with him is to notice ever more performative demonstrations that they share his grudges and will act on his grievances. Vance berates Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, in the Oval Office. Rubio channels Trump’s xenophobia and animus toward elite universities with a puffed-up panic over international students. Both men seem less devoted to complementing Trump than to complimenting him.
But what he needs at a juncture like this are confident confidants who can play devil’s advocate, not a coterie of toadies who whisper sweet nothings in his ear — or have nothing valuable to whisper at all."
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