The Air Force One debacle happened a couple of weeks ago, but it is worth continuing to discuss because it has broader implications. First of all, it has all the makings of a bad joke. It is hysterical in the way that it demonstrates what a physical coward Donald is, how inept the people around him are, and it should disabuse anybody of the notion that he is a tough guy, that he is strong or brave. This perfectly exemplifies his complete and utter selfishness and the aforementioned cowardice.
The Secret Service or the intelligence agencies intercepted what they believed were credible threats against Donald and Air Force One. So they removed him without letting anybody else but a very small handful of the select few know. And they snuck him off the plane and put him, and this is just perfection, in a catering cart, which is humiliating. It is something out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This is utterly humiliating. It is shameful, and it underscores just how pathetic he is.
On the other hand, though, it is not funny at all because it demonstrates how dangerous and insane the people making the decisions in this regime are. They responded to a credible threat by removing Donald and his handpicked coterie from Air Force One, the potential target. Fine. So let’s talk briefly about who he brought with him.
Thirty five year old Natalie Harp, who I believe is referred to as the human printer, is a woman who spends about 24 hours a day with Donald telling him how great he is, taking down dictation to post his social media rants, and writing him love notes about how he is the center of the universe, her universe. There was Walt Nauta, who used to be his valet and was, of course, his co conspirator in the Mar a Lago stolen documents case, and his former caddy, Dan Scavino. I do not know what Dan Scavino does now. I am sure he made that caddy experience very relevant to working with the president. And, of course, there was the perpetually incompetent Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense. The fact that Donald chose those four people to go with him speaks to his priorities and his insecurities because he could have brought anybody.
The question is not really why Donald chose those people, although it is a potentially interesting question that maybe I will get to at some point. And it is not even why he chose to leave the other people behind, although I think it is important to know who those people were. The flight crew, the White House press corps, members of his cabinet, including Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and some of his closest advisers, Stephen Miller and former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, were left behind.
Again, the question is, why did he leave anybody on the plane at all? By removing him secretly, the people making these decisions made sure that everybody else on that plane remained targets. Because by removing him secretly, they did not remove the threat. They just removed him.
Is there any other way they could have gone about doing this? Sure. I can think of several. They could have said that the plane had mechanical difficulties. They could have said that there was a health emergency. They could have said that something came up with the scheduling and they had to postpone. There are so many ways this could have been done properly, but the fact that they did not just shows you how the people surrounding him are just as incompetent as he is and how deluded they have become into thinking that Donald is literally the only person who matters, that no other human life has intrinsic value.
This is the thing we need to figure out. Why are so many people willing to overlook Donald’s utter lack of humanity and participate in it? They should know by now that it does not matter how loyal they are. I cannot think of two people more loyal to him than Karoline Leavitt and Stephen Miller, and yet he left them on the decoy plane.
It does not matter what you do for him, how you lie and cheat and steal for him. It does not matter how you debase yourselves for him because he does not care about anybody else unless somehow they are of use to him. And then that is another question worth asking. How is it that Walt Nauta, Dan Scavino, Natalie Harp, and Pete Hegseth are of use to Donald Trump, and yet his Secretary of State, Stephen Miller, Karoline Leavitt, and the Secretary of the Treasury are of no use to him whatsoever? Who with the tiniest bit of self respect can continue to work for this man who literally keeps trying to get people in his orbit murdered? If you do not believe me, just remember January 6th.
Explaining the psychology of these people is getting harder to do because this is just the latest in a long line of things that have happened in the last few months that demonstrate just how weak, corrupt, and in decline Donald is. His flailing is becoming more obvious and his self aggrandizement more grandiose because he is desperate to assuage his pathetic little ego. Meanwhile, he is making it clear that, with the exception of that special handful of people I mentioned earlier, he cares nothing about the health, wellbeing, and safety of those closest to him.
I think the best way to understand, to the extent that we can understand, why these people are continually willing to debase themselves to Donald despite the fact that he does not care if they live or die, is that Donald is not good at many things, but he is very good at this. He is good at getting people to make micro concessions to him. Over time, as he and they become more comfortable with the concessions they make to him, the asks get bigger. We have seen this in a broader sense with the electorate as well. Donald has gotten people who continue to support him to accept things that would have been unacceptable earlier.
I am pretty sure we are going to get to the point where he is going to say, “Hey, in order to make America great again, you have to be willing to give up your Social Security.” Or, “Hey, in order to make America great again, we are going to have to put your children into reeducation camps.” And they will all basically say, “Okay, we will willingly do that for you.” This is something that happens slowly over time.
I recently spoke with a Yale professor and former FBI agent about the experiments at Yale University in the early 1960s that psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted. Participants were told by people wearing white lab coats to inflict shocks on other participants who were in other rooms. The point of the experiment was to see the role authority played in people’s willingness to override their own hesitance to inflict pain on other people.
When one of the subjects administering the shock showed hesitance because they could hear, even though they could not see, how the person they were shocking was responding, the person in the lab coat, the authority figure, told them they must continue for the sake of the experiment. More than 60 percent of the time, the subjects were willing to administer the highest level of shock because they were told to by an authority figure. The alleged victim was not actually being shocked, but the subjects did not know that. The Milgram experiment showed people’s relationship to authority and how problematic it could be. We are seeing this play out in real time, both at the societal level and, what we are more interested in right now, the interpersonal level between Donald and the people who continue willingly to choose to be in his orbit.
How much are they willing to put up with? I would not be surprised at this point if they were willing to shock themselves to death if Donald told them to because, in their worldview, he is the ultimate authority and compared to him, they are nothing.
Whenever we see pushback, that is shocking, not in the electric shock sense, but in the, “Oh my God, somebody actually stood up to him,” sense, because it happens so rarely. We saw Jeanine Pirro recently willing to draw the line when Donald was pressing her to indict people falsely for having vandalized the reflecting pool, which, of course, did not happen. Pirro’s willingness to draw the line in the sand here was completely self interested because she did not want to get disbarred for bringing a fraudulent prosecution.
It is also important to remember that Donald was not angry with her because she did something wrong. He was angry with her because she would not break the law for him. When she said, “No, I cannot continue to do this unethical, potentially illegal thing,” she was in trouble. And she did not like being in trouble with Donald. So guess what? She is once again choosing to do his bidding, potentially putting her law license and her future at risk.
That keeps happening in different ways and in varying degrees with all of them. But here is what I would say to anybody still willing to put up with this, who is still willing to debase themselves, who is still willing to risk everything for a man who does not care if they live or die: You people are going to get punished. Donald never will. And your punishments are going to be severe.
