Was It Worth It?
John Kelly, John Bolton, and other ex-Trump staffers all had the same answer when I asked them to reflect on their past work
By Peter Nicholas
People who work for President Donald Trump typically meet one of two fates. They fail to show the unthinking loyalty he demands and get fired. Or, maybe worse, they don’t get fired — they endure the tantrums and turmoil and survive another day, binding themselves even closer to perhaps history’s most divisive president.
Anyone who went to work for Trump inside or outside the government surely knew the terms of the bargain. They’d be answering to an untested and impulsive president. They weren’t getting Dwight Eisenhower as a boss — they were getting Dwight Schrute.
Was it worth it? I asked nine seasoned officials, credentialed lawyers, flameouts, worker bees, operatives — some who voted for Trump twice, some who absorbed his harshest attacks. They all insisted that it was.
Plenty of Republicans refused to work for Trump. Those who signed up found various ways to justify their choices. A powerful mythology surrounds the presidency. Many see the Oval Office as the place where wars are won and economies rescued, making a job offer from the duly-elected president an irresistible tug.
