‘Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.’
That’s former FBI director James Comey unleashing on Attorney General William Barr, his former deputy Rod Rosenstein and all the others in Trump’s orbit whom he says have compromised their ideals to remain in the president’s good graces.
“It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence,” Comey wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times. “In meetings with him, his assertions about what ‘everyone thinks’ and what is ‘obviously true’ wash over you, unchallenged.”
Comey asks why Barr, a “bright and accomplished lawyer”could be swayed to protect the president with defenses he would never use “to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger.”
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Comey then asks how Rosenstein could feel compelled, upon resigning, to thank a president “who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice.”
So how does it happen? Rationalization.
“You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet,” Comey wrote. “Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values. And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.”
