From the Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection

When leaders face no consequences, democracy depends on voters—and the window to enforce accountability is closing.

When I saw the video of Kash Patel splashing beer around an Olympic locker room, two things struck me: I’m so thankful I’m no longer serving in the FBI, and Julius Caesar was right to divorce his wife.

To indulge in a little Roman history: it’s 64 BCE, and Julius Caesar has just won election to pontifex. Meanwhile, another nobleman, Clodius, is pursuing his wife, Pompeia. While Pompeia attends a religious ceremony barred to men, Clodius sneaks in, confessing he waits for Pompeia when the women find him. Caesar immediately divorces Pompeia in the fallout, providing no evidence against Clodius at the subsequent trial. When the judges ask how he can divorce her without proof to share, Caesar answers, “because my wife ought not even to be under suspicion.”

Now, as a newlywed myself, I disagree with Caesar’s approach to marriage. But the concept that those holding office must be held to standards so high that power becomes more burden than privilege is one we should embrace. Demanding and upholding standards of behavior from our public officials at the ballot box is among the most powerful ways we can reinforce the fundamental premise of our governmental system – our officials work for us.

Decline into Kakistocracy

Americans have a well-earned cynicism about those leading the institutions charged with safeguarding our health, economic future, and national security. That cynicism significantly predates the kakistocracy of 2026. Indeed, our nation’s highest officers already abdicated standards of conduct. How else to explain the Senate confirming a cabinet member who allows her husband to allegedly assault civil servants in government buildings, or a Director of National Intelligence whose affinity for Kremlin talking points is so ludicrously inappropriate? Supreme Court justices apparently personally decided lavish gifts from individuals aren’t bribes long before Snyder v. United States, and people regularly invest in the stock market using dashboards duplicating trades by Congressional members who sit on the affected committees. Our refusal to confront such behavior has made it easier to accept an increasingly venal political system, and that system naturally paved the way for opportunistic authoritarians.

The Onset of Authoritarianism

This administration, like all authoritarian regimes, demands that the population adhere to strict rules susceptible to change at any moment. The White House runs roughshod over both law and what turns out to be just norms and not actual laws; it’s the people who must adjust. This administration tells us we must not exercise our right to protest or to carry a gun. Don’t remind our servicemembers of their rights and obligations. Don’t take a scenic drive. The administration lulls people into self-soothing with the lie that if you just follow directions, you’ll be okay. If you aren’t an immigrant or don’t look like an immigrant, you won’t be deported. If you don’t get between an untrained ICE agent in sneakers and an “illegal,” you won’t be killed. If you aren’t transgender, or if no one thinks you’re transgender, you’ll be safe. If you have your birth certificate on hand, you’ll still be allowed to vote.

But these expectations only go one way. Such regimes do not consider themselves beholden to the people, and so the only behavior that matters is how deferential an official is to the leader. When Kash Patel makes a fool of himself in Milan and wastes our tax dollars for his girlfriend’s security detail, he’s showing us this new playbook. He’s telling Americans that the position he occupies is not worthy of dignity. He doesn’t work for us. He works for President Trump. And Trump, who sees himself as a king, as a pontifex, and as a pilot dumping feces on Americans, certainly doesn’t consider himself a public servant.

President Trump and his circle interpret government as something to use for self-enrichment, not something precious to steward. He won’t change.

Forging Something Better

But it’s not too late to forge something better. With midterms upon us, we have the opportunity to evaluate the character and capabilities of the people we trust to make decisions on our behalf. If the last year taught us anything, it’s that citizens have limited tools to confront flagrant abuses of power. We are, to a frightening extent, at the mercy of a cohort of legislators who either endorse the abandonment of a functioning republic or are too weak to confront it.

We cannot settle for voting in a status quo that facilitated this active dismantling of our republic. We must instead seize this opportunity to express this fundamental democratic principle that all power is derived from the people, and that each of those people, from the poorest to the most privileged, are of equal inherent value.

The White House is telling us we aren’t citizens, but subjects to be ruled. We cannot accept that demotion.

Max Estevao is a former FBI Intelligence Analyst who covered Latin America and Middle East counterintelligence issues. He left federal service in 2025 and now works in private strategic intelligence and security consulting.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rFounded Rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

Puppet or not, Donald Trump has delivered on nearly every strategic objective Russia could hope for from an American president.

Donald Trump has long appeared to be in the thrall of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In her October 2016 Presidential Campaign debate, Hillary Clinton called Trump a puppet for Putin. It struck a nerve, and an angry Trump responded, “No puppet! You’re the puppet!” Secretary Clinton was referring to multiple reports of Russian money bankrolling Trump’s candidacy and reported comments from Trump’s own sons regarding the prevalence of lots of Russian money invested in Trump businesses.

If you look at the many seriously extra-Constitutional actions Trump has carried out as President, there have been clear benefits to Putin and Russia to the equally clear detriment of the United States. From campaigning to destroy NATO, to threatening close allies and major trading partners with massive on-again off-again tariffs, to selling out Ukraine, to rewarding Russia for providing Iranians targeting data to kill American soldiers in the Gulf, Trump’s goal appears to be to weaken America’s world leadership, power, and prestige.

Ukraine has been bravely fighting to defend democracy against Russia, a brutal dictatorship that America has long considered a dangerous adversary. Yet Trump has rewarded Ukrainian courage by cutting off American aid, repeatedly belittling President Zelenskyy while praising aggressor Putin, and making it increasingly clear that he wants Putin to prevail.

With Trump’s seemingly impulsive start of an unprovoked war in the Middle East, the question is no longer whether Trump does things to weaken and diminish America globally; coincidentally, in lockstep with Putin’s dream of payback for America’s role in the dissolution of the communist Soviet Union.

Reminiscent of Trump’s 2018 Helsinki statement contradicting US intelligence and taking Putin’s word as conclusive that Russia played no role in the 2016 election, when asked about recent reports from Ukrainian and regional intelligence sources of Russian targeting American forces for Iran, Trump’s billionaire international negotiator-at-large, Steve Witkoff told the press in March that it’s not a problem, saying, “The Russians said they have not been sharing. That’s what they said. So, we can take them at their word.” This, despite Putin confirming Russia’s unwavering support of and solidarity with Iran. As if to confirm he is indeed still in Putin’s sway, in the wake of Iran shutting the Strait of Hormuz, Trump lifted sanctions on Russian oil, gifting Putin freedom to sell unlimited amounts of its oil and finance Russian military aggression against Ukraine.

Trump first attracted Moscow’s beneficence when he needed cash bailouts in the 1980s and ‘90s. This financial dependence grew over time, making Trump increasingly susceptible to Russian influence. He was the perfect “Manchurian Candidate” for Putin: an American businessman with political ambitions who whom Putin would later help become President in exchange for “favors” to Putin. Trump is well known for being 100% amorally transactional, using whatever ideology, value system, or performative act suits the moment, while actually operating independently of any doctrine, to secure whatever he perceives will net him personal gain.

It is well known that Russian oligarchs laundered money through Trump’s business operations in the days of his multiple bankruptcies in the 1990s, when he could not get any loans from reputable banks. Russian financial “help” expanded considerably during the 2016 Presidential Campaign. The Center for American Progress has documented an expanded pattern of contacts and transfers of money between Russia-linked operatives and members of the 2016 Trump campaign and 2017 transition team, concluding “while an analysis of the publicly known transactions cannot answer all the questions about Trump’s involvement with Russia, they do show a significant nexus between his political campaign and Russian money and suggest a number of important avenues for further oversight and investigation.”

Trump’s 2016 Campaign Manager, Paul Manafort, who was previously employed by Putin’s people to install a pro-Russian puppet as Ukraine’s president in 2010, admitted that he was regularly feeding campaign strategy and polling information to Russian intelligence. Throughout the campaign, Manafort let Russian intelligence know how best to help Trump win, and it appears that Russia indeed jumped into American social media with viral bots and propaganda.

There are credible assertions from American intelligence sources that when Trump was first elected, there was literally partying in the Kremlin, celebrating a victory they believed they had made happen. In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy to the Russian Foreign Minister in what Trump thought was going to be a “secret Oval Office meeting.” Ironically, the Russians released an embarrassing photo to the press, resulting in Mossad having to relocate and provide a new identity for that spy. That in turn prompted the CIA to worry that a longtime American spy in the Kremlin was similarly vulnerable to Trump outing him to Putin. According to CNN and other reporting, the CIA concluded that the risk Trump had revealed or was about to reveal our human asset was so great that they pulled our spy out of Russia in 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency.

The Steele Dossier and Mueller Report both suggest plausible reasons for Trump to act as Putin’s puppet (blackmail, money, and domestic political help). However, the former relied on confidential sources and was publicly squelched by a vigorous disinformation campaign, while the latter was limited in scope by then-Attorney General Barr. Over Trump’s first term in office, there were several meetings and calls with Putin and Russian leaders with apparent coordination and “meeting of the minds.” No memoranda or notes were taken; the most curious meeting being an unusually cordial, even jovial, tete-a-tete in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, closed to media coverage with only a Russian propaganda “readout” afterward.

. Further, Trump’s January 2021 theft of highly classified national security secrets is, in itself, consistent with Trump continuing to act as Putin’s “useful idiot.” It is still unclear exactly why Trump stole that trove of classified material; he may have taken it to show to Putin, to sell to Putin, to sell to other nations, or to hoard it. But take the material he did, and having those documents in his Mar-a-Lago country club was a clear and significant national security problem for the United States. And a clear and significant national security problem for the United States is a clear and significant win for Mr. Putin. It proved to Putin that Trump would violate the strictest US regulations if he felt he could benefit or please another world leader. Even if this was not a task that Putin gave Trump, it was validation that Trump would take a significant risk to please Putin while endangering the national security of his own country. It was also some confirmation that Trump was eager to please Putin, which is not at all a trivial thing for his Russian counterparts to know should they need or want it.

Puppet or No Puppet? You be the judge. What specific actions to weaken America would Putin ask a puppet to pursue? A few very serious “asks”:

– Withdrawing US assistance to Ukraine to facilitate a Russian takeover. Check!
– Disengaging from US alliances to weaken the economic and military strength of the Western democracies. Check!
– Destabilizing and weakening the US economy through on-again, off-again crippling trade tariffs. Check!
– Belittling, attacking, sowing discord in NATO and EU nations to reduce their ability and confidence to counter a Russian expansionist agenda. Check!
– Lifting sanctions on Russian oil to provide more financial and material lifeblood to Russia’s military operations (which are simultaneously providing an active US adversary with targeting data on our troops). Double check!

The real question is, WHY would Trump want to enable Putin’s anti-America agenda? Why would he imperil three-quarters of a century of post-World War II American leadership, forging peace-promoting alliances, creating trade-enhancing partnerships, and conducting humanitarian democratic nation-building, undermining America’s strength and reputation?

His siding with a historically belligerent adversary nation begs the question whether Trump is operating as Putin’s quisling apostate. While there is as yet no “smoking gun” proof that he is, in fact, a Russian asset, Trump has certainly been doing all the things one would expect a well-placed Russian agent to do.

Douglas Clapp, Captain USCG (Ret.) is a member of The Steady State. His career service in Maritime Safety & Security culminated as Deputy Director of the Coast Guard’s Training & Education System, Reserve Component, and Leadership/Diversity functions. In his post-military career, he served as Senior Analyst for the Operations Directorate, USNORTHCOM as a missions expert in Defense of the Homeland and Defense Support of Civil Authorities for emergencies and disasters.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rFounded ule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

In the latest episode of the Sentinel, American University Adjunct professor and Scholar‑in‑Residence, Alex Joel, joins host Peter Mina to unpack how democracies can fight real threats without becoming one themselves, exploring the post‑9/11 “connect the dots” mindset, the Privacy Act’s enduring role, and how data, protest, and transparency collide.

Watch and listen to new Sentinel episodes each Tuesday. Subscribe and review us on your favorite podcast platform.

Guest Info: Alex Joel is a Scholar‑in‑Residence and Adjunct Professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, where he leads the Privacy Across Borders initiative and focuses on the intersection of national security, technology, privacy, and civil liberties. He previously served as the longtime Chief of the Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy and Transparency at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, acting as the Intelligence Community’s Civil Liberties Protection Officer and later its Chief Transparency Officer after earlier service as an attorney at the CIA.

View the episode transcript.

PDF VERSION AVAILABLE HERE

We assess that Donald Trump’s second presidential term exhibits increasingly personalized, dominance-oriented leadership, shaped by strong partisan control, expanded executive authority, and a staff culture emphasizing loyalty over moderation. His governing style prioritizes image, legacy, and symbolic strength over institutional process, contributing to policy volatility and making long-term forecasting difficult, even as he sometimes recalibrates when faced with sustained political, economic, or strategic resistance.

Less Restrained Second Term

We assess that Trump is less constrained in his second term than in his first, due to greater ideological consolidation within the Republican Party, legal developments expanding presidential immunity, and a White House environment that rewards fealty and sidelines moderating voices. The absence of future electoral pressures, combined with accumulated grievances from his first term and post-presidency period, further reduces self-restraint and incentivizes aggressive use of executive tools. Trump has publicly downplayed external checks, suggesting his primary constraint is his own judgment, reflecting a personalized understanding of presidential authority rather than one rooted in constitutional limits.

Cult of Personality and Image Politics

Trump’s leadership is anchored in a personality cult centered on ego, self-importance, and image management, where personal brand and public office are deeply intertwined. He embraces stylized, mythologizing portrayals of himself, including heroic, pop-cultural, and religious imagery, as tools to project singular authority and justify an exceptional role outside normal democratic expectations. Political psychology research on personality-centered movements aligns with this pattern, in which loyalty to the leader becomes central to supporters’ political identity and rhetoric emphasizes his invulnerability and unique status above ordinary accountability.

We assess that Trump increasingly blurs the line between the presidency and his private brand, with a strong focus on visible markers of power such as naming rights, prominent buildings, and large symbolic projects that foreground his personal image. His worldview appears heavily shaped by entertainment media and nostalgic mid-twentieth-century imagery, prioritizing the appearance of strength over functional effectiveness and rewarding followers who mimic his style as demonstrations of fealty. With low confidence, we judge that age-related decline is more likely to intensify negative impulses than to moderate them, given the increasingly disruptive trajectory of his rhetoric and behavior over the past decade.

Transactional Governance

We assess that transactionalism remains a core dimension of Trump’s leadership, with individuals, institutions, and foreign states evaluated primarily in terms of deals, leverage, and personal or political gain rather than values, norms, or collective goods. Government processes, rule of law, and democracy itself tend to be treated as instruments to be exploited for advantage rather than independent constraints embodying shared societal standards. This pattern is particularly visible in foreign policy, where he seeks high-profile deals in arenas such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe without consistent regard for durability, underlying causes, or long-term strategic balance.

Transactional logic also extends to relationships with elites and donors, where large financial contributions or strategic investments have been closely linked in reporting to access and favorable policy outcomes. Trump tends to operate through exchange relationships, whether financial, political, or loyalty-based, rather than through institutionalized policy frameworks, and he often devalues motives tied to sacrifice, ideology, or public service that do not align with his deal-making worldview.

Mafia Style Leadership and Bullying

We assess that Trump routinely employs dominance-based leadership patterns that parallel protection rackets and organized crime models, emphasizing loyalty enforcement, intimidation, and selective reward and punishment. He maintains personal reward networks, keeps long memories of perceived betrayal, and uses public targeting, humiliation, and reputational attacks as tools to discipline subordinates and adversaries. Policy moves, including unilateral tariff threats and coercive bargaining with allies, often resemble protection schemes aimed at extracting concessions or public capitulation rather than deriving from coherent economic or strategic frameworks.

Bullying appears as a distinct, recurring strategy, frequently aimed at weaker or more vulnerable targets while avoiding equal-risk confrontations with peers or stronger opponents. Trump integrates bullying into governance by using visible attacks to signal the costs of dissent and shape the risk calculations of surrounding actors, consistent with research on bullying as a mechanism of social control. He favors family members and long-time business associates for sensitive roles, reinforcing a quasi-clan structure and reducing reliance on professional, norm-bound civil servants whom he often views with suspicion.

Bigotry and Retrograde Social Hierarchy

We assess with moderate confidence that Trump holds instinctive, if not fully worked-out ideological, preferences aligned with a nostalgic mid-twentieth-century social hierarchy privileging white, male, and traditional gender and sexual norms. From his early promotion of false claims about Barack Obama’s citizenship to his stance on the Central Park Five, patterns of racialized grievance and bigotry have been recurrent features of his public life. These instincts often inform policy preferences when not overridden by transactional or tactical considerations, contributing to exclusionary, punitive approaches toward immigrants, racial and religious minorities, and other vulnerable groups.

Trump’s Make America Great Again framing amplifies boomer-era nostalgia and resistance to social changes since the 1950s, reinforcing a worldview that sees many post–civil rights advances as threats rather than progress. In his second term, these instincts appear increasingly institutionalized through aligned appointees and policy entrepreneurs who share his views and possess the expertise to implement harsh measures, making bigotry not just a personal failing but a driver of state policy.

Real Estate Developer Worldview

We assess that Trump’s long career in real estate strongly shapes his conception of power as acquisition, branding, and ownership, with a focus on tangible assets, physical infrastructure, and territorial control. He places outsized emphasis on naming rights, large projects, and branded programs, treating them as essential to legacy and recognition, and has pursued renaming or imprinting his brand on major public sites and government initiatives. Reported comments that historical figures failed by not putting their names on property reflect this deeply ingrained branding logic.

Internationally, his mindset aligns with an imperial frame in which powerful states acquire territory and dominate others, as reflected in musings about annexing Greenland or incorporating Canada as an additional state. He treats ownership rather than treaties or alliances as the ultimate guarantee of control and has expressed admiration for historical imperial projects while downplaying or ignoring associated exploitation and violence. This outlook encourages zero-sum, asset-focused thinking in both domestic and foreign policy.

Inconsistent Decision Making

We assess that Trump lacks a stable, institutionalized decision-making framework beyond shifting perceptions of personal self-interest, grievance, and symbolic gain. He relies heavily on instinct and the influence of the last person in the room, producing frequent reversals and inconsistent rationales for major actions, including the use of military force against Iran and other adversaries. In his first term, more professional staff sometimes slowed or reshaped his impulses; in his second term, a more loyal and ideologically aligned entourage appears to amplify rather than constrain them.

Policy is often announced via social media or abrupt executive actions with limited interagency coordination, contributing to chaos and unpredictable implementation. This volatility empowers sycophantic advisers who can frame their preferred policies as ego-affirming or grievance-satisfying, thereby channeling his impulsivity into more extreme or coherent ideological projects. Such dynamics complicate forecasting, as outcomes depend less on structured processes than on the interplay of mood, flattery, and perceived personal stakes.

Implications

We assess that Trump tends not to compromise unless confronted with an equal or greater demonstration of strength, leverage, or clear personal costs, especially in the absence of internal institutional constraints. He is simultaneously risk averse when facing credible opposition and risk acceptant when imposing costs on weaker actors, leading to bellicose rhetoric followed by tactical retreats that he then rhetorically reframes as victories. External actors, including foreign governments, markets, and domestic institutions, have at times successfully constrained him by imposing clear economic or strategic consequences, as seen when market sell-offs or coordinated resistance forced partial reversals of aggressive tariff or sanction announcements.

Other players experiment with combinations of accommodation and resistance, often beginning with ego-stroking gestures but ultimately needing coordinated pushback to alter his course. Attempts to appease him without meaningful counter leverage tend to invite further demands, while clear, unified resistance can sometimes generate tactical retreats, even as he escalates grievance narratives for his base.

Uncertainty and Forecast Limits

We assess that Trump’s personality will continue to play an outsized role in United States policy, but personality-based forecasting remains inherently difficult and uncertain. With moderate confidence, we judge that salient traits such as ego, bullying, and grievance sensitivity are likely to intensify as domestic and international resistance grows, given his aversion to acknowledging error or accepting defeat. We cannot reliably predict how aging will interact with these dimensions; with low confidence, we assess that advancing age in a less constrained second term environment is more likely to exacerbate existing patterns than to mellow them.

Corruption and Conflicts of Interest

We assess that Trump’s transactional orientation, refusal to fully separate from his business interests, and willingness to leverage public office for private gain create significant corruption risks and conflicts of interest. External reporting indicates that he and his family have profited substantially during his second term through ventures closely linked to his political position, including a financial and crypto start-up in which foreign, state-linked investors acquired major stakes while later receiving favorable policy outcomes.

In January, a reporter for the New Yorker magazine estimated that President Trump and his family have made approximately $4 billion during his first year of his second term by leveraging his office. Particularly through the family’s linkages with financial start up World Liberty Financial: his three sons are cofounders with Trump himself listed as co-founder emeritus. Four days before President Trump’s second inauguration, the UAE national security advisor and brother of the UAE President invested $500 million for a 49% stake in the company. Roughly five months later the UAE was able to negotiate administration approval to purchase powerful A.I. chips that the U.S. had previously declined to approve for export to that country. The Administration denied any connection.

Trump’s administration has significantly weakened the government’s anti-corruption infrastructure. In January 2025, he fired at least 17 inspector generals. In February 2025, he ordered the DoJ to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In May and June of that year, DoJ issued revised FCPA guidance to emphasize cases that impact U.S. competitiveness and national security. At the same time press reports indicated that the administration sharply reduced the number of attorneys at the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section from over 30 attorneys to around 5 and suspended its ability to review potential cases against members of Congress and other public officials to prevent politically motivated prosecutions.

Institutionally, his administration has weakened anti-corruption safeguards by firing inspectors general, narrowing enforcement of foreign bribery statutes, and reducing the capacity of the Justice Department’s public integrity functions, thereby undermining oversight. Civil and criminal cases alleging fraudulent financial practices in his business empire, including judicial findings of deliberate overvaluation of assets to secure better loan terms, reinforce concerns about his ethical fitness for high office and the compatibility of his leadership style with rule-of-law governance.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.

A lifetime of leadership experience leads to a stark conclusion: Donald Trump’s lack of competence and empathy is not just a personal flaw—it is a national security risk, now dangerously exposed in a war with Iran.

Tragically, Donald Trump is incapable of providing effective leadership for our Armed Forces or the nation, and has proven so repeatedly. The still expanding war of choice with Iran makes this statement even more pressing and alarming. I have published, spoken on, and taught leadership principles for over four decades. There are two primary components of good leadership: competence and caring. America’s once and again chief executive is a clear failure on both counts. His unilateral, disastrous decision to go to war with Iran provides illumination.

You have heard it before, but it bears repetition. This Oval Office occupant exhibits all the behaviors of a malignant narcissist. Narcissists like this lack empathy. Empathy is a key character trait of all effective leaders. Despite voluminous discussion of Trump’s shortcomings, rarely is his lack of empathy, the ability to genuinely care about the fate of those beyond himself and his immediate family, highlighted as a causal factor in his leadership deficiency. We all know that quality, effective leadership matters; soldiers know and depend on this factor better than most. Effective leaders inspire us to become the best version of ourselves. A truly caring leader would have considered and planned for the circumstances and consequences of the actions he was directing the military to undertake. And, he would have prepared and mobilized the nation to support those actions while explaining their urgency. He did neither.

When it comes to competence, history’s judgement will be harsh. This Commander-in-Chief may be the least capable of performing national security functions of any that ever sat behind the desk. Effective leadership in this context is about making wise and informed decisions, acting with integrity, bolstering the nation’s (rather than personal) well-being, accepting responsibility, and possessing the character to bear burdens for others, easing them when possible. This White House occupant renounces responsibility like the mongoose recoils from the cobra’s strike. His straight-from-the-hip and go-to position appears to be to lie, dissemble, and blame others. He plays the role of victim constantly and with undisguised relish.

Regarding the war of choice against Iran, his leadership mistakes are egregious. Trump chose a wholly unqualified self-promoter with repugnant views and past behavior to lead his self-styled Department of “War.” He refused to seek Congressional counsel or approval prior to engaging in hostilities, preferring the advice of his son-in-law and business cronies. He embraced the long disproven notion that air-power alone could compel surrender, an idea surely not promoted by senior military advisers. He shunned collaboration, insulting our NATO allies – calling them cowards – and endangered the Gulf Cooperation Council nations.

As the battle was joined, he insisted that the war was already won in the midst of a clearly continuing and escalating conflict while leaving many American citizens stranded in the region, for lack of evacuation planning. Moreover, he failed to anticipate what everyone in the US Intelligence Community surely knew: that Iran would respond by threatening the Strait of Hormuz, effectively shutting down 20% of the globe’s oil distribution, and driving up the cost of gas at the pump. Finally, but hardly least, he appears to be preparing for a ground assault option that could result in significant American military casualties. The list of missteps goes on and grows longer daily.

It is a well-established truth that competent and caring leaders earn their peoples’ respect and loyalty. I have studied leadership throughout my adult life, learning at the feet of exceptional senior sergeants and officers in the US Army’s Special Forces. I know this subject through academics as well, but more importantly, a half-century of deep professional experience. Mr. Trump is not equal to the challenge of leading our nation. Regrettably, he lacks both required components of effective leadership: competence and caring. Both components are bolstered and accentuated by striving to be a good person. This chief executive failed that test a long time ago.

Robert Bruce Adolph , a qualified Military Strategist, is a retired senior US Army Special Forces soldier. He holds graduate degrees in both National Security Studies & International Affairs and was formally trained as a counterintelligence special agent. Robert also taught university level courses in American Government, US History, and World Politics. Following his retirement from the active military, he joined the UN, subsequently seeing service in Sierra Leone, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Israel/Palestine, Indonesia and more, culminating in the role of Chief of the Middle East and North Africa at UN Headquarters in New York. He is a member of The Steady State.

Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 400 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.