The Trump administration shows how power can turn institutions into instruments of personal loyalty. Beneath the combative rhetoric and high-profile departures lies a deeper danger: persuasion replacing knowledge, loyalty eclipsing institutional responsibility, and educated people normalising behaviour they once condemned

Here is where it is coming to an end, step by step. The façade is crumbling; the putrid structure is becoming visible. First, they leave. There is no grand theoretical explanation, no elaborate political doctrine, no convincing institutional account. They simply depart, citing personal reasons, political disagreements, reassignment or silence. This is how such systems often end, not with a single dramatic collapse, but with departures that gradually reveal what had been concealed by the appearance of control. President Trump’s administration offers a laboratory in which loyalty can become more valuable than competence, repetition more useful than evidence, aggression more effective than explanation, and personal allegiance more important than institutional responsibility. The deeper danger is that intelligent people learn to justify the behaviour, reproduce it and eventually mistake their participation in it for political virtue. The political order begins to fracture, and their loyalty does not necessarily protect them.

Pam Bondi, former Attorney General, Tulsi Gabbard, the former spy chief, and Karoline Leavitt, the former White House press secretary, are revealing precisely because they are not identical figures. Leavitt transformed the office of White House press secretary from an institution supposed to mediate between government and journalists into something closer to a combat platform. The press secretary became an amplifier. The exchange was no longer about what the administration had done, but about how effectively the administration could defeat the person asking. A press briefing ceases to be an information mechanism when the performance of dominance becomes more important than the transmission of information. The........

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