Paranoids have enemies

President Trump has embarked on a purge to rid the government of his real and imagined enemies, and even lukewarm supporters. National Security Council staff and members of the intelligence community are the current targets, but other agencies won’t be far behind. The State and Justice Departments have already been partly purged, not to mention the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and others I may not have noticed.

The paranoia is at least partly justified. No one who has sworn to uphold the US Constitution can behold what Donald Trump is doing to it and not wonder whether loyalty is merited. Lots of things raise doubts:

• the many “acting” officials unconfirmed by the Senate,
• the appointment to lifetime judgeships of unqualified lawyers,
• the naming of grossly unqualified ambassadors to key posts,
• the second guessing of highly qualified prosecutors and intelligence analysts,
• the mixing of his family’s personal business with government responsibilities,
• the imposition of racist immigration policies,
• the failure to protect the November election from Russian interference, and
• the use of his private lawyer to seek dirt on political opponents using US aid as leverage.

The vast majority of US government employees will vote against Trump. For Trump, that is sufficient evidence of their disloyalty. He relishes the notion that the entire government bureaucracy is against him. Paranoia justifies his ignoring it, diminishing it, and circumventing it.

But let’s face it: there are surely a few US government employees, among the several million, who will take risks to bring him down, because they believe he is violating his oath of office and the law. The whistleblower who complained about his “perfect” phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky is one. Former Ambassador to Kiev Yovanovitch is another, as is former “acting” ambassador Bill Taylor. Each put a career on the line to tell the truth about what they had seen and heard.

Let’s hope there are a few dozen more. There should be several in the Secret Service who can tell more tales about Trump’s billing for hotel rooms at his resorts. There will be a few at the State Department who can blow the whistle on excessive expenditures during his trip to India this week, not to mention his past trips abroad. Trump’s efforts to get his friends out of prison are surely not limited to his tweets about Roger Stone. Where are the judges and prosecutors who can tell us about other initiatives? We know the military was diverting flights so that crews could stay at one of Trump’s resorts in Scotland. What has happened with accountability for that, and how many other instances are still outstanding?

The less than nine months remaining before the November 3 election should be chock-a-block full of revelations, not only from inside the US government. Deutsche Bank’s romance with the failed Donald Trump is a rich vein, only partly mined so far. I hope the courts will finally order him to turn over his tax returns to the House of Representatives. The tales of Trump stiffing small contractors, while told repeatedly, bear more repetition, if only because they come from the same demographic that provides much of Trump’s base. We need an all-out effort to reveal the full dimensions of the scandal that is the Trump Administration. Even paranoids have enemies, who need to speak up and be counted.