Conservative columnist Ross Douthat argues that President Donald Trump’s preference for loyalty and sycophancy in his administration creates a systemic vulnerability where officials are punished for the failure of policies they were ordered to implement.
Writing in the New York Times on April 4, 2026, Douthat suggests that the president desires officials who exhibit TV-ready swagger
and perform like reality-show characters
. According to Douthat, Trump expects his cabinet members to provide a litany of his accomplishments
and to rubber-stamp decisions made in the West Wing or at Mar-a-Lago within their respective departments.
However, Douthat posits that this desire for absolute loyalty conflicts with the president’s refusal to accept defeat or embarrassment. He asserts that when policies fail, the sycophancy that previously protected an official becomes a liability, transforming them from a loyalist into a scapegoat.
The Failure of Loyalty in Practice
Douthat identifies several high-profile examples where officials were penalized despite acting on the president’s wishes.
Former Homeland Security head Kristi Noem faced political consequences following an immigration enforcement debacle in Minneapolis. Douthat notes that the sweeping crackdown in the city of Ilhan Omar and the state of Tim Walz was almost certainly what the president wanted, yet Noem received no political protection once the operation failed.
A similar pattern is observed with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. Douthat claims Bondi dutifully carried out Trump’s instructions regarding political prosecutions and the Epstein files. Despite this adherence to the president’s bidding, Bondi was transformed into a scapegoat due to courtroom losses and the unpopularity of the Epstein-related matters.
Douthat also cites the example of Hegseth, who reportedly told the president let’s do it
during the lead-up to the war with Iran. In this instance, Douthat describes Hegseth as an enthusiastic yes man for a bellicose boss
, arguing that there is no reward for such loyalty if the grand plans do not succeed, as the official then owns the failure.
The Dilemma of the ‘Sycophant’
The central thesis of Douthat’s analysis is the difficulty of combining intelligence with total sycophancy. He suggests that for an official to survive and succeed, they would need the capability to steer the president toward more viable versions of his impulses.
Douthat proposes hypothetical alternatives that could have avoided these failures:
- Hegseth could have steered the president toward a purely military campaign against Iran, utilizing bombs and missiles without targeting leaders, which would have satisfied hawkish impulses without pushing the Iranian regime to a breaking point.
- Bondi could have avoided a broad range of difficult lawfare vendettas and instead focused on a single political prosecution with a lower threshold for success.
Douthat concludes that such scenarios are implausible because they require hacks and yes-women
to suddenly possess a set of capabilities they do not have.
It doesn’t matter if you were acting on his orders; you will be punished for that unsuccessful service just as surely as if you’d tried to thwart his aims.
Ross Douthat, New York Times