Column details Blanche slip, Schwartz pledge, Clayton refusal
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, in a Guardian opinion column published Monday, argued that the confirmation hearings for three of President Donald Trump’s nominees exposed a direct conflict between personal integrity and loyalty to the president.
Reich wrote that “it is not possible to have integrity and be loyal to Trump. The two are in direct conflict.” He defined integrity as living by one’s principles and maintaining one’s moral compass.
Reich described attorney general nominee Todd Blanche’s testimony as revealing the conflict. Blanche, he wrote, said he wanted to restore trust in the Justice Department but then inadvertently referred to himself as “Trump’s lawyer” before correcting the remark. Reich wrote that the slip was evidence of “unswerving loyalty” and showed Blanche “lacks integrity.”
Regarding CDC nominee Erica Schwartz, Reich said she pledged to follow science but expressed trust that Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “would not implement policies that hurt public health.” Reich concluded that statement was “enough to cast doubt on her integrity.”
Reich wrote that intelligence nominee Jay Clayton repeatedly refused to say whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Reich quoted Senator Jon Ossoff’s response: “You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election? But you ask to lead America’s intelligence community? Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question? To have to indulge the president’s delusions?”
Reich extended his argument to Senator Lindsey Graham, whom he said “traded honesty for influence” after denouncing Trump following Jan. 6 and later becoming a loyal defender. He contrasted integrity with loyalty by recalling Trump’s praise for his mentor Roy Cohn in The Art of the Deal: “What I liked most about Roy Cohn was that he would do just the opposite” of those “boasting about their uncompromising integrity.”
The column invoked the poet, philosopher, and statesman Václav Havel: “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.” Reich concluded that “someone lacking integrity is inherently untrustworthy” and “cannot serve the people of the United States.”