Where a normal politician would see a drowning man, in this case Eric Adams, embarrassing the opposing party, Trump sees instead an opportunity to cut a deal.
One of the patterns we have seen over the course of Donald Trump’s political career — and really, one that dates back even to his business career — is that he seems to attract to his inner circle, and select for important positions, people who are morally compromised. He liked having Michael Cohen as his lawyer, knowing he was a shady and untrustworthy character. He’s handed out pardons to crooks on both sides of the aisle. He defended Bill Clinton back in the day. His current cabinet includes men such as Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who have treated the women in their lives in appalling fashion. Elon Musk, whatever one says of his business genius, has his own checkered personal life. One of Trump’s heroes is Roy Cohn.
It isn’t just that Trump is himself morally compromised and thus not judgmental. Ulysses S. Grant, for example, was a man of high moral character and a shrewd judge of talent, but as an alcoholic with a string of business failures to his name, he had a blind spot in his ability to judge the failings and vices of others. That proved especially difficult and embarrassing in his presidential administration. But this is different. Trump seems actively to pursue the support and alliance of people in inverse proportion to their personal virtues and character. Why?
Trump swooping in to rescue Eric Adams, New York City’s Democratic mayor, from a federal indictment detailing his corrupt relationship with Turkey is revealing. There’s no direct political upside to aiding a floundering member of the other party, and Trump has opened yet another chaotic dispute with federal prosecutors who, in this case, were sincerely doing their jobs without a political axe to grind. But where a normal politician would see a drowning man embarrassing the opposing party, Trump sees instead an opportunity to cut a deal. In this case, the deal is apparently on policy: Adams is playing ball with Trump’s immigration agenda, reopening an office to let ICE agents operate in the Rikers Island prison. Border czar Tom Homan even told Fox & Friends this morning, with Adams sitting next to him: “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City and we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying ‘where the hell is the agreement we came to?'”
The central ethos that runs through Trump’s career is his belief that everything is a negotiation, and everything is negotiable. It’s all The Art of the Deal. Having people work for him who have compromised moral character and damaged reputations serves multiple purposes: it places them in a grateful, subordinate position because they know that other people won’t hire them, and it ensures Trump that they can be bent. That, in the end, was what infuriated Trump about Mike Pence: Pence was a loyal soldier almost to the very end of their partnership, but Pence has a moral core formed of his religious faith and political convictions, and there was just a point beyond which he would answer to those, not to Trump. There are some things he could not regard as negotiable. This time around, Trump has been much more careful about surrounding himself with negotiable people.