Betrayal Is All They Know

It’s how they came to power. And it’s how they will lose it all.

After January 6th, Kevin McCarthy went down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. In that moment, he turned his back on his country.

There’s a photograph from January of 2021 that still makes me angry to look at.

Two men stand side by side at Mar-a-Lago, smiling for the camera. One of them had left the White House in disgrace a week earlier, after a mob he summoned smashed its way into the Capitol. The other was the top Republican in the House of Representatives, who had stood on the House floor days earlier and said the President “bears responsibility” for that very attack.

Kevin McCarthy flew to Florida to take that picture. And the moment that picture was tweeted out to the world, Donald Trump’s political career came back from the dead.

I’ve thought about that photo many times over the last five years. This week, I found myself thinking about it again, because Kevin McCarthy’s name showed up in the press.

According to Politico, President Trump has spent the last few weeks calling allies and asking them about his own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and if she’s still right for the job. Her rivals inside the building, along with people who feel she’s “burned” them over the years, have reportedly been showing the President every unflattering headline about her and her family.

Naturally, the capital has turned it into a guessing game. Who’s feeding the stories? Plenty of people assume it’s Stephen Miller, whose name is on the short list to replace her. Maybe. Maybe not. In this White House, the list of people with a motive is never short.

The First Domino

After January 6th, Donald Trump was on the ropes. A mob he had summoned had stormed the Capitol. People who had defended him for four years were finally admitting that he had gone too far. He was leaving office with the lowest approval rating of his presidency. For the first time, it felt like the fever might break and the country might actually move on.

Then Kevin McCarthy went to Mar-A-Lago and changed everything.

It told every Republican in the country that the leader of the House had made his peace with what happened. It made a disgraced former president viable again, at the exact moment he was weakest.

We had a chance. Kevin McCarthy betrayed his country to save his own job for a little while.

There’s an old fable you probably know. A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river. The scorpion promises he won’t sting the frog, because if he does, they’ll both drown. So, the frog agrees, and halfway across, the scorpion stings him anyway. As they’re both sinking, the frog asks why. And the scorpion says, “I couldn’t help it. It’s my nature.”

Kevin McCarthy mortgaged our entire political future for that picture. Less than three years later, the movement he rescued turned on him and McCarthy became the first Speaker in American history to be thrown out by his own chamber. Trump didn’t come to his rescue.

That’s what I mean when I say betrayal is all they know. It’s the default operating system. Watching bad people knife each other can bring a little bit of satisfaction, I’ll admit. But a government that runs on betrayal eventually finds other people, usually ones that can’t defend themselves, to betray.

The Betrayal That Costs Lives

But the betrayals of the MAGA movement run deeper than palace intrigue.

Reuters reported Thursday that the White House directed SpaceX to restrict Starshield, the military version of the Starlink satellite system that Ukraine’s armed forces rely on for battlefield communications and drone operations. According to two U.S. officials, Defense Department leaders received instructions to slow the service down for Ukrainian forces. The officials didn’t say who in the White House gave the order.

In Ukraine, the effect was immediate. Officials there say terminals stopped working when they were attached to anything moving fast, which is to say, drones. A Ukrainian presidential adviser said the restrictions, imposed without warning, disrupted several military missions. “This cannot be a coincidence,” he said.

Here’s the bigger picture: Trump has been blaming Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy targets for the rising energy prices he says threaten his party in next month’s midterms. And he just announced a diesel deal with Russia, the country that invaded Ukraine. Reuters didn’t report a motive, but you can examine those facts and draw your own conclusions.

Palace intrigue is one thing. This is the United States intentionally hobbling an ally in the middle of a war.

It’s a betrayal of everything this country has claimed to stand for since the end of World War II. And it’s a betrayal of basic human decency.

You Never Leave Your Wingman

In the Air Force, there’s a word that holds real meaning: wingman. Your wingman is the person flying beside you, and the whole culture is built around the one promise that you don’t abandon them. When the stakes are life and death, you keep faith with the people fighting next to you, even when it costs you something. Especially then.

Ukraine has been our wingman in the most important fight for freedom of this century. And this week, the White House flat out abandoned them.

Donald Trump’s betrayals have hurt more people over the years than I could ever list here. Business partners, contractors, allies, his own vice president on January 6th. But the stakes have never been this high. This time, it’s the survival of a free nation.

So here’s where I land.

Betrayal is all they know. It’s how they clawed their way to power, it’s how they govern, and in the end, it’s how they’ll fall. That’s their nature, and I don’t expect it to change.

But it doesn’t have to be ours.

We can be the kind of people who keep faith. With our friends when it’s inconvenient. With our neighbors when we disagree. With the allies who have stood beside us. And with this country, even on the days it’s hard to recognize.

Their world runs on betrayal. Ours can run on honesty and compassion. And I promise you, when the river gets deep, that’s the only thing that keeps anyone afloat.

— Adam