That all seems to have gone by the board. Ethical behaviours be damned. Moral compass? Err, what?
if you are one of United States President Donald Trump’s top team, staying on the rails is apparently not something you need to do. Anyone on the outside the president disagrees with or doesn’t like can be quickly dispatched and defamed as a "sleazebag", but risk the lives of American military personnel by careless, reckless, shameful actions and it doesn’t seem to matter.
This week’s utter fiasco over the use of messaging app Signal to share confidential and obviously classified information about an attack on Yemen terrorist group the Houthis has provided confirmation, if ever it were needed, that Trump’s hand-picked top advisers are highly deficient.
Do we want the ideal people for these jobs to have experience, intelligence, reliability, integrity, humility, honesty, consistency, empathy in their leadership? Hell, no. Let’s have lies, deceit, abject hypocrisy, irresponsibility, arrogance, discord, apathy, callousness and sycophancy instead.
On discovering their almighty blunder of adding a journalist to their Signal chat group, Trump’s cadre went straight to the first rule of their already well-thumbed guide book — blame someone else, in this case the media.
Meanwhile, the president was happy to feign ignorance and brush off on to others concerns of it being a major failure of security.
The lies flowed freely in Hawaii, where Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth had just landed. In a strangely fidgety and highly overconfident interview, he first chuckled when fronted by a reporter about the debacle and then went on a gaslighting attack, referring to a "deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes ... to include the, I don’t know, the hoaxes of (shouting by now) Russia, Russia, Russia".
"Nobody was texting war plans," he concluded. Liar.
In the days since, it has become uncontrovertibly clear that the Signal chat contained enough detail of the pending attack on the Houthis to put US servicemen and women’s lives at risk.
Hegseth’s "so-called" journalist Jeffrey Goldberg is highly respected editor-in-chief of the prestigious The Atlantic. Goldberg showed more gumption and uprightness in not immediately publishing the battle messages sent to him than any of Trump’s inner circle have in trying to hide what has happened.
The messages also showed the scornful disdain Vice-President J D Vance has for Europe. In the thread he said: "I just hate bailing Europe out again". Hegseth replied: "I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC."
The Trump team’s response to the uncovering of the messages, their continuing efforts to try to wriggle out of trouble, and the use of the app for classified information, lead to the conclusion that, in the intelligence world, allies and long-time friends can no longer trust the US.
The president’s flip-flop on the Ukraine-Russia war and his cosying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin echo George Orwell’s 1984, when it is announced Oceania is not at war with Eurasia any more but has always been at war with Eastasia.
How can other countries rely any more on any kind of consistent line from the Trump administration?
As for Hegseth and national security adviser Mike Waltz, as well as all those who squirmed through questions on this massive clanger, where is the accountability? Anyone with any ounce of honour would realise they had to go.
But there is no accountability. There appear to be no consequences for dangerous mistakes.
Deep down, Trump’s inner circle must sometimes get a glimpse that they are poor human beings. But they can’t believe their luck and they’re not going to do anything to give it up.
These people are only in it for themselves.
