Closed door depositions regarding the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump are coming to a close, with many of the most damning testimonies coming from officials in his own administration.
Many being Trump appointees.
Numerous diplomats and employees within Trump's State Department corroborated allegations that Trump or his administration withheld military aide to Ukraine as leverage to pressure its President to publicly declare an investigation into Trump's potential 2020 opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump's eldest daughter and advisor, Ivanka Trump, has an explanation for that.
It involves comparing her father to former President Abraham Lincoln.
Watch below.
Ivanka implied that the officials testifying against Trump were political rivals of the administration and working against him with their testimony, saying:
"This has been the experience of most. Abraham Lincoln was famously, in his own cabinet, surrounded by people who were former political adversaries. So I would say that this seems to be the norm and history tends to repeat itself."
But there's one notable difference: Lincoln deliberately put members of opposing political ideologies in his administration in order not to be surrounded by Yes Men.
Trump, famously, only wants to be surrounded by Yes Men—which he conflates with loyalty.
In his 2007 book, Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life, Trump wrote:
"I value loyalty above everything else—more than brains, more than drive and more than energy."
According to the testimony of former FBI director James Comey, Trump expected Comey to shield him from investigation, saying:
"I need loyalty, I expect loyalty."
When Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the NSC Director of European Affairs, agreed to testify in the impeachment inquiry, Trump accused him of being a "Never Trumper."
Trump's demands for unconditional loyalty are a far cry from Lincoln's goal of an ideologically diverse cabinet, as many pointed out.
With the highest turnover rate of any President in U.S. history, there are growing concerns that Trump's administration is swelling with the Yes Men he so craves.
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