In Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era (2026), political journalist Jacob Weisberg calls out eight prominent Americans for failing to live up to the very principles they claim to have spent their lives promoting. And, at their feet, he places responsibility for the failure of several American institutions to stand up to the colossal mess that is the presidential administration of Donald Trump.
The real threats facing the United States today aren’t the clowns populating the Trump administration circus such as Stephen Miller or Kash Patel; it is their enablers, those who have decided to situate their own self-interests ahead of the guiding principles they have long espoused.
This infamous octet hasn’t simply looked the other way as so many ignorant Americans have done. Indeed, they have all found themselves in positions wherein, had they taken a stand based upon the principles that they themselves have claimed to live by, they might have forestalled the surrenders of the institutions they represent: a free press and the First Amendment, the United States Senate, the rule of law, capitalism and the free market, the United States Supreme Court, the legal profession, and, perhaps most significantly, the Republican Party.
Profiles in Cowardice is “about those who recognized the danger Trump posed to American values,” Weisberg writes in his introduction, “who had the ability to say no to him, and who at earlier moments showed flickers of integrity—but who, when a more serious test came, failed to act courageously, in ways that reveal both their moral weakness and the fragility of the institutions they represented.”
Those “flickers of integrity” showed themselves early in Trump’s first campaign just as Trump’s vulgarity and misogyny were on bold display.
During the first Republican debate in August of 2015, Fox News personality Megyn Kelly asked Trump about his long record of mistreating women. “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals…’”Kelly said. Trump replied, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.” Kelly said, “No it wasn’t.” The audience applauded and Trump said, “Thank you.” Kelly then cited instances from Trump’s Twitter account including his post that “it would be a pretty picture to see [a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice] on her knees” and Kelly added “how will you answer the charge… that you are part of the war on women?”
While Trump made light of the entire affair, his humiliating comments later prompted physical threats against Kelly. “Most notoriously,” Weisberg writes, “[Trump] said on CNN the next day that [Kelly] had ‘blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her whatever.’ That was the humiliation part—shaming her in sexual terms and implying she was in a bad mood because she was on her period.”
We all know what a disgusting specimen that Trump is. Unfortunately, many of those who applauded this behavior from a presidential candidate felt empowered to take it further. Following Trump’s comments, his followers, Weisberg adds, went after Kelly online “threatening to rape her, kill her, and harm her family. Her phone number was posted on the internet, and her voicemail filled up with messages calling her a ‘cunt,’ a ‘slut,’ a ‘bitch, and a ‘fucking whore.’”
“It was one of the first moments,” Weisberg writes, “when the online MAGA mob emerged as a new kind of political weapon—a pack of angry, agitated followers who might respond to their leader’s hurt feelings in dangerous and unpredictable ways.”
But Kelly did not back down, “Even though most of her colleagues at Fox News took Trump’s side.” Kelly’s stand against Trump “was the moment that launched her into wider national prominence, not as a mere partisan on Fox, but as a serious journalist with spine… It was a heartening story of journalistic toughness and personal bravery in the face of terrifying intimidation.”
By the time Trump secured the nomination, however, Kelly had surrendered. In a “one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower,” Kelly “asked Trump what he had learned ‘about love’ and ‘about yourself’ from his divorces and his late brother’s alcoholism.” As we have learned about Donald Trump, he can hold long-term grudges but we have also seen on many occasions that, if his victims come crawling and fawning, he can just as quickly welcome them back into his embrace… literally.
During “Trump’s 2024 election-eve rally in Pittsburgh [m]ore than an hour into his speech, Trump pauses to welcome Kelly to the stage. They embrace…”
Kelly then proceeds to laud Trump. “He got mocked by the left for saying he would be a protector of women,” Kelly tells the audience. “He will be a protector of women and it’s why I’m voting for him.”
We know Megyn Kelly was disgusted with and humiliated by Donald Trump, and had serious concerns about his misogyny, yet she capitulated. The extremely popular news personality had the platform and the conservative bona-fides to make a real difference, but she squandered it. Megyn Kelly is a coward.
Jacob Weisberg lists five explanations for bringing out cowardice in otherwise seemingly decent people: Peer Pressure, Fear of Ostracism, Fear of Violence, Money, and Institutional Responsibility. While others on Weisberg’s list would lamely claim that they behaved the way they did to protect the institutions they represented, I think we can safely say that Megyn Kelly capitulated due to a combination of the other four. Weisberg also points out that taking a stand against someone like Donald Trump can come with a heavy price. In this, he expresses a bit of brief sympathy, or perhaps pity, for Megyn Kelly. After all, what is one to do when one’s family is threatened by an irrational and angry mob? What would you be willing to do?
Not all of Weisberg’s cowards are household names, including the president of Dartmouth University, Sian Beilok. Trump set his sights on higher education early in his second term by threatening to limit government funding; “delay or deny grants, initiate audits and investigations, freeze new research funding, and flood [universities and colleges] with compliance demands.” The administration eventually demanded that schools limit international students, “[e]liminate race and gender identity as factors in admissions, financial aid, and hiring…” and perhaps most terrifying, “[s]ubmit to ideological audits, donor disclosure, and requirements to report protestors to the government…”
At Dartmouth, due to a miscommunication between university officials and the police, a pro-Palestinian candlelight vigil on campus in 2024 was met with unintended police force. Beilok didn’t call for this crackdown but when the Trump administration got word of it, the effect was to take Dartmouth out of the administration’s crosshairs.
When Harvard University famously sued the federal government over Trump’s authoritarian and unconstitutional demands, the Ivy League school sought the support of the larger academic community. While many schools rallied to Harvard’s defense, Beilok offered only a lukewarm response. While this may seem a small matter, the problem is that, as Weisberg writes, “[t]he strength of academic freedom has always depended on unity and collective resolve… Every separate peace with Trump weakened the positions of those standing firm. Each capitulation allowed the administration to portray the remaining opposition as marginal and weak rather than united by principle.”
“The Trump administration’s 2025 actions,” Weisberg warns, “struck at the foundations of higher education as a whole: who gets admitted, what gets taught, which ideas can be researched, who can speak.” What President Beilok failed to recognize was that serious principles of academic freedom were at stake. Weisberg describes Trump’s threats as “a campaign of coercion far more menacing than what happened during the McCarthy era…’
“By staying quiet, Dartmouth sent a powerful signal throughout a wider academic community that was struggling to form a unified front,” the journalist writes. “The message was that individual self-preservation mattered more than solidarity or core beliefs.”
As has long been established, “intellectual inquiry requires distance from the state, [and] colleges should be places where truth is sought, not dictated.” This principle is worth defending because it holds a place among the very foundations of our free society; even if a price is to be paid.
Six other cowards are called out in Profiles in Cowardice. Determined to secure a more favorable legacy, former President George W. Bush refused to speak openly against a MAGA movement that turned the Republican Party a full 180 degrees away from an enduring principle of multi-generational “Bushism,” as Weisberg calls it. Bush, his father George H. W. Bush, and brother and Trump primary opponent in 2016 Jeb Bush all supported open markets and free trade, diplomacy and international engagement, the support of immigration and citizenship access, active participation and support of our NATO allies, and the defense of democracy around the world. Sounds like a thousand years ago, doesn’t it?
“Trump’s movement rejected everything the Bush brand stood for,” Weisberg reminds us.
For W, “His father’s example showed how restraint and patience can improve a post-presidential reputation. George H. W. Bush’s approval began to rebound after he left office and stepped away from partisan politics.” George H. W. Bush had, by the time of his death, established a legacy that belied his lack of popularity when he left office. His son hopes to do the same and has decided that criticizing Trump would not be conducive to the task.
“By not criticizing Trump,” Weisberg laments, “[George W. ] Bush was adhering to a tacit non-aggression pact with his Republican successor: ‘If you don’t attack what I did [in Iraq], I won’t attack what you’re doing.’”
“Oddly, it was Bush’s VP Dick Cheney who called out Trump, and many see his fingerprints all over the disaster in Iraq.
George W. Bush is a Weisberg coward: “A leader who framed politics around a straight-forward, Christian morality of right and wrong saw evil and failed to call it out.”
Again, speaking out against Trump from within the Republican Party comes with a serious price tag; just ask former office holders Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, and many others who dared to stand up to principle.
Weisberg also has some choice words for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who, among many other criticisms of Trump’s lack of fitness for the presidency, spoke openly about Trump’s treasonous behavior on January 6, 2021. If he had supported conviction after Trump’s impeachment in the House, as seven other Republicans did, McConnell could have given political cover to at least nine additional senators in order to reach the 67 required to convict. This would have prevented Trump from holding political office ever again. “It is likely,” Weisberg notes, “that McConnell could have ended Trump’s political career on February 13, 2021.”
Chief Justice John Roberts also makes Weisberg’s coward list. Roberts once stood as a firm believer in the institutional principles and the power of precedent at the Supreme Court. This is simply no longer the case. (I’ve written about the formerly-principled Roberts before.*)
Jeff Bezos and his capitulation to Trump in regard to his interference with The Washington Post puts the Amazon founder in the cowardly category. Other targets of Jacob Weisberg’s scathing pen call out Big Law (Brad Karp) and its institutions which no longer seem to defend the rule of law and Wall Street (Stephen A. Schwarzman) for, of all things, failing to defend free market capitalism.
Just as Jacob Weisberg has identified five causes that lead to cowardice, he closes with five “factors that can enable and reinforce public courage.” Pre-thinking means pondering the ethical and moral lines one will not cross before the challenge arises. Develop habits of resistance by calling out even the small things and refusing to compromise when ethical questions are at stake. Weisberg calls the third factor, “Decency loves Company,” and explains that “[r]esponsibility flourishes around collective expressions like the ICE protests.” Courage grows where people believe others will recognize and echo their actions.”
And, finally, as a measure of just how far we have fallen, Weisberg appeals to our society to “Bring Back Shame.” Unfortunately, not everyone has the capacity for shame and Weisberg suggests that Mitch McConnell, Megyn Kelly, and Jeff Bezos may be beyond hope. He says of Bezos that he “seems to have misplaced his sense of shame somewhere between the decks of his yacht.”
“Shame,” he adds, “won’t reach Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, or Kash Patel, who operate outside of any civic ethic.” The power of shame is that “[m]ost of us want to be seen as decent, patriotic, and democratic.” In other words, most of us do not want to be featured in Weisberg’s sequel.
*Two Books & Such pieces on the Supreme Court from 2023.
