Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era
by Jacob Weisberg
Kennedy's Profiles in Courage told of eight senators who paid for doing the right thing. Weisberg inverts it with eight powerful people, among them Mitch McConnell, John Roberts, Jeff Bezos and Paul, Weiss's Brad Karp, who saw the danger in Trump's second term, could have refused him, and didn't.
Core ideas
- Cowardice rarely announces itself; it wears the disguises of pragmatism, realism, caution and institutional loyalty.
- Authoritarianism advances less by overthrowing institutions than by bullying the people who run them into complying before they are forced to.
- The ones who failed were not Trump loyalists but people with the standing to say no, who had shown flashes of integrity before and knew better.
Published2026
Pages288
ISBN9798217062591
ReadOct 2026




