Trump has a remarkable record with his “loyalty” program, almost too good, in a way. It makes one wonder how he’s just so darn successful in having people do his bidding, doesn’t it?

Mark Meadows had announced that he planned on cooperating with the Select Committee. This was, of course, after Steve Bannon was charged by DOJ with contempt of Congress. It sure appeared that Meadows was doing all he could to avoid sharing Bannon’s fate. He did pledge to keep quiet about anything that touched upon executive privilege.

It looked like Meadows was trying to thread a needle. But, Trump requires a type of loyalty that doesn’t have the head of a needle to even thread.

Today, Meadows announced that he was no longer going to cooperate with the Select Committee. At least Meadows was in the government at the time with Trump, so he can cling to a bit stronger excuse than Bannon, who has nothing except his threat to try to expose the committee.

According to Meadows and his attorney, they could not come to terms with lawmakers on an arrangement to work with them. “We have made efforts over many weeks to reach an accommodation with the committee,” attorney George Terwilliger told Fox News.

It is probably good to point out that no one has really defined executive privilege in a, particularly helpful way in situations such as these. We only know that the current Attorney General told former Trump officials that executive privilege did not apply.

“Terwilliger said Meadows was looking to appear voluntarily before the committee and answer questions that Meadows believed were not protected by executive privilege. … Over the weekend, however, the committee demonstrated that they indeed planned to look into privileged subject matters, the attorney said. Terwilliger pointed to how, the committee had issued at least one subpoena to third parties for Meadows’s cell phone records, which Meadows intended to turn over voluntarily after screening them for privileged material,”

Again, it all comes down to who believes what is defined as privileged. The situation was always going to end up in negotiations with Meadows having to risk declaring executive privilege.

But that darn loyalty to Trump thing has just been so reliable for Trump, almost uncanny how he’s had such an amazing record. We wonder how he’s done it. Strange.

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