Elise Stefanik learned that loyalty to Trump goes only one way - up to him. She should have known better.

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Poor Elise. A year that began with such great promise for Elise Stefanik, my least favorite member of the New York congressional delegation, has ended in absolute disaster. Indeed, humiliation. And the same man was responsible for both the ecstasy and the agony: Donald Trump.

She should have known better.

What follows is a story of ego and ambition unfettered by anything resembling a sound moral compass. It carries an important life lesson for anyone willing to see it.

Stefanik was a typical moderate upstate Republican from her early years in politics working for other Republican officials and since her election to the House in 2015. But the Harvard graduate swung sharply to the right and became one of Trump's more avid supporters in his successful 2016 presidential campaign and again in 2024.

She opposed his impeachment and vigorously supported his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. As a result, Stefanik rose to a leadership position among House Republicans, being elected chair of the House Republican Conference in May 2021 (number three GOP leader) after incumbent Liz Cheney was removed for her opposition to Trump.

Presumably in recognition of this loyalty, after Trump was elected again in 2024, Stefanik was chosen to be his nominee for ambassador to the United Nations. A pretty heady honor for a girl from upstate New York.

But alas, as always with Trump, things changed. Stefanik had to give up her party leadership position when Trump tapped her for the U.N. post. She did so willingly. But as the confirmation process dragged on and Trump had to act as if he knew what he was doing, his standing in the polls kept dropping. That's because he only thought he knew what to do and ignored advice from those who had other opinions.

The more he kept raising tariffs and the price of eggs and kidnapping people off the streets for speaking Spanish, the lower his ratings fell. Below 50 percent favorable. With a razor-thin majority in the House to work with, Trump and Republican congressional leaders worried about losing Stefanik's seat to a Democrat in a special election to replace her. Without control of the House, Trump would be unable to get any legislation passed or make special, personally profitable deals with other countries.

So, Stefanik was eventually informed that the leader for whom she had campaigned so vigorously and professed such admiration for had changed his mind. He'd like her to stay in Congress.

But, but, but she had already given up her House leadership position and the United Nations headquarters was much closer to her home in upstate New York than D.C. was. Friends and relatives could come see her work.

Besides, she wasn't interested in becoming just one of the Republican rabble again.

What to do?

Of course, run for governor. The incumbent Democrat, Kathy Hochul, wasn't that well-known or popular. An all-female gubernatorial race in New York sounded interesting, never mind historic.

So that's what Stefanik decided to do. But as she weighed the timing of her announcement, Trump was still bouncing off the walls of the White House. For reasons known only to him, he withheld public endorsement of Stefanik's gubernatorial ambitions.

Then, in a move that likely made up Stefanik's mind, Trump met the newly elected New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, in the White House and matter-of-factly said he could live with the Social Democrat's plans to make the city more livable for regular folks.

Unfortunately for Stefanik, she had already quite publicly expressed strong opposition to Mamdani's view of free buses, lower rents for regular folks and higher taxes for corporations. What was going on?

No one can accurately read Trump's mind, but with millions of Americans worried about inflation, the higher cost of everything actually and his mass deportations drawing strong opposition, he might have thought agreeing with a foreign-born Muslim mayor would help with the polls. Or maybe he just got confused.

In any event, Hochul began to campaign aggressively and her popularity steadily grew.

Stefanik said, "Enough."

But not only wasn't she running for governor of New York, she wasn't going to run for reelection to Congress. She was done with politics.

Hello, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Another outspoken female Trump supporter feeling betrayed. Gosh, by a man who had betrayed all three of his wives. Who would've thought it?

Well, Stefanik, being a Harvard grad, probably should've had some inkling. The fact that Trump has been at war with Harvard might even have played into the scenario. He is, after all, all about petty resentments.

And for what it's worth, if Stefanik took some courses on ethics, morality and political science at Harvard, she might have learned something about the value of having core principles and sticking to them, rather than abandoning them abruptly for power, money and prestige.

Trump, who lies as he breathes, obviously has a natural talent for this approach to life. And he learned at the elbow of Roy Cohn that loyalty only flows one way, upward to the leader of the cult.

Elise Stefanik apparently learned this lesson the hard way. She should have known better.

Authors Website: https://www.blogger.com/home

Authors Bio:

Bob Gaydos is a veteran of 40-plus years in daily newspapers. He began as police reporter with The (Binghamton, N.Y.) Sun-Bulletin, eventually covering government and politics as well as serving as city editor, features editor, sports editor and executive editor. He was also managing editor of the Evening Capital in Annapolis, Md. He retired from daily newspapering in 2007 after 29 years with the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y., where he was Sunday/features editor and, for 23 years, editorial page editor. He won numerous awards for his editorials from the New York Newspaper Publishers Association and The Associated Press and in 1992 was a finalist for The Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Gaydos continues to write on a freelance basis, including a column on addiction.