Dante reserved the last and worst ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality. Room has been reserved for Donald The Vulgarian and his enablers.

Here is a brief excerpt from an article by William D. Cohan for The New York Times. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times

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As recent events at Fox and Uber show, it’s unequivocally clear that sexual harassment and misconduct in the workplace are behaviors that can get you fired.

But what about at the White House? Why isn’t the message getting through there? President Trump’s tweets about the MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski were vile. Then there were his unprofessional and sexist remarks, in the Oval Office, directed toward Caitriona Perry, the Washington correspondent for Ireland’s RTE News, when he was on the phone with Ireland’s prime minister. Mr. Trump said to the prime minister after Ms. Perry introduced herself to him, “She has a nice smile on her face so I bet she treats you well.”

Arianna Huffington is among those leading the charge against sexism at Uber.

As inappropriate as that moment was, making it worse was the fact that Dina Powell, a deputy national security adviser and one of the highest ranking women in the White House, was sitting right there, on the other side of Mr. Trump’s desk. In the video released of the incident, Ms. Powell was smiling broadly. She has said nothing publicly about it.

Nor for that matter have the other top women in the Trump administration spoken out publicly about Mr. Trump’s sexist remarks. Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary, has been silent. Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, has been silent. Kellyanne Conway, counsel to the president, has been silent. Both Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump have been silent.

Even the men in the White House who seem more sentient — among them Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council; H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser; and Jared Kushner, the White House senior adviser (and Ivanka Trump’s husband) — have remained silent, too.

Silence equals complicity. Stephanie Ruhle, an MSNBC anchor, wrote on Twitter on July 1 that Ms. Powell, for one, must “speak out against this misogynist, sexist behavior once and for all.” Her MSNBC colleague Nicolle Wallace, a former communications director for President George W. Bush, exhorted the top women in the Trump administration to “go on the record and condemn your boss’s comments,” adding that they “should work behind the scenes to educate him about just how offensive they are.”

The two MSNBC hosts have it exactly right.

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William D. Cohan writes the “Street Scene” column for The New York Times.