NONE DARE CALL IT “TREASON?”: NYT Publishes Op-Ed from Anonymous “Senior Administration Official” Slamming Trump
This op-ed is one of the more entertaining episodes of this season of the Trump presidency:
[M]any of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
But an official trying to undermine the President isn’t the real fun here. The real fun lies in the open contempt with which the author treats Trump in the piece:
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
. . . .
[Trump’s] successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.
The Times makes this claim about the author:
The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure.
Trump is mighty upset about it:
TREASON?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
Does the so-called “Senior Administration Official” really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source? If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
LOL.
Assuming the author is being truthful and accurate, and the NYT is telling the truth, at least three people know the author’s identity:
1. The author
2. Someone at the NYT
3. The “top official” who said to the author: “There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next.”
I don’t think this stays secret long but I have been wrong before.
I tend to think this is an overblown story, and agree with Allahpundit:
The op-ed was written by some rando deputy whom no one would care about
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) September 5, 2018
And anyway, while the flap over this op-ed is entertaining and everything, the author is saying nothing about Trump that isn’t already on public display every day. What’s that you say? Donald Trump is ill-informed? He veers off topic and says dumb things that he has to walk back??
NO &*^(*&^*& WAY!
Thank goodness we have a “senior administration official” to tell us that!
[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]