Just a day after the first leaks of the contents of Bob Woodward’s new book about the Trump Administration, The New York Times has published an anonymous Op-Ed from a Trump Administration insider that corroborates many of the claims made in the book:
A person identified as a senior administration official blasted President Trump in an anonymous op-ed published by The New York Times on Wednesday, saying they were working to ”thwart” President Trump’s “worst inclinations.”
In the piece, titled, ”I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” the author says that while officials “want the administration to succeed,” they have had to work against Trump’s “misguided impulses” and parts of his agenda.
“To be clear, ours is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left,” the piece reads. “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,” the unidentified official wrote.
The Times said in a note attached to the op-ed that the author, described as “a senior official in the Trump administration,” requested their essay be published anonymously.
The newspaper explained its extraordinary decision to publish a column without providing the name of the author, stating, “We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.”
The newspaper said that the person’s identity was known to the Times and their “job would be jeopardized” by their name being disclosed.
In the piece, the unidentified official denounces Trump’s “amorality” and describes his impulses as “generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.”
“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,” they wrote.
The piece describes a number of instances that the author describes as part of a “two-track presidency,” saying when Trump expresses a desire to take a particular action, aides and officials around him work to do another.
The official briefly praises the administration, but suggests that its successes are not because of the president.
“There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more,” the piece reads. “But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”
Trump has long attacked some of the institutions in his own administration for alleged political bias, and speculated that there are people within the government working to undermine him. But the author of the Times piece pushed back on the suggestion that there is a so-called “deep state.”
“This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state,” the person continued. “It’s the work of the steady state.
The Op-Ed is certainly extraordinary and potentially explosive:
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many 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.
(…)
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 erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
(…)
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
There really isn’t any way to understate just how extraordinary this Op-Ed actually is in American politics. The fact that the Times published an anonymous Op-Ed isn’t extraordinary in itself. They’ve done this before as have some other publications. What is extraordinary is that this is the first time that I’ve seen someone inside the White House writing on anonymously about things that have been reported over the course of the past year and many of which are repeated in the upcoming book from Bob Woodward. Indeed as one reporter on CNN noted this afternoon after the Op-Ed went live on the Times website, some of the language in the Op-Ed matches almost word for word that sources cited in the Woodward book describe the President’s behavior and his state of mind. While Woodward also does not identify sources in many of the excerpts we’ve seen so far, many of the circumstances that Woodward describes makes it fairly easy to figure out who the source might be. Given that, it’s seemingly inevitable that someone is going to start putting two and two together, identifying the sources of the allegations and stories in the Woodward book and, potentially, identifying the person or persons responsible for the Op-Ed and for many of the leaks coming out of the White House.
Not surprisingly, the President and the White House are pushing back against the allegations in the Woodward book and against the Op-Ed in the Times
The president addressed the op-ed directly in comments made in the East Room, calling it an “anonymous, meaning gutless, gutless editorial.”
“So when you tell me about some anonymous source within the administration, probably who’s failing and probably here for all the wrong reasons, now, and The New York Times’ is failing,” Trump said. “If I weren’t here, I believe The New York Times probably wouldn’t even exist.”
“We are disappointed, but not surprised, that the paper chose to publish this pathetic, reckless, and selfish op-ed. This is a new low for the so-called ‘paper of record,’ and it should issue an apology, just as it did after the election for its disastrous coverage of the Trump campaign,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected President of the United States. He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing and resign.”
In a note to readers, The Times said it made the extraordinary decision to publish the op-ed anonymously because it is “the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.” The Times added that the newspaper knows the identity of the official.
Within an hour of the op-ed’s publication, current and former White House officials were already trying to figure out who the anonymous official is, making guesses about whether the person actually worked in the West Wing in close proximity to the president or at a federal agency.
(….)
The White House is already struggling with fallout from the publication this week of excerpts from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book, “Fear.” Woodward reported that key administration officials took steps to prevent Trump from making dramatic – and in their view, catastrophic – policy decisions, even going so far as to remove key documents from the president’s desk.
One former White House official said: “It’s open season on the president.”
The Times op-ed is certain to infuriate the already-paranoid president, who has long worried that members of his own administration were working against him – and who has had to contend in the past month with the revelation that his longtime “Apprentice” sidekick and former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman was secretly taping fellow staffers on the Trump campaign and in the West Wing.
Trump has roared both in public and in private about leaks to the press and about the so-called “deep state.”
Trump has also pushed back on Twitter:
Statement from Secretary of Defense, James Mattis: pic.twitter.com/OneaxKCneV
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2018
Statement from White House Chief of Staff, General John Kelly: pic.twitter.com/LUN8cDr3N5
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2018
Statement from White House @PressSec, Sarah Sanders: pic.twitter.com/mE73HSi6Rl
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2018
The Woodward book has already been refuted and discredited by General (Secretary of Defense) James Mattis and General (Chief of Staff) John Kelly. Their quotes were made up frauds, a con on the public. Likewise other stories and quotes. Woodward is a Dem operative? Notice timing?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2018
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd of Fake NBC News said it’s time for the Press to stop complaining and to start fighting back. Actually Chuck, they’ve been doing that from the day I announced for President. They’ve gone all out, and I WON, and now they’re going CRAZY!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
The already discredited Woodward book, so many lies and phony sources, has me calling Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb southerner.” I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He made this up to divide!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
Isn’t it a shame that someone can write an article or book, totally make up stories and form a picture of a person that is literally the exact opposite of the fact, and get away with it without retribution or cost. Don’t know why Washington politicians don’t change libel laws?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
The Failing New York Times! pic.twitter.com/SHsXvYKpBf
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
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
I’m draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back. Don’t worry, we will win!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2018
As we get closer to the release of the full Woodward book next Tuesday, I suspect that we are going to see more of this, and there is going to be even more of it to follow. For whatever reason, it appears that whatever may have been restraining the people around the President from being even more open about what is happening behind the scenes at the White House than they have been through the frequent leaks that we have seen over the past eighteen months has been lifted. Perhaps it’s the impending realization of a political disaster for the Republican Party in the upcoming midterms, perhaps it’s the increasingly irrational manner in which the President and close advisers are becoming when it comes to responding to the Russia investigation. Whatever the prompt is, the news developments regarding the irrationality inside this White House are just getting worse on a daily if not an hourly basis. Given that, one can’t help but feel as if there is another shoe getting ready to be dropped very soon and what we’re seeing is nothing more than the White House preparing itself for the inevitable.
Hang on, it’s going to get bumpier as we go forward.
