Posted on 09/09/2018 10:28:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
WASHINGTON -- An anonymous Trump administration official confessed in an opinion piece published Wednesday that many senior officials "are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
"I know. I am one of them."
There are many ways to react to the anonymous piece published by The New York Times.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., offered one take. He told CNN that in his world, people don't care much about what runs in The New York Times. Fair enough.
Others questioned the author's integrity or credentials.
Ari Fleischer, press secretary for President George W. Bush, tweeted, "Support the President or don't work there."
Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for President Barack Obama, noted that "this person could easily be someone most of us have never heard of" -- for example, a deputy of a department most voters don't know.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson berated the unknown official's presumption for bashing the anti-free trade positions that Trump promised Americans as he campaigned for office. Ditto Trump's attempts to make nice with Russia, which the author said steady hands in the bureaucracy have undermined.
Carlson found the notion that staffers would try to sabotage an elected official's policies downright anti-democratic.
First lady Melania Trump had a message for the author: "To the writer of the op-ed, you are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions."
Indeed, the piece seemed written deliberately to send the president down a nasty rabbit hole with rants and recriminations -- the exact behavior to which the unknown author objected.
President Donald Trump's reaction was a combination of rage and self-pity.
The president addressed a group of sheriffs gathered in the East Room shortly after the Times posted the piece. "A lot of times you're looked at and you're scorned," Trump told the room, scorned, that is, by "the media because the media is very dishonest."
Trump then offered that the men and women in uniforms were "I guess, a little bit like me."
Trump cited the good economic news under his watch -- 4 million jobs created, 400,000 new manufacturing jobs and record unemployment -- all claims that were close enough to accurate and worthy of praise. And he was right that he does not get enough credit for the strong economy.
Then he called the unknown author's piece "gutless," and later tweeted, "TREASON?"
The White House press corps' reaction was to ask every administration suit who walked near a camera if he or she wrote the piece. Cable TV could not get enough of the story. Pundits were demonstrably unperturbed at having to rely once again on an anonymous source.
The story had every element that many Americans hate about the news media: a backstabber hiding in the shadows, palace intrigue in lieu of policy and a reward for lack of loyalty.
Like the anonymous author, I support Trump's commitment to deregulation and increasing military spending. I strongly approve of his Supreme Court picks, his decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and his decision to reach out to Egypt after President Obama.
Still, I believe that there are people in the administration toiling to protect the president from himself and the country from the president's worst impulses. And I believe that one of them snapped.
After the story appeared, Vice President Mike Pence's office and members of Trump's Cabinet tweeted denunciations of the "gutless op-ed" and declarations denying authorship.
But I believe the anonymous official in The New York Times, however high or low that person might be. I believe it because I've read the president's tweets.
Why has this traitor not taken a lie detector test yet? Why the needless delay?
The whole piece was a fraud from the beginning. This was an outside hit piece that has no connection to any White House Official. Just pure fiction from a fictional Trump hater living in the basement of his mother’s white 2 bedroom home.
I agree and I am not sure the Trump admin played this correctly. Perhaps if they had laughed the whole thing off as fan-fiction, this nonsense would stop.
Only thing I can think of is that someone thought it more useful to use this as proof of a deep state.
Exactly.
Bob Woodward: “People better wake up to what’s going on” in the Oval Office
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bob-woodward-fear-trump-in-the-white-house-people-better-wake-up-to-whats-going-on-in-the-oval-office/
Amazing he knows such detail. He probably also knows the russian hookers too.... He starts his articles with “It was a dark and stormy daniels night.
He wrote a couple of books on the Clintons and somehow missed all the crimes.
Debra is a very nice person. I met her a quarter century ago. But she doesn’t go all in here, and exposes her reluctance to fully support our president and gives a pseudo defense of the NYT traitor.
“He wrote a couple of books on the Clintons and somehow missed all the crimes.”
His books on the Clintons were puff and fluff. And Rush Limbaugh read excerpts on the air and helped him sell “The Agenda.”
There is no author of the Op-ED. It was written by a group of writers for the NYTs. They can never admit same so they keep playing this game.
I just read that article you linked.
So maybe President Trump is brash - would anyone be surprised at that? And maybe he has aides to give him advice - isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? If not why would any POTUS need them? I’m sure the Obama WH was way less stressful because nothing ever got done and then zero went out and made speeches full of excuses that the media reported about adoringly.
In the end I have to look at results and so far they’re the best we’ve seen - maybe even better than Reagan.
The only evidence we need to conclude that the author isn't a part of the Trump administration is the fact that the Slimes didn't identify the author.
Ever since the days of David Stockman, the Fake News Media has loved to divulge the identity of those within a Republican President's administration who has something even remotely derogatory to say about the President.
This op-ed is about as authentic as an eyewitness account of an event written by Jayson Blair.
If that name doesn't ring a bell, look it up.
The tweets, oh my, the tweets. People like this snobby biotch are why we elected Trump. President Trump is doing things none of these lofty people have been able to do. I want common sense and guts, not etiquette. All etiquette does is get you into the fancy places with the fancy people. The Donald proved all you really need is money for that anyway because the lofty people are actually shallow.
Why are we still giving the freak publicity? Shut down the story and investigate in the back.
This “traitor” is a junior hack writer for the New York Slimes.
What exactly does that mean Debra.
What exactly does that mean? It means she knows how to psychoanalyze those tweets in a way that works against the President's credibility with words like "self-pity" and "rage."
Ahem...
Apparently POTUS greatly dislikes anonymous sources leaking information from inside his administration, considers it a national security issue...possibly treason.
I am beginning to think it was a hoax.
Well said.
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