I Am Part of the Resistance [NYT OP-ED From Anonymous Senior WH Official]
88 replies, posted
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
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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.
This is labeled by the NYT as an opinion piece but I am posting this as I believe it has relevant insights that compliment the recent Bob Woodward book. A Senior White House official taking the effort to share this has obvious interesting implications, as does the discussion of various points brought up in the article.
This whole piece really rubs me the wrong way. The source is basically just mad that Trump isn't another bog-standard Republican who can pass a brutal right-wing agenda with a polite smile and a handshake.
The source clearly leans Conservative, but it's more of an old Conservative like McCain, whom s/he praises. I didn't get the impression you got, my impression was that they tolerate Trump because they're worried about setting a bad precedent by invoking the 25th Amendment (president is compromised and unable to do the job). Instead they chose to continue working and try to keep things on track however they can.
https://i.imgur.com/wyesuEO.png
Oh, YEAH, sure, makes yourselves up to be the "good guys" just because you're stopping the big orange from literally nuking any country that looks at him wrong.
I don't think that it's much of an achievement to just stop an idiot YOU ELECTED from fucking up everything.
https://i.imgur.com/IgbLfpl.png
Jesus fucking christ.
"fails to cover"
no, it gets covered. as more stupid bullshit. "effective deregulation" is one of the dumbest fucking phrases, and "historic tax reform" might as well be "historically awful and senseless tax reform"
If you have to question whether the president is psychologically fit for office, if you regularly spend your time cock-blocking his worst or most untenable ideas, then the president is not fit for office. Jesus.
Do you really think the White House would hire people who don't want these things? Deregulation, tax cuts, and increased military spending are all mainstream Republican positions.
Yeah I mean even if there are great sources inside the WH you gotta stop and remember that they wouldn't have signed up for this shit unless they were a republican.
Who made this??? 😂😂😂
No seriously I can't wait for the day we find out who this is
I think this piece was written by an old school republican, that while i will disagree on with many issues and methods, still agrees with us when it comes to realizing how insane the trump presidency is
It reads like someone trying to cover their bases if/when the administration crashes and burns.
As funny as this is in the short term, I hope Trump doesn't become savvy enough to work around people trying to prevent war and/or economic collapse in the future.
FYI: saying white house official is wrong, it's an admin official
the leading guess I've seen is Mattis (anon used a phrase Mattis has used multiple times in his remarks)
Partly my bad, but I was also trying to work with the thread title's character count limitations too. The forum rules state that if it's an opinion article, you have to label it as such, etc etc. Plus, with the article title, that alone would not be enough to indicate the significance of why I posted it (anonymous insight from a high level Trump Admin. official).
I'm sceptical of Mattis cus he isn't known for the kind of political views that the writer seems to have?
Crazy to think it could be Pence but I guess he does kinda fit the bill?
it's a cabinet level official, it could either be Mattis or Pence (among other possibilities)
we'd all like to think it's Mattis, so watch it be fucking Robert Wilkie or Ben Carson or something
Here's a quote from Mattis:
In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony—even vicious harmony—on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.
So I don't think it's from Mattis because that article doesn't sound like a man with the integrity to try to create harmony (even vicious harmony) no matter what the situation throws at him. I don't think Mattis would do what he would see as acting in any kind of treasonous manner, even against someone like Trump. Doesn't mean he has to cooperate with the current administration but he certainly would try to do what his job requires of him.
It could also be Nikki Haley as she'd be at least somewhat involved in the Russian stuff, and ambassador to UN is cabinet level
Wait, come to think of it, aren't there subtle indications that Pence is complicit in some of the more shady areas of the Trump/Russia connections? Would him being the author make sense? (Unless, is he trying to alter public perception to scapegoat all the blame onto Trump and away from his enablers?)
Is this pence gearing up to curry popular favor in anticipation of trump being impeached?
...and if all of this is coming out now, what's happening behind the scenes? Bad press/leaks portraying an incompetent administration have never stopped Trump before - all he has to do is scream "fake news", so something must've really made the camel's back break.
at this point, pundits can't agree whether or not when NYT says senior official they mean cabinet level or someone lower
Nate Silver (538) agrees with another one saying it's probably a assistant deputy secretary or something based on pure numbers
Karen Tumulty (WaPo) takes the anonymity given to mean this is someone at least as high as cabinet/assistant to president
Mattis doesn't strike me as a guy who would speak to the press like this, and Pence as far as I know has always shown himself to be genuinely loyal to Trump. I think it's John Kelly, or some other senior staff aide in that department.
Omarosa is dropping hints that imply it might be someone in the Trump family.
https://twitter.com/gbrockell/status/1037444636724350976?s=19
I wouldn't take idioms as hints at who wrote the op-ed. Wasn't there something long ago about how everybody leaking would purposefully put in other officials' idioms in order to obfuscate their own identities? I would imagine that whoever wrote this op-ed at the very least would do their best not to use their own typical phrases.
Come to think of it, I do recall that.
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