Woodward’s Book, Op-Ed A Trump Tipping Point?

In the immortal words of Grace Slick, the white knight is talking backwards and the red queen’s off with her head. I’m writing this on Wednesday afternoon. The New York Times has just taken the extraordinary step of publishing an anonymous op-ed by a senior member of the Trump administration.

The essay — “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” — essentially restates what the yet-to-be-published but somehow-read-by-everyone Bob Woodward book “Fear” states: The president’s behavior has become so erratic that high ranking officials often go to “great lengths” to ward off terrible decisions. (Woodward describes staffers stealing papers from Trump’s desk so he can’t sign them.)

The essay describes the president as amoral and unstable. Also, “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.” (A friend emailed: “Melania’s English is surprisingly good.”) The author says there have been whispers in the cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment — that’s the “unable to discharge the powers and duties” one — but there were fears of precipitating a different kind of crisis, “so we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.”

Earlier Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., had a confrontation with conspiracy worm Alex Jones and threatened, “I’ll take care of you myself.” Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller subpoenaed Jones associate, 9/11 truther and Obama birther Jerome Corsi, apparently to answer questions about chronic Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone. Also, Trump himself was, according to CNN, demanding that his aides (some of whom were probably anonymous sources for Woodward’s book) root out the people who were anonymous sources for Woodward’s book.

In other words, the roof has come off the cuckoo clock and all the crazy little parts are rolling across the floor.

Before we go further (or before you stop reading and head for your bunker), a journalistic point of order. This is, ideally, not the way we do things. Woodward, although he claims to have recordings of most of his interviews, relies too heavily on unsourced anecdotes, and the Times is similarly out on a limb with this piece by God knows whom.

(Stray thought: Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, must be wondering in the afterlife why he kept dragging his butt to that dark garage when he could have written an op-ed.)

A number of level-headed people on Twitter — yes, that’s sort of a paradox — made the point that Deep Resistance spends much of his or her essay describing heroic efforts to keep the president on an even keel — although this may boil down to telling him he can’t withdraw from any more treaties until he picks up his toys — but that the publication of the piece seems likely to unhinge him.

It’s a fair critique, and, without knowing who this person is, it’s tough to evaluate motives.

This feels like a tipping point in the Trump presidency, but I’ve lost count of the times I’ve thought that before. In a way, both the essay and the Woodward book negate the idea of any one tipping point and describe, instead, our republic as a baby in a tire swing being pushed back and forth over a deep crevasse.

Woodward describes meetings at which the president seemed unable to grasp ideas that had been repeatedly explained to him and a February 2017 dinner at which the president remarked to high-ranking military leaders that the now deceased Sen. John McCain had been released early from a Vietnamese prison because of his father’s high rank. Anybody who follows the news knows it’s the opposite — that McCain refused to be released ahead of his fellow prisoners.

The Times essay describes staffers as if they’re trying to corral a toddler in a Pottery Barn, always one lunge away from making a jagged-edged, expensive mess.

The problem with invoking the 25th Amendment is that this president is exactly the person millions of Americans thought they were voting for. They don’t think Trump is “unable” to preside. They think the “adults in the room” described in the Times essay are Deep State actors working to wreck their chaos party.

So remember what the dormouse said: This will be over, one way the other. That doesn’t sound very comforting.