Big chorus of #NotMe
Host of write-wing denials
Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a slew of other top administration officials on Thursday denied writing the scathing New York Times op-ed detailing a “resistance” to President Trump.
“The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds. The @nytimes should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed. Our office is above such amateur acts,” Pence spokesman Jarrod Agen tweeted.
Pompeo, too, offered a sharp rebuke of the op-ed in the Gray Lady.
“I come from a place where if you’re not in a position to execute the commander’s intent, you have a singular option — that is, to leave,” Pompeo said during a trip to India.
Adding to the chorus of denials Thursday were White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, budget chief Mick Mulvaney, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.
Trump, who used the word “gutless” to attack the op-ed writer Wednesday, continued his attacks Thursday, telling Fox News in an interview to air Friday that he believed it was a “low level” or “deep state” staffer.
He also told a rally in Montana that “even liberals that hate me say, that’s terrible what they did.”
Meanwhile, it was reported Thursday that Trump’s obsession with insiders trying to undermine him began long before the op-ed and Bob Woodward’s new book on the Trump White House.
Last year, Trump began carrying a list of suspected leakers, according to Axios.
First Lady Melania Trump also weighed in Thursday, saying the anonymous author was “not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions.”
History shows denials should be taken with a grain of salt. Mark Felt — who as “Deep Throat” anonymously leaked details of President Richard Nixon’s Watergate coverup to The Washington Post — spent decades denying his involvement.
The first thing to say about that anonymous New York Times op-ed is that its impact was always going to harm the cause the “senior official in the Trump administration” claims to be working for — namely, to rein in what the author sees as President Trump’s worst instincts.
“Anonymous” — let’s just assume it’s a guy and call him A — says he and other high officials want to “frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda and his worst inclinations” while supporting the “good” Trump whose “policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.”
Huh? This is basically what all executive branch staff are supposed to do: Counsel the president. The job is more challenging under Trump than other chief executives? Tough.
A doesn’t even point to an actual crisis averted by Trump’s minions. The closest he comes is recounting how the president had to be persuaded to impose new sanctions on Russia and dared to gripe about it afterward. Big deal: He made the right call and kept the staffers who’d moved him to do it. President Bill Clinton regularly raged at his minions, too.
Good ol’ A boasts of the administration’s achievements: “effective deregulation, his- toric tax reform, a more robust military and more” — but complains they came despite “the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”
OK: Trump drives us crazy sometimes, too. But a President Hillary Clinton would’ve delivered none of that — and it’s hard to see how any other Republican nominee would’ve carried Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and so won the White House.
If Trump has “little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people,” he does have an affinity for voters whose concerns run beyond all that movement-conservative jargon.
Speculation is rife over A’s motives: Burnishing his own reputation when he someday owns up to the Times piece? Trying to undermine the crowd of staffers he claims to be a part of?
The one thing that’s certain is that those motives were purely selfish — because an official out to support the “best” of any president’s agenda wouldn’t be slamming the boss in the pages of the Times, and thereby giving comfort to the opposition.
If A were what he claims to be, he’d simply soldier on quietly. But he’s not: He’s just a self-important worm.