Warren’s op-ed rant far oversteps bounds
Elizabeth Warren continues to showcase her activist skill set, but she was elected to be a senator — not a protester.
Her latest ploy is to demand the ouster of President Trump in the wake of an op-ed published in The New York Times earlier this week purportedly from a high-level White House insider. The author suggested that there was a “resistance” in the administration working to prevent Trump from following through on dangerous decisions.
In an email blast, Warren wrote, “If senior officials believe the president is unfit, they should stop hiding behind anonymous op-eds and leaking information to Bob Woodward boasting that they’re trying to save our country, and instead do what the Constitution demands they do: invoke the 25th Amendment and remove this president from office.”
She doubled down during an appearance on CNN, asking, “What kind of a crisis do we have if senior officials believe that the president can’t do his job and then refuse to follow the rules that have been laid down in the Constitution?”
Warren continued, “They can’t have it both ways. Either they think that the president is not capable of doing his job, in which case they follow the rules in the Constitution, or they feel that the president is capable of doing his job, in which case they follow what the president tells them to do.”
The 25th Amendment facilitates the vice president to take over if the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
This is an irresponsible and alarmist action on behalf of a sitting senator and shows little regard for the truth or accuracy — all in the name of politics.
The anonymous op-ed was supposedly written by a “senior administration official,” which, by the Times’ own standards, could include any of more than a thousand people.
Even loyal Democrat Jennifer Palmieri, who served in the White House, threw cold water on the op-ed, tweeting, “Fwiw, based on my experience with NYT sourcing rules for Administration officials, this person could easily be someone most of us have never heard of & more junior than you’d expect. Like a deputy at legislative affairs or NEC.”
David Nakamura, a reporter for the Washington Post (hardly a friend to Trump) added, “Most DC journalists, incl. me, have quoted a ‘senior administration official’” in stories. But I feel as though an op-ed like this should have an editor’s note explaining what an SAO is. There are 1,212 Senate-confirmed positions, incl. 640 ‘key’ jobs.”
But Warren ignored those facts and went right into political-activist mode because she is no longer pretending to represent everyday Americans. She is trying to appeal to the unhinged fringe — the people who let out a primal scream on election night in 2016.
Left unrepresented are her actual constituents, who depend on their elected officials in Washington, D.C., to look out for their best interests.
Sen. Warren may be the most prestigious protester/politician in Washington, but she is not the only one. Apart from all the gun protests, Democrats displayed their displeasure with Trump at the State of the Union speech. Last year, Warren led Democrats during the “Hold the Floor” protest of Betsy Devos, and there was even a challenge of the presidential election certification.
Democrats routinely use Capitol Hill for civil disobedience just as they use hearing rooms to launch presidential campaigns, as witnessed this week in the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh.
The voters of the commonwealth deserve a senator who is devoted to their collective plight rather than her own future fortunes. Outlandish protests on the taxpayers’ time are bad enough, but when her politically aimed activism involves entertaining the notion of unseating the commander in chief through a process other than an election, that is sheer recklessness.