The New York Times published yesterday an anonymous editorial, ostensibly written by an aide to Donald Trump. The editorial affirms claims found in Bob Woodward’s about-to-be-released book, Fear, that there is a cadre of people within the administration who believe the country must be protected from Trump’s ignorance and incandescent emotional instability.
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
It seemed clear to me before the election that Trump utterly lacks the administrative skills that the presidency demands, and that his emotional instability would be crippling even if he did have the necessary talents, and so I’ve thought all along that there must be core personnel who are quietly subverting him. Recall that almost two years ago I urged professionals to decline to work for Trump — predicting that they would find themselves in exactly the position the anonymous editorial writer describes:
Imagine this wholly plausible scenario: Ben Carson, Creationist nutjob who believes that the pyramids were built to serve as granaries, is nominated for Secretary of Education; he is much-discussed as a likely nominee for that job, and weenies like Paul Ryan will doubtless urge his swift confirmation. Carson reads some law or other as granting him authority to withhold federal educational funding from states which don’t teach creationism as an alternative scientific explanation of human existence, and piously adds that to do so will uplift the country’s morals.
He has said he believes exactly those things, and millions of Trump voters agree with him. This could actually happen.
What is an honorable mid-level science professional serving in the Department of Education supposed to do in that case? Disgrace himself by attempting to implement such a policy, condemning a generation of American schoolchildren to appalling ignorance and sweeping the floors of the Chinese-owned factory on the midnight shift?
S-a-a-a-y that he is trying to implement the policy and look busy-busy-busy while underhandedly subverting it?
Y’all read it here first, folks, except that the stakes are higher than I anticipated: the author of the Times piece seems to be associated with national security.
The immediate criticism, by Trump and others, is that the writer of the editorial is a coward.
Does the so-called “Senior Administration Official” really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source? If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
No. We are not talking about a coward; we are talking about somebody with a sense of responsibility who is caught in a madhouse and trying to hold on till the cavalry arrives.
The editorial is an appeal to the cavalry — Congress — to giddyup.
That’s not likely to happen, though, because the cowards in this squalid little drama are the Congressmen who know that the White House is occupied by a corrupt madman — but refuse to act because they fear that Ma and Pa Kettle will terminate their sinecure.
We are beyond policy differences now; the country itself is at stake, and there is no defense but the annihilation, in November, of the Republican Party.