There is a lot to dislike in the piece. He (or she) apparently thinks that environmental degradation, global warming and large wealth disparity are good things. But he is still trying to keep the worst of aspects of trumpism under control.
And yes the shadow government does bother me. But there is always one and it does help keep things on an even keel. I think the main effect of the piece will be to reinforce what Woodward and others are saying.
Off topic, but I wanted to say that the Votemaster thinks the most dangerous period will be between Nov. 7 and Jan. 3 when the lame duck congress can do anything it likes, without any restraints.
You have to remember that, as far as I remember, there are no current or former Trump administration officials yet who have provided on-the-record quotes from themselves in this vein. And except for Porter who I believe is directly quoted in Woodward’s book as directly quoting Trump and Mattis (which both have denied), nobody has on-the-record been attributed putting words in someone else’s mouth. And I guess also Cohn who has admitted to swiping papers off Trump’s desk.
So except for Porter and Cohn, there’s no “Mr Jones says he did X,” or “Mr Jones says Trump said (or did) X” or “Mr Jones says Person 1 said (or did) X,” or “Mr Jones says Person 1 says Trump said (or did) X.” It’s all anonymous. It does make a difference.
There is an opinion piece on the CNN website by Scott Jennings, a former assistant to GWB and campaign advisor to Mitch McConnell, who tries to make the case in your first sentence without acknowledging the truths in your subsequent ones. The error that Jennings makes is in applying ordinary norms to extraordinary circumstances. The Times piece is not some random hit piece by an eccentric, it’s part of a consistent description of incompetence and corruption and a consistent pattern of dissent against it. It’s actually comforting to know that if Trump took offense at some nation and impulsively ordered a nuclear strike, there is not a chance that it would be carried out. I wonder if Jennings would object to that, too?
I sort of wonder if the op-ed writer is a high ranking (less than we might hope), but not cabinet-level person who is imagining that they may have a career in DC in the future, hence the anonymity.
And just to float a potential alternate situation (playing devil’s advocate here), maybe it’s not quite to the level of “shadowy unelected cabal”; could it possibly be people just doing exaggerated versions of the sorts of BS that happens everywhere; people slow-walking things and the like? That was my first thought with the exception of the swiping of the papers, as it sounds like Trump is flighty and disconnected enough to not ever really come back to something and say “Hey… didn’t I say I wanted Assad dead last Tuesday? Why is he still alive?” when Mattis just sort of said “We’re not doing that”.
Because what this person thinks are Trump’s “worst impulses” aren’t necessarily what I think are his worst impulses. There were already rumors (or more than rumors) that Stephen Miller was behind the separating families at the border policy. What other things is this shadow cabal up to, while claiming they are protecting us from Trump?
A recent column I read somewhere suggested that the Anonymous OP-Ed was intended as a message to the old style Republican’s reading it that “yeah, we know he’s off the rails, but we’ve got this!” In other words, the internal resistance team is making sure that the traditional Republican policies get enacted, while preventing the Trump nonsense from seeping out. So, stop worrying!
The Democrats read the message as OMG! RED ALERT! But they aren’t the intended audience.
You know, the secret of who the Watergate informant Deep Throat actually was didn’t get out for over 30 years. At that, it was because Mark Felt wanted to reveal that he was Deep Throat, he might have elected to take it to his grave and leave us all wondering still.
No, it’s NOT guaranteed that the author’s identity will come out at any point in the future, especially the near future. Granted, these days it’s harder to stay anonymous but it’s still possible.
Yes, it means Donald Trump, after roaring like a stuck pig, would attempt to ruin your life and make your existence a living hell. Yeah, I can understand NOT wanting to be in the cross hairs of a man with a lifelong reputation as a vindictive bastard who is now the PotUS.
There’s this pernicious myth that if you’re in the right you’ll win. No, it’s not guaranteed. Sometimes the guy in the wrong wins, especially if that guy has money and power and influence - which Trump most certainly does have.
Signing your name to an Op-Ed piece like that means painting a target on yourself.
Funny thing is, I remember some people pre-election saying they were going to vote from Trump and weren’t worried because congress was going to keep him in check.
So would any reasonable person, in normal circumstances. This is an extremely undesirable state of affairs, as Jennings points out. The tragedy of present circumstances is that it’s better than the alternative, power in the hands of the duly elected official. The virtue of writing the New York Times piece is that it seeks to legitimize and publicize what is being done and why – it’s not “shadow” in the sense of being done in secret, it’s quite the opposite.
It’s rather the opposite. Miller is not an example of a rebel against the administration exercising contrarian power, he is an example of its very worst qualities, and whatever his role in separating families, much of what he does is to both encourage and execute the very worst of Trump policies, with Trump’s full support. If Miller was responsible for those policies, it’s because he’s part and parcel of the immigrant-hate that is central to Trumpism.
Yeah, that almost makes it worse. If you can’t be loyal to the person (even if a utter scumbag) who hires and trusts you, you really can’t claim to be any better, now can you?
To be fair, Trump trusts nobody. He monomaniacally demands loyalty from everyone, but of course that loyalty is a one way street. You’re expected to give everything to Trump, and he does nothing for you.
So his underlings betraying him won’t come as much surprise to Trump.
In the last days of the Nixon Administration those in charge of our nuclear weapons were told that if Nixon ordered an attack nothing should be done without the consent of Kissinger or the Secretary of Defense. Was that undermining the democratic process? Remember Nixon got a majority of the popular vote, unlike Trump.
The writer didn’t tell us much that isn’t in Woodward’s book, except that a high official felt the need to go public.
My guess is that he doesn’t want to go down in history like John Mitchell and the rest of the Nixon gang. When the Administration implodes, he could say that he tried to do his best to protect the country. We’ll see how that plays out.
But I’m sure that Trump supporters will want to shoot the messenger.
We don’t know what is actually motivating this guy, so it’s hard to say if he’s a coward or not. I would call him gravely mistaken at this point. He just made life miserable for most of his co-workers and will almost certainly end up making things worse rather than better. Trump has trust issues as it is, but he’ll trust no one now. It will be much, much more difficult to give him good advice.
That’s true. But Deep Throat didn’t get mentioned publicly until Woodward and Bernstein’s book came out in February of 1974, which was well after the Senate hearings, the revelation of the tapes existence and the Saturday Night Massacre.
I don’t really remember how much focus there was on the importance of who it was, but the cats were mostly out of the bag at that point.
I agree but I can’t help but assume this is all something both the writer and the New York Times considered.
I will assume the writer is probably a reasonably intelligent person. If they are highly placed in the administration they are at least savvy players of the political game and have been doing it for a long time.
Likewise I assume the New York Times editors and owners thought long and hard about whether to publish this or not. This is something that would have been decided at the very highest levels in the newspaper. I am willing to bet they are a pretty smart bunch too.
They all had to consider the ramifications of publishing this and they must have considered your points (I would hope). They all decided to do it anyway which makes me wonder what their game is.
I dunno, maybe I am overthinking it and the writer had a few extra glasses of scotch one evening, whipped this up and handed it to a junior editor at the Times who whooped at the scoop and published it.
I think the NYT is primarily interested in making money, and they figured this would do nicely. Having said that, I don’t think the NYT should be bothering about whether something is going to make it harder for Trump or anyone else to do their jobs. The NYT should bother itself with reporting news and publishing commentary that people want to read.
Have you even seen “All the President’s Men”? These papers do not take publishing this stuff lightly. There are still papers who consider their responsibility to the society, at least a little bit, and I think the NYT is one such paper. Their reputation is part of what sustains them.
If nothing else the fallout is something that could potentially hurt the paper, particularly with an anonymous source, so even if they only care about the bottom line they will give something like this serious thought because of the potential for it to bite them in the ass.