Ah, well that makes all the difference then. :rolleyes:
I think “The Post” is a better comparison.
In any case, I agree with you. Their reputation is on the line, and I’m with those who think this is absolutely written by someone the Times says. I don’t know who and I don’t know why (it seems like there are two possibilities, either to stir up trouble so that they can both hurt Trump and claim some sort of heroism/nobility, or to reassure some people), but I feel it’s extraordinarily likely to be what they say it is.
It seems to me that anyone who makes a serious claim that the NYT made this up is either a troll or a fool.
The last “senior administration official” who publicly broke with the President was, if I recall correctly, Cyrus Vance, who resigned as Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State in 1980 over Carter’s decision to attempt a military rescue of the Iranian hostages.
Vance’s very public action did not change Carter’s policy, nor did it get the hostages released any sooner.
Damn fine well-poisoning, there. Damn fine well-poisoning.
Some wells need poisoning.
Who can refute a sneer?
I’d be happy to make a wager with you that the New York Times is telling the truth that the writer of the Op-Ed is a highly placed person in the Trump administration.
You game?
All of this.
You don’t score bravery points by impeding the madman of a boss you were appointed to serve and then anonymously advertising your machinations in a national newspaper. True heroism keeps itself hidden, doing what needs to be done in secret so that it can continue without interference.
I do think there is cowardice in this letter. Cowardice because it reeks of someone trying to distance themselves from some shit about to hit the fan. “If I quit, then who will stop Trump, huh?” is also self-aggrandizing bullshit that looks like a rationalization more than anything else. You aren’t Neo from the Matrix; flouting Trump’s will isn’t something only a special person can do. If this stealth cabal had some gonads and stopped prioritizing their prestigious jobs over the country’s well being, they’d resign en masse and tell whomever would listen that the President is unfit to serve and needs to be removed. As it stands, they want their cake and eat it too. This is what cowards do.
Well, not put like that, no. But in a gun-to-my-head wager where I’m forced to put my money on (a) any one highly-placed individual or (b) the NYT isn’t telling the truth, I’d reluctantly bet on the latter. Given what you’re proposing, I figure the smart way to bet would be to put money down on it being “Pence or Conway or Kelly or Mattis or Coats or thirty or forty others” — but one of those versus the Times? Yeah, I don’t feel great about ruling out the Times.
Do you think the Times made it up? I’d like to hear your reasoning, if so.
The NYT states this person is a, “senior official in the Trump administration”. I think that narrows it down a bit. Not sure where exactly you draw the line but this isn’t the assistant to the assistant of Sarah Sanders.
I think they may have. It’s a possibility I can’t breezily rule out.
If they didn’t make it up, then the reasoning seems to be this: Trump poses so big a danger, to the world in general and to America in particular, that a senior official who has positive things to say about the administration has vowed to be the resistance: working to frustrate parts of the guy’s agenda by keeping bad decisions contained to the West Wing — but declaring it anonymously because lies about authorship will be needed to stay on in the job amidst the brouhaha that will obviously ensue.
Say I grant the key points, there: that we take, as given, that the person who wrote it is willing to lie for the greater good; and that Trump does pose exactly that big a danger, and that some witch-hunt brouhaha is about to ensue — with morale going down, and Trump looking like an inept bellower who’s having trouble tracking down someone who’s thwarted him under his nose; why, I’ve seen talking heads say this could be the beginning of the end, that it was meant to get people talking about the 25th Amendment, and so on, because it makes him look that pathetic.
Would the NYT want to spark that result, if Trump poses that big a danger?
Well — maybe? Look, I can’t bring myself to declare “no, only a guy who works in the White House would lie while hoping to bring that about.”
NM
Spark what result? Trump losing it? Everyone quitting? Trump getting impeached?
In any case, it is not the job of the NYT to suppress such a submission because of what it might do, unless there are national security concerns or libel law issues.
Trump would be bellowing about Woodward’s book in any case.
And what lie? Most of the stuff in the op-ed has now been reported. The news is that a senior official said it, not that it happened.
My deleted message was asking for a good reason for the Times to make this up. Guess I still haven’t heard one.
I think you are over-complicating this.
- The NYT faked an OpEd
- Some government employee of little note wrote and OpEd and the NYT is claiming they are a “senior official” (or at least seriously stretching the notion of “senior official”)
- An actual senior official wrote an OpEd that the NYT published
You do not need to assess the truthfulness of what was said or the reasoning of the person. It is one of the three above regardless.
The rest is a different discussion.
Sorry, let me clarify: my point was, if a senior official wrote this, then I’m figuring the reason it was done anonymously is because of what would happen to said official if the word got out — and the only way that’ll work, is if we go on to figure that said official will of course lie when of course asked, “hey, did you write that?”
Well, start by looking at what it’s sparked so far — this is, after all, getting treated for some reason as A Very Big Deal — and give me your best guess of what it’ll spark in a week or a month or whatever; and you just mentioned “Trump losing it” as if it were a throwaway quip, but that phrase strikes me as, uh, ‘plausible’.
Well, if this is true, you have an unprecedented case of a president’s administration actively working to thwart the president they work for as a matter of course. You have an un-elected group of people running the country.
So yeah…big deal.
Or a lie. But if it is a lie that the NYT perpetuated that in itself is a really big deal.
You say it without stating that your goal is to undermine the President. You just relay the facts. It is a very valid assertion. Like you say, all they needed to do was relay the evidence and reasonable statements. The fact that this source stated their goal then makes anything they say a little more suspect.
And anonymity has nothing to do with it, and it doesn’t necessarily make them a coward.
Okay, that makes sense.
The big deal is that a senior official goes public (anonymously) to say that the President is so out of control that his aides have to prevent him from doing awful things. We’ve heard reports of this before, but this is from the inside.
What we’ve been missing so far is a smoking gun, like the tapes were for Watergate. Trump being carried out in a straight jacket will serve well. I suspect, especially given the recent information, that he has already been blocked from launching missiles on his own. Just as Nixon was.