Whomever he/she/it may be, they are singing a familiar song, about how they want to find a way to preserve the Trump agenda.
“Yes, our guy is nuts, but the agenda is gold!”.
Can’t we at least retain a few know it somes?
(My emphasis.) Thump DIDN’T win the "popularity contest,’ as I have to keep reminding people who seem to have forgotten this. He LOST the popularity contest and won the technicality contest.
If the people working the closest to thump believe he is so incompetent that they have to do end runs around him to keep him from destroying the country, then why in heaven’s name are they writing to the NYTimes about it? They should be writing to Mitch McConnell. They should be writing to every member of Congress (Dem and Pub) as well as to each sitting member of the Supreme Court.
What are they playing at? Who is the audience for this op-ed? Not thump’s base because they wouldn’t believe anything from that source. Is it mainstream Republicans who have lost confidence in thump but won’t speak up? Well, let’s set them a good example by speaking up anonymously. :smack: Surely it’s not the liberal NYTimes reader, because we’re neither impressed by “lodestar’s” cowardice nor its tactics. Is it written to the reassure the country at large? Well, it’s not reassuring shit. WHO IS THIS WRITTEN FOR?
Regarding the identity: At the time of Watergate, remember all the speculation about the identity of Deep Throat? Many thought it was John Mitchell. The secret was kept for THIRTY YEARS and Mark Felt only came out because he had Alzheimer’s and wanted to be lucid enough to still answer questions before the disease took his memory. (BTW the film of that name is excellent.) My own vote is that a group of WH staffers has written this, not one person. But they need to collectively find their gonads (of which there is a serious shortage in Washington :dubious:) and take some meaningful action past swiping papers off the president’s desk.
I think the NYTimes was okay to publish it, but I think Lodestar was dumb as shit to write it and stop there. Again, I ask: who is this op-ed REALLY aimed at?
As an alternative, a senior official who blocks the president could be called Deep Thwart.
Pretty sure that’s exactly the root of things.
Trump is asking insightful questions.
That sounds exactly like what’s being written and said by Trumpco insiders.
“Trump is asking useful, insightful questions to alleviate his own ignorance,” seems to be the overarching theme.
Screw that noise which says things like the PotUS can’t keep up with what’s going on around him — that’s not what Fear or the Lodestar op-ed said.
Screw that noise which says that Trump is ineducable — that’s not what Fear or the Lodestar op-ed said.
Fear and the Lodestar op-ed totally said that Trump is asking good questions and learning on the job.
It has been pointed out that Mike Pence used the very unusual word “lodestar” in a speech last year, which is quite an unusual fingerprint. However…
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Speeches are usually written for Pence by other people, and
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He doesn’t seem like a likely candidate, and
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The NYT claims the author’s job would be jeopardized if not kept anonymous, which is literally untrue if the author is Pence.
So who writes speeches for Mike Pence? Or… would the person who wrote this be clever enough to find an unusual word like that to throw people off the trail? I know if I was trying to write something anonymously like this, I would absolutely do things like that; I’d find a phrase or word used by someone else but not me and use it, and I’d strip the work of phrasing and structures I typically overuse.
Honestly, though, if I may (gulp) defend Trump on one thing, throwing questions around the room as a brainstorming exercise is not a bad thing. Should we assassinate Bashir al-Assad? Should we attack North Korea? Should we do this or that? A leader SHOULD toss stuff like that around and encourage other people to do the same. Part of avoiding groupthink is getting everyone out of the comfort zone of assumptions.
Other that that, of course, he is wildly incompetent.
The following reasons are why I think Pence authored it:
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“Lodestar”. Yes, I know that anyone in the WH could’ve used this word to throw Trump off their scent, but think about it: this would essentially mean the author is going out of their way to frame Pence as the resister when the safest and smartest bet would’ve been to just keep the writing as plain and non-stylistic as possible. If Pence didn’t write the letter, he now has even more incentive to clear his name and find out who the real saboteur is. So the author would’ve been insanely stupid by pulling this move…unless Pence was behind this.
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As VP, Pence is the only one in the administration that Trump can’t fire. So he has a lot less to lose than someone like Kelly or Mattis.
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He stands to benefit the most if Trump is removed from office. Ambition is a helluva drug, and setting himself up to be president one day is probably the only reason he agreed to be Trump’s running mate. By using this letter to mention the prospect of Trump’s removal, he’s trying to hasten his own rise to power while also stealthily assuring the public that 1) he’s nothing like Trump and 2) he’s effectively running things already.
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His use of “lodestar” serves as a wink, outing his identity but not conclusively. He wants the public to suspect it’s him; you don’t write op eds like this unless you have a self-serving reason. If people think it’s Mattis, that doesn’t really help Pence look like the hero he wants to look like.
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The author referred to Trump as “amoral”. Another clue that Pence wrote this. No one else in the WH has portrayed himself as Mr. Morality as much as Pence has. This is the one area that Pence and Trump are polar opposites.
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Pence doesn’t strike me as being very smart or strategic, and this letter has fail written all over it. I can’t see someone other than an ambition-blinded politician doing this. Admitting, even anonymously, that you are part of organized effort to undermine the President as a trusted official within the White House is just monumentally stupid and short-sighted. I actually think your typical Trump twitter screed at 3a in the morning reflects better judgment than sending out this letter did. The other names floated as suspects all strike me as too intelligent to miss the treasonous implications. Pence seems naive enough to think he’d only look like a hero.
One thing I might have missed: isn’t there one clue that maybe stands out?
Not to us, you understand. But say, for the sake of argument, that Pence did write this. And say, for the sake of argument, that no word of it is a lie.
Would you vividly remember having that conversation with the VP? If so, would you have read that and gasped, hey, doesn’t that mean it’s him?
(Unless, of course, exactly that phrase gets tossed around a heck of a lot.)
Brainstorming is indeed a good technique IF there is a brain involved, AND if the object is ultimately an intelligent discussion leading to realistic, effective solutions.
In this case, no.
It’s likely the person quoted by the author is part of the cabal and knows who the author is.
“I think it’s embarrassing for the country to allow protesters, you don’t even know which side the protesters were on,” Trump said. “But to allow someone to stand up and scream from the top of their lungs and nobody does anything about it is frankly — I think it’s an embarrassment.”
Seeing aside the idea that the country ought not allow protesting (yay freedom of speech) - He didn’t know which side the protesters were on? I guess the signs saying “Kava NOPE!” didn’t tip him off?
Unfortunately for Pence, he has the charisma of a banana slug.
See, it’s just that now I can picture a whole string of tête-à-têtes: it’s not really all that interesting to envision folks getting hauled in, one by one, to sit down with Trump and have him ask “DID YOU WRITE THIS?!?” I mean, yeah, it’ll maybe hurt morale, and so on; but people who didn’t write it just say “no,” and if he talks to someone who did write it, well, end the chat with a “no”. So what?
But this bit here? Picture a guy getting asked if he’s heard anybody else utter that exasperation about literally being unable to tell if Trump will change his mind from one minute to the next. Picture the guy who said that realizing everyone else is getting asked if they’ve heard anyone else say it. Picture, too — if you were with me on that parenthetical — dozens of people having said it to other folks, now knowing that other folks are being asked if they ever heard someone say it.
That, to me, is an interesting little playlet.
Hi** UWTF,**
The Talking Points Memo site madethese comments.
However, as the Washington Post points out, the **rationale the Times gave **for keeping the author’s name a secret is the likelihood that identification would lose the person his or her job. Pence cannot be fired, only impeached.
Further, an unnamed White House official who frequently leaks to media outlets told Axios in May that he or she is very attentive to the verbal mannerisms of White House coworkers, the better to leave red herrings in leaked quotes.
“To cover my tracks, I usually pay attention to other staffers’ idioms and use that in my background quotes,” the official told Axios. “That throws the scent off me.”
It occurs to me that the intended audience might be thump himself. There’s nothing in there that the rest of us didn’t already know.
Maybe the intent is to play into thump’s paranoid thinking that he is surrounded by enemies and traitors while sending a dog whistle to Pubs that their policies are being protected by like-minded people in the castle keep.
If these keepers of the flame can drive the mad king over the edge, the Pubs can have President Pence without getting blood on their hands.
Otherwise, why publish it at all?
He’s not much of a reader and old enough to need correction even if he used to have 20/20 vision; maybe the lettering on the signs wasn’t large enough.
The President is not a policy expert by any means. But the process is working. This is why you hire advisors. This is why you have aides.
It does not look like the work of one person. It looks to me as though it was outlined, as it were, by Leo, Josh and C.J., composed and drafted with the precision of Will Bailey and edited by Toby, the “official known to us” who presented the finished copy to the Gray Lady.
‘If we have nukes, why can’t we use them?’ is a bloody stupid question. If you ask it three times, it just might indicate a cognitive disability. If you ask it because you don’t see any reason why you should not be allowed to use nuclear weapons, you just might be unhinged.