This is fucking brilliant

[ex-khobar Andy]

From today's NYT:

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

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.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

[Burning Petard]

Not Deep State but Steady State. So POTUS is right--there is a cabal of insiders working against his will.

'Course, it anyone did try to actually carry out his will, how would they do it, since it swings around changing direction faster than a weather vane in a tornado.

snailgate.

[Big RR]

While this does not surprise me, I am not sure which scares me more--that a man like Trump can be elected president or that there are a group of either career politicians, or bureaucrats (or both) seeking to subvert the will of an elected official. Either way it doesn't bode well for the democratic process.

[BoSoxGal]

A true patriot would stab the motherfucker 23 times, IMNSHO.


Although I suppose it’s quite likely that would end for US as badly as it did for the Roman Republic.

[Sue U]

There is so much wrong with this op ed. Does this person think s/he deserves a cookie for preserving a pantomime presidency?

If we have a president who can't perform the functions of the office, then 25th amendment him, don't enable him. But as long as you're keeping Americans in the dark about the true mental fitness of the president just so you can advance YOUR policy priorities while hiding behind the madman, you're not a patriot and you're not doing the country any favors.

[Joe Guy]

Oh... I get it. Our president is immature and mentally challenged but don't worry, we're seeing to it that he doesn't screw things up. Relax....

btw - Where have you gone, Lord Jim? The Plan B turns its lonely eyes to you. (woo woo woo)

[MGMcAnick]

Wow, someone in the White House has guts.

So what will Drumpf do, fire his whole staff (except for family) in order to get to the root of the problem? This isn't over.

[wesw]

it s enough to make fella join the other team......

the libertarians.....

[wesw]

the funny thing is that this is only going to help trump with independents

the woodward book too.....

funny that bob isn t making the rounds on tv supporting his book......

defending unverifiable gossip isn t easy........

neither is swallowing it.....

and the circus hearing for kavanaugh.....

oh gosh..., thanks so much.

and on a lighter note...., I wish that Rubio had punched alex jones in the mouth today....

[Econoline]

• Trump Furious That Woodward’s Book Is Written at Seventh-Grade Reading Level
  
  By Andy Borowitz 10:17 A.M.
  
  WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump obtained an advance copy of Bob Woodward’s new book Monday evening and was “furious” to discover that Woodward had written it at a seventh-grade reading level, a White House aide has confirmed.
  
  The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Trump was convinced that Woodward wrote the book for seventh-grade readers to make its assertions impossible for Trump to refute.
  
  “Trump was turning page after page, becoming increasingly angry at its gratuitous use of a seventh-grade vocabulary,” the aide said. “It was like it was written entirely in a secret code.”
  
  At one point, Trump became so frustrated trying to decipher the word “imbecilic” that he hurled the book across the room.
  
  “Book bad!” he reportedly shouted.
  
  According to the aide, Trump’s daughter Ivanka is dreading that she will be called upon to read the Woodward book aloud to her father, as he has demanded she do with books by James Comey and Omarosa Manigault Newman.
  
  “In the past, Ivanka has begged off by saying she was too busy running her company, but she can’t do that anymore,” the aide said.[/size]

[rubato]

I cannot see how an honorable person could fail to resign and go public with their criticisms. Trying to lessen the harm is like a parent who runs around paying off the victims of their children's criminal vandalism. It just guarantees that it will go on even longer.

The 25th amendment is just a pipe dream. I can't see this cabinet of sycophants and self-dealers ever voting to enact it nor can I see the current congress producing a 2/3 majority to remove him.


yrs,
rubato

[wesw]

darn.

I can t find anything that I disagree with in rube s post.

[Econoline]

David Frum, writing in The Atlantic:

• Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis.
  
  If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.
  
  On Wednesday, though, a “senior official in the Trump administration” published an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, writing:

  • Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.

  
  The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers. See, we only look complicit! Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story.
  
  But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.
  
  What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down the Mueller investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart, and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.
  
  He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous.
  
  And those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this piece. They will be worse because of this piece.
  
  The new Bob Woodward book set the bad precedent. The high official who thought the president so addled that he would not remember the paper he snatched off his desk? Those who thought the president stupid, ignorant, beholden to Russia—and then exited the administration to return to their comfortable, lucrative occupations? Who substituted deep-background gripe sessions with a reporter for offering detailed proof of presidential unfitness, or worse, before the House or Senate? Yes, better than the robotic servility of the public record. But only slightly.
  
  What would be better?
  
  Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.
  
  Your service in government is valuable. Thank you for it. But it is not so indispensable that it can compensate for the continuing tenure of a president you believe to be amoral, untruthful, irrational, anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.

[Guinevere]

There is so much wrong with this op ed. Does this person think s/he deserves a cookie for preserving a pantomime presidency?

If we have a president who can't perform the functions of the office, then 25th amendment him, don't enable him. But as long as you're keeping Americans in the dark about the true mental fitness of the president just so you can advance YOUR policy priorities while hiding behind the madman, you're not a patriot and you're not doing the country any favors.

This, this, and this again.

[Sue U]

And JFC I have to agree with David goddam Frum . . . again! *spit* *spit* *spit*!!!!

[rubato]

There is an internet theory that Pence wrote it because Pence often uses the word "lodestar". It would explain why he has not resigned. Pence is a self-absorbed opportunistic coward.




yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

And JFC I have to agree with David goddam Frum . . . again! *spit* *spit* *spit*!!!!

My sentiments, EXACTLY.

[Sue U]

And JFC I have to agree with David goddam Frum . . . again! *spit* *spit* *spit*!!!!

My sentiments, EXACTLY.

What has this world come to? We are truly at the end of days.

But seriously, you know things are dire when conservatives and socialists stop fghting each other about policy and unite to fight an existential threat to functional American government.

[BoSoxGal]

Larry O’Donnell argues convincingly that it is DNI Dan Coats; he’s at the end of his career with nothing to lose, except that if he loses this job he can’t keep intervening on behalf of the best interests of our nation.

[Lord Jim]

Coats is a good possibility; I think it's pretty clear from the text that the person is from the national security/ foreign policy sphere of the administration, since that's where most of the policy emphasis is...

I have mixed feelings about this...

On the one hand it's stunning and unprecedented that a "senior official" would come forward in this way, (and I question the wisdom of it, since Trump will now obviously try to move heaven and earth to uncover and purge this person and anyone else he can identify as involved from his administration)

On the other hand, there's really nothing in this article that we didn't already know and that hasn't been widely reported on since shortly after Trump took office (the same is true of everything I've heard about the Woodward book.)

It's not really news that there are people (not just career government employee "deep state" types, but officials appointed by Trump himself) who have been actively trying to thwart Trump's worst policy intentions, especially in foreign policy. That's not only been widely reported for over a year, but it's also proven by (as the article itself points out) the observable disconnect between a lot of Trump's pro-Putin rhetoric and some of the actual policies that have been implemented.

I disagree with the people in this discussion who are saying the folks involved in this have been doing the country "no favors" ....

You can believe there were other courses of action they could have pursued that might have constituted bigger "favors" (though given the overwhelming unlikelihood that you could have gotten a 2/3 vote in both houses of the current Congress to vote in favor of it would seem to make invoking the 25th Amendment pretty much a non-starter) but it seems to me to be an unarguable truism that the country is far better off having people highly placed within the Administration who are undermining Trump's efforts wreck our alliances and subordinate US policy to an enemy regime than we would be with a President being able to pursue these borderline treason policy objectives unimpeded...

But it's also true that even though the country is better off having people doing this than we would be if we didn't have such people, this really isn't anywhere near an adequate solution to the problem...

The adequate solution to the problem lies with getting this President out of office as quickly as possible, and the first step towards accomplishing that is to elect a Democratic majority in the House two months from now...