Alleged 'Senior' Trump Official Describes Resistance Inside TWH

Screen Shot of NYTimes

Many senior officials in the Trump administration have been working from within to frustrate parts of the president’s agenda to protect the country from his worst inclinations, an anonymous Trump official wrote in a column published by the New York Times on Wednesday.

In the piece, the official described “early whispers” among members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet to take steps to remove him as president, but added they decided against it to avoid a constitutional crisis.

Reuters reports The Times took what it called the rare step of publishing an opinion column by the official under an agreement to keep the author’s name secret. It said the senior administration’s official’s job would be jeopardized by its disclosure.

Asked about the column during a White House event, Trump called it a “gutless editorial,” bashed the New York Times as “failing,” and ticked off economic achievements that he said were proof of his leadership. Staring into the cameras, he said: “Nobody is going to come close to beating me in 2020 because of what we’ve done.”

From Hillary Clinton’s campaign communications director - and this is why it’s impossible to evaluate how important the anonymous NYT op-ed is. Without knowing how high up the author truly is, the op-ed leads me to no conclusions. https://t.co/IvRVLueU4L

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) September 6, 2018

RE: the NYT anonymous editorial. The federal government always has been honeycombed with officials resistant to this and all GOP administrations. They are government workers and nearly all Democrats. And don't be misled by the words "senior officials." There are loads of them.

— Brit Hume (@brithume) September 5, 2018

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders issued a statement calling the author a coward and demanding the person resign.

The Back Story:

According to CNN, Several days ago a senior official in the Trump administration used an intermediary to contact New York Times op-ed page editor Jim Dao. Through the go-between, the senior official expressed interest in writing an explosive piece for the paper, describing a "resistance" to President Trump within the government that works overtime to protect the United States from the president's worst impulses.

The result, published on the New York Times' website on Wednesday, prompted speculation all across Washington about who the official is. The op-ed came on the same week that the excerpts from Bob Woodward's book "Fear" have revived conversations about Trump's behavior and fitness for office. Dao said that as far as he knows, "this is a coincidence," meaning the senior official's outreach was not related to the Woodward book.

Major newspapers almost never publish unnamed op-ed pieces. At The Times, it is very rare, but not quite unprecedented.