Wednesday, September 05, 2018

DEAR ANONYMOUS: WHAT YOU'RE DESCRIBING ACTUALLY IS A DEEP STATE

So -- about this anonymous op-ed by "a senior official in the Trump administration" who boasts that he and others in the White House are thwarting some of the president's worst instincts:
... 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.
I don't know who the author is, but it's not a woman -- as Breitbart has noted, a Times tweet refers to the author as "he."



So it's not Kellyanne, or Nikki Haley, or Ivanka. Jennifer Rubin has a theory:



As does Mike Cernovich:



And Omarosa has some thoughts:



The author says of Trump, "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" -- which rings a bell for Julian Sanchez:



But the author also praises John McCain:
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.
Who ticks all the boxes?

Beats me -- but I actually agree with Gateway Pundit's Christine Laila, up to a point:
The op-ed begins with the author admitting people within the Trump administration are ‘working diligently from within to frustrate parts of Trump’s agenda.’

But if you dare say there is a Deep State, you are a crazy conspiracy theorist....
What the author describes is a Deep State -- but it's a partly Trumpian Deep State:
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.
Although Trump's most breathless admirers want you to believe that the Trump presidency represents a clean break with the establishments of both parties, he is obviously a down-the-line Republican on all these issues (and on drugs, abortion, the courts, Democratic/minority vote suppression, and many others). The administration's saboteurs want to keep all that going, while thwarting Trump in other matters.

What they're trying to prevent -- as we already know from Bob Woodward's book -- is trade war and World War III, because economic turmoil threatens GOP rule (as, obviously, does nuclear holocaust). Golf clap for trying to prevent Trump from killing us all or sending us all to the poorhouse -- but, sorry, as David Frum says, you could grow a spine and show your faces:
Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the 25th 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.
As Frum notes, Trump will now be on guard against any subversion, which means that the balancing act the author and his fellow saboteurs have maintained will no longer be possible:
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.
Also, this will make the Trump diehards in the electorate cleave to the president all the more. You've proven that there's a cabal arrayed against him. Never mind that it's a cabal doing a lot of things the Trumpers like -- they now believe their worst fears are realized, and they'll regard Trump as even more heroic for remaining in power despite this... oh, what's the word they'll use?



Suffer the blow to your careers. Suffer the enmity of the Fox-addled crazies. Show some courage and blow some whistles -- openly.

But of course you won't. You wrote this op-ed in the hope that someone else will do the hard part. And clearly none of you have the moral compass for that, or you wouldn't be working where you're working.
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