Susan Wright on the Right
Well, things just got interesting.
On Tuesday, excerpts from the upcoming book by veteran journalist, Bob Woodward, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” were released, causing a major stir.
The book proposes to reveal a White House in disarray, perhaps more so than even all the leaks before have led the public to believe.
Claiming hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, along with interviews, diaries, documents and files, Woodward lays out an image of a president so ignorant and reckless that it should chill the blood of any American who truly pays attention and cares about the direction of the nation.
And there are tapes.
Woodward isn’t just asking us to rely on his word verses anybody else’s from the administration. He claims to have tapes of his interviews.
One excerpt from the book involves Trump’s former economic adviser, Gary Cohn, describing how aides would take documents from Trump’s desk before he could see them, because of their fear that he would sign something he didn’t understand and run the nation into a ditch.
One letter in particular:
The letter would have withdrawn the US from a critical trade agreement with South Korea. Trump’s aides feared the fallout could jeopardize a top-secret national security program: the ability to detect a North Korean missile launch within just seven seconds.
Woodward reports Cohn was “appalled” that Trump might sign the letter. “I stole it off his desk,” Cohn told an associate. “I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.”
That revelation came along with so much else, including how Trump mocked the Southern accent of his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and even called him “mentally retarded.”
Various members of Trump’s Cabinet have come forward to say that things attributed to them in the book are untrue. Trump, himself, has attacked the book (but we knew that was coming).
So while all the obvious denials are in full effect, Wednesday brought a new revelation, by way of an anonymous op-ed posted in The New York Times.
The author of the piece claims to be a senior official with the Trump administration and if true, this is a strong indicator that maybe we should all be taking Woodward’s book more seriously.
In the piece, titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” the author says that while officials “want the administration to succeed,” they have had to work against Trump’s “misguided impulses” and parts of his agenda.
That’s right. There are people within the administration who are there to try and act as buffers to protect the nation against an incompetent, slow witted oaf, who stumbled into the highest office in the land, based on the vote of angry, low-info voters.
Further:
“To be clear, ours is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left,” the piece reads. “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,” the unidentified official wrote.
Calling balls and strikes… something I keep hearing from those who know Donald Trump is corrupt and incompetent, but they really want to pretend it’s not as bad as those of us who stood on principle have claimed it to be.
According to the author of the op-ed, they’re not against Trump for the sake of hating on Trump. They want people to look back on the Trump years and say that good things were accomplished. That can still happen, and in some instances, has, but it will all be overshadowed when the history books talk about the character and inherent corruptness of the man.
In the piece, the official denounces Trump’s “amorality” and describes his impulses as “generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.”
“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,” they wrote.
The piece describes a number of instances that the author describes as part of a “two-track presidency,” saying when Trump expresses a desire to take a particular action, aides and officials around him work to do another.
The emphasis there is mine.
So what is it to be amoral?
The definition, as noted by Merriam-Webster:
Definition of amoral
1a : having or showing no concern about whether behavior is morally right or wrong.
b : being neither moral nor immoral; specifically : lying outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply.
2: being outside or beyond the moral order or a particular code of morals.
Yeah. That sounds about right.
And the author points out something that I’ve mentioned myself, several times throughout the brief but horrendous age of Trump: If there are successes with this administration, Trump is just the face of those successes, but little else.
“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,” the piece reads. “But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”
In spite of, not because of.
I’m picturing the feverish 4Chan and QAnon posts now, claiming some “Deep State” attack. Trump, himself, has often pouted and raged about departments in the government being stock-full of Obama loyalists and other Democrat holdovers, waiting to attack him.
The author of the piece slams that notion.
“This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state,” the person continued. “It’s the work of the steady state.”
This person… I like this person.
The author goes on to note that only the specter of a “constitutional crisis” has kept the Trump Cabinet from invoking the 25th Amendment and deeming the hay-haired mountebank “unsuited for office.”
Yes. That’s right. The 25th Amendment HAS been discussed.
“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the official wrote. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”
Bravo!
The editors of The New York Times have defended their decision to run the op-ed, while keeping the author’s identity under cover.
They say they do know who the author is, but that his/her job would be jeopardized, if it were made public.
Not to mention the endless and immediate attacks on the person’s character, along with threats to their family by the nutcases that see any truth spoken against Trump as a reason to attack.
The newspaper stated, “We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers.”
And important, it is, but will people listen?
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