You’re a senior official working in the White House and the New York Times has published your Op-Ed anonymously, the first anonymous NYT Op-Ed ever. In it you talk about how you and others like you are are working from inside the Trump administration to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
Clearly this is not working as well as you had hoped. You consider yourself to be part of a “resistance” made up of like-minded officials and aides in the administration. I wouldn’t call this a resistance so much as a passive aggressive pact to annoy someone who refuses to be a team player.
You say that you want the administration to succeed (despite Trump) and that you believe in many of the policies. But that the “the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.” So you and others have vowed to thwart Trump’s “more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
Until he is out of office. We are currently only into the second year of his presidency, and look at the damage that has already been done, not only domestically, but Trump has also alienated us with the international community. Until he is out of office. Think of the all the damage that will be done by the end of his first term. God help us if he is re-elected for a second term.
You go on to say:
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works for him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.
I would say that anyone who has ever heard him speak, who has ever seen him on television, who has ever read any of his Tweets, knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles, or any principles other than what governs his narcissism.
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.
Much like a group of teenagers talking trash about a mutual “friend” behind her back.
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, (cold comfort? Try no comfort) but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. Are you sure you’re adults? Not a bunch teenagers in a petty fight over who should be anointed king and queen of homecoming?
[W]e are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.
If this is supposed to make us feel better about the Trump presidency, it’s not working. Are we supposed to just trust in some anonymous officials and aides who are not elected, who are not held accountable to the people, and who definitely have their own agendas, to do what is right? What does "right" even mean to you? We don't know, because we don't know you.
There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture….But these successes have come despite…the president’s leadership style.
There it is again. Despite Trump. Then why do we need to keep him around? Can’t someone else do just as well?
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.
Stephen Colbert put it best: “I want to point out that technically the 25th amendment is not a constitutional crisis. It’s a constitutional remedy.” The 25th amendment is part of the constitution, it is there to prevent a crisis. Use it!
So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
Yeah. When everything ends in fire and brimstone. For those of us waiting for Trump to do something so egregious that even your dear old Republican Party would agree to an impeachment, you are not doing us any favors. All you're doing is bandaging up the wound, while the wound itself is already infected and festering and it's only a matter of time before someone loses a limb.
You're published anonymously because you don't want to lose your job. Well, maybe you should lose your job. You're not doing what you were hired to do—that is, to help President Trump realize his goals for the administration. Maybe you should quit if your job is such a frustration to you. You would be better able to undermine Trump by exposing his erraticism and instability. You're clearly just living in your own delusion that what you're doing is for the greater good. And that is the problem with people who act in the shadows, behind closed doors, anonymously, all the while believing that they are working for an abstraction called "the greater good." Nobody can call you out for your mistakes or your misguided ideas. Did you even stop to ask what we, the American public, want?
So what if you're working to undermine Trump’s presidency behind the scenes? His die-hard supporters only hear what he tells them and only sees the results of his administration as his successes. Your silence is not doing anything to pierce the veil of their ignorance. And your shadowy machinations against their president may only fuel their support of his leadership. They'll just point to you and call you a traitor instead of listening to what you have to say about your experience.
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.
I agree with you on that. But, once again, you are not doing much to help remedy that situation.
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.
It is so high and mighty of you say that we as a people should put aside our differences and embrace our shared values and out mutual love for our nation. That we should work together to make this nation what we want it to be, despite Trump. But those are just bullshit platitudes. People’s feelings and ideals are way more complicated than a simple love for our nation can resolve. We need a leader who can demonstrate that we can reach across the aisle and work together without giving up on personal values. And clearly this leader does not share any of the values that you, that we, hold dear. We will just continue to divide along red and blue lines.
Your piece in the New York Times is little more than a self-congratulatory letter, little more than an attempt to make yourself feel better about being part of this unhinged administration and an attempt to justify your remaining in your position.
To you I say, no thanks. You are not excused. We don’t need your ineffective “resistance.”
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