New York Times Publishes Op/Ed From Senior Trump Administration Insider Working to Curb President's Excesses

The big news out of Washington today is that there is another leak from within the Trump administration. Yet again, a White House insider has dismissed President Trump as a de facto child, and made public his or her attempts to curb the irresponsible excesses of the president. And once again, Trump is livid, absolutely fuming. He blasted this anonymous piece, demanding that the New York Times release the name of the person in the name of national security. Typically, he lashed out with one of his trademark stupid tweets, with a single word in all caps: "TREASON?"

Okay. Have we not come to expect this by now. This man, and his presidency, just is not normal. There is nothing normal about him, and that is not meant in a complimentary way. But Trump is a symbol of what ails the country, and at this point, perhaps to some extent the world, in many respects.

I have said this before, but will say it again: Trump himself is not the problem, but just the most obvious symptom of the sickness and the rot that this country has allowed to grow within it. 

Here's the thing: we cannot say that we were not warned. In fact, another man who held this highest office warned us that this was happening to us, and he warned us about it nearly forty years ago! Let's remember that Carter also warned us about the need to become energy independent. But Carter was particularly emphatic about the moral crisis, in what came to be known as the "Malaise speech." Yes, President Jimmy Carter told us all about this failing as a country, which we have now seen quite a bit of, and which has reached the point where it can no longer be denied any longer. Here is Carter, almost four decades ago now:

"The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation." 

- President Jimmy Carter's Address to the Nation on July 15, 1979, more commonly known as the "Malaise" speech

So yes, we were warned. And hey, by the way, Carter warned us that we needed to be self-sufficient with our energy, as he saw a looming crisis that he felt compelled to address, even though this actually hurt his chances at re-election. Somehow, we actually had a leader in office who was concerned about the future of the country beyond the next election cycle. Imagine that! Must have been nice to have someone of intelligence and vision leading the country. We sure do not seem to have that these days. 

Yet yesterday, the New York Times published an Op/Ed piece that suggests that we have some thinking adults in the White House. 

Here is some of what this anonymous Trump administration insider, who is described as a senior official within the administration, had to say:

"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."

This official made sure to reveal that some of the policies that have been passed under this presidency have been successes. However, this official qualified those:

"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."

Yikes. It's almost as if even those who publicly support the president, and are closest to him, also recognize just the sheer idiocy and staggering levels of immaturity and irresponsibility that this president exhibits on a daily basis. It has become a national disgrace and tremendous source of embarrassment. But, this senior official wants the reader to be comforted that the child is not running completely rampant and off the walls, and dragging the country down with him. Indeed, he is being reigned in and, apparently with some consistency, he is being rendered powerless to act out on his worst impulses. Here again is a description from this anonymous author:

“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.

"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 author concludes with perhaps the most telling statement about the Trump administration to date:

"The result is a two-track presidency."

I will conclude this piece with words from this anonymous author, who essentially ends the op/ed piece by suggesting, as I have, that Trump is more indicative of some kind of moral failing within the country, rather than simply as some abberration, or the source of all of the nation's current woes:

"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 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.  Sept. 5, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html