Only a few days after Bob Woodward’s book “Fear” was pitchforked into the headlines by teaser leaks that portrayed a White House suffering a “nervous breakdown” with some aides quietly working to thwart and contain Donald Trump, the New York Times delivered a double whammy: an op-ed reportedly written by a White House “senior official” (NY Times editors know who he/she is) the echoes Woodward’s reportage. It paints a portrait of a White House where some administration members actively work to stall or halt Trump’s agenda, and claims the cabinet whispered whether to invoke the 25th amendment to remove him but dropped the idea.

A few excerpts:

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. 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.

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.

And:

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.

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.

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.

And:

Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

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 result is a two-track presidency.

Noting that this is not the deep state but the “steady state,” he/she goes on to write:

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. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

Go the link to read it in its entirety.

Meanwhile, back at the White House:

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched a scathing attack on a Trump administration official who wrote an anonymous op-ed for The New York Times Wednesday. Sanders said the official was a “coward” who should “resign.”

“The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected President of the United States,” Sanders wrote in a statement. “He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing and resign.”

The Times took the unusual step of publishing the anonymous piece, the paper said, “at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure.”

The piece was published online Wednesday by The New York Times. In response, Trump says of the Times: “They don’t like Donald Trump and I don’t like them.” Trump describes the editorial as “gutless.”

And Trump?

President Donald Trump says it’s “really a disgrace” that an unsigned op-ed critical of him and written by a senior administration official has been published.

The piece was published online Wednesday by The New York Times.

In response, Trump says of the Times: “They don’t like Donald Trump and I don’t like them.”

Trump describes the editorial as “gutless.”

But he had a lot more on Twitter (readers can go there and search for those Tweets themselves).
The Washington Post reports, in part:

The column, which published midafternoon Wednesday, sent tremors through the West Wing and launched a frantic guessing game. Startled aides canceled meetings and huddled behind closed doors to strategize a response. Aides were analyzing language patterns to try to discern author’s identity, or at a minimum the part of the administration where the author works.

“The problem for the president is it could be so many people,” said one administration official, who like many others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. “You can’t rule it down to one person. Everyone is trying, but it’s impossible.”
The phrase, “The sleeper cells have awoken,” circulated on text messages among aides and outside allies.

“It’s like the horror movies when everyone realizes the call is coming from inside the house,” said one former White House official in close contact with former co-workers.

The stark and anonymous warning was a breathtaking event without precedent in modern presidential history.
“For somebody within the belly of the White House to be saying there are a group of us running a resistance, making sure the president of the United States doesn’t do irrational and dangerous things, it is a mind-boggling moment,” historian Douglas Brinkley said.

The column added to the evolving narrative of Trump’s presidency, based on daily news reporting and books like Woodward’s that rely on candid accounts of anonymous administration officials.

The op-ed piece has fired up with Twitter, with various theories of who wrote it (Vice President Mike Pence? No it doesn’t sound like him…yes it does….Or, wait: could it be a Trumpista like Stephen Miller or someone else who wants to have Trump clamp down and clean house and take a harder line?).

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JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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