Vice President Mike Pence says he didn’t write the anonymous op-ed published Wednesday in The New York Times that paints a picture of a resistance movement inside the Trump administration and efforts to rein in the president’s most dangerous impulses. More than a dozen other senior Trump administration officials — that’s how The Times described the mystery author — also quickly jumped on the “it wasn’t me” bandwagon.
The stunning essay set off a guessing game into the author’s identity and the finger has been pointed at everyone from White House counsel short-timer Don McGahn to even President Trump himself — though the latter would be either a particularly cunning or bizarre effort to prove the existence of a deep state. A furious Trump tweeted Thursday morning that “The Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy — & they don’t know what to do.”
The op-ed was published a day after the release longtime journalist Bob Woodward’s book, “Fear,” that laid bare mounting concerns inside the administration on Trump’s judgment and cast the president deeply insecure, petulant and completely unaware of his shortcomings. The assertions in the op-ed and Woodward’s book are in line with previous complaints about a dysfunctional White House aired by administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
For his part, McGahn, who has frequently clashed with President Trump and plans to leave the administration this fall, told reporters he didn’t write the op-ed, titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” Still his refusal to fire special counsel Robert Mueller and his willingness to spend 30 hours answering questions about Russian interference in the 2016 election made him a suspect in the political whodunit.
Who didn’t write it? Joining Pence and McGahn in denying authorship of the op-ed are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
Also, Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, CIA Director Gina Haspel, EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon, Energy Rick Perry, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman and Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. (That list comes from NBC News, which is updating the denials.)
If none of them wrote it, who did?
Was it Chief of Staff John Kelly? Many of those that CNN Editor-At-Large Chris Cillizza offered as likely suspects have already denied they wrote the essay. Among those who hasn’t is Kelly. The retired Marine general has faced obstacles from Trump as he tries to implement traditional processes, including daily “policy time,” in an untraditional White House. In Woodward’s book, Kelly is quoted as saying: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
Was it Attorney General Jeff Sessions? Sessions’ unraveling relationship with the president would give the attorney general motive, Cillizza suggests. Speculation has been rife almost since the moment the Senate confirmed Sessions, who represented Alabama in the Senate for two decades, to head the Justice Department in February 2017 that he would replace him and it hasn’t quieted. Their public feud escalated this week when Sessions learned from Woodward’s book that Trump had said he was “mentally retarded” and that he had made fun of Sessions’ southern accent.
Was it national security official Fiona Hill? Hill, a Russian expert from the Brookings Institute who joined the administration in April 2017, was close to former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, the retired three-star Army general who left the White House after clashing with the president on policy issues, including strategy in Afghanistan and Iran. And, Cillizza points out in his analysis, Hill was left out when Trump and Russia President Vladimir met at the 2017 G20 summit in Germany. In one of her earliest meetings with Trump on Russia, the president mistook her for a clerk, Cillizza noted.
Was it U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley? The White House publicly humiliated Haley in April after she spoke on television about the administration’s plan to roll out new sanctions against Russia that the president later deferred, chalking it up to “momentary confusion.” Haley swiftly drew a red line. “With all due respect,” she said, “I do not get confused.” The former South Carolina governor is deeply engaged on the world stage and also politically ambitious, Cillizza said.
Was it someone in the Trump family? Some people suggest the author is “Javanka” — the combination of first daughter Ivanka Trump’s and husband Jared Kushner’s names — or maybe even First Lady Melania Trump. When she shut down her fashion line this summer, Ivanka Trump said she planned to pursue a career in public policy, and she advised her father to end the zero tolerance immigration policy that separated children from their parents, among other things. As for the first lady, Cillizza admits it’s a wild speculation, but wrote: “And, if you believe this administration and Trump are governed by reality shows rules, then Melania writing the op-ed is the most reality TV thing EVER.”
The op-ed said Trump aides are aware of the president’s faults and “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,” the author wrote. “I am one of them.”
The op-ed’s author alleged the president’s “instability” prompted “early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment,” which allows the vice president to take over if the commander in chief is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
It requires that the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet back relieving the president.
The Associated Press contributed reporting.
Photo by Alex Edelman – Pool/Getty Images
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