White House allies and top aides to President Trump struggled Thursday morning to pinpoint the “gutless” culprit behind a New York Times op-ed by an unnamed senior administration official, who claimed to belong to a shadow operation inside the executive branch that has worked to protect the U.S. from its “erratic” leader.
Denials rapidly poured in from Cabinet officials who sought to clear their own names while speculating about the op-ed’s author. It had to be a “disgruntled, deceptive, bad actor,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo surmised in a statement, hours after Trump accused the anonymous writer of treason. At press time, eight other Cabinet members had issued their own denials, not including Vice President Mike Pence, who said the writer “should be ashamed,” and first lady Melania Trump, who called the act “cowardly.”
Even after White House press secretary Sarah Sanders issued a blistering statement urging Americans to call the Times’ opinion desk “if [they] want to know who this gutless loser is,” aides inside the West Wing were quietly theorizing who could have penned the unprecedented essay.
[Rand Paul: Trump would be ‘justified’ in using ‘lie-detector’ tests to find anonymous author]
One White House official described “mass distraction” inside their department on Thursday, as staffers whispered back and forth about who the “traitor” might be, weighing the cogency of each others’ arguments in between emails and meetings.
Another administration official admitted to keeping tabs on which Cabinet secretaries had issued denials, whether their statements were “believable,” and which had yet to speak out publicly.
A person close to the White House suggested an alternative method for discerning if a member of Trump’s Cabinet was guilty of writing the op-ed or belonging to the internal “quiet resistance” described by its author.
“I would circulate one piece of paper to the Cabinet and have everybody sign it, condemning the op-ed and saying they weren’t the author,” the person said, adding that “what’s happening now [multiple statements from Cabinet officials] prolongs the news cycle.”
“Just like you teach candidates never to repeat a negative, these denials perpetuate the story,” they said, claiming that by now, most of Washington was likely tracking the length of time it took for senior administration officials to deny their involvement and reading into certain delays.
“A lot of us are amused at how many theories there are,” a senior White House official told the Washington Examiner, adding that the thought of uncovering the author made them “giddy.”
The same official joked about one idea floating around the Internet that alleged that Pence wrote the column because it contained a word — ”lodestar” — he had used in speeches over the years. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi entertained that theory during remarks to reporters on Thursday, saying the vice president was her “first thought.”
One former White House official expected ample time to pass before the author reveals their identity or their name is leaked to the press.
“Unfortunately, I think we may not know for a while who is behind it,” said Boris Epshteyn, who now serves as chief political analyst for Sinclair Broadcasting.
If efforts to uncover the author were launched by the president on Thursday, they were done so quietly. Two White House officials said the op-ed had not explicitly been addressed during their morning meetings, despite Trump making his frustration clear in a series of tweets earlier in the day. Both officials said they knew of several critics within the administration who frequently balked at the president’s proposals, but were careful to add that they didn’t suspect any of them of being involved.
The president on Thursday demanded that the Times immediately “turn over” the op-ed’s author “for national security purposes.” He did not specify what threat the individual might pose to the U.S., a seemingly impossible determination to make without knowing the person’s identity.
For Trump, who revoked John Brennan’s security clearance last month over frustrations with the ex-CIA director’s persistent criticism of him, a searing indictment of his leadership by an anonymous administration official — someone he might have even hired himself — was enough to make him “explode,” said one White House official, who suggested anonymous criticism was worse than put-downs by someone like Brennan because Trump didn’t have someone to counterattack.
Few, if any, of the words or phrases in the column made its author easily identifiable. Even as some observers suggested the references to foreign policy were indicative of someone with broad knowledge in that arena, most of the critiques echoed what has already been said about the president, and his leadership style and agenda.
“Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making,” the author wrote, later adding that Trump often “engages in repetitive rants” and has had to backtrack on impulsive decisions on more than one occasion.
The op-ed also seized on the president’s “preference to autocrats and dictators,” a major point of criticism from his political opponents, and his perceived reluctance to punish Russia for its election interference and the Kremlin’s alleged nerve-agent attack earlier this year on two British citizens.
Some allies of the administration said the op-ed’s author was wrong to take their complaints public, misguided in their efforts to “frustrate parts of [Trump’s] agenda,” and should resign if they so dislike the head of the branch they work for.
“If you go to any company, sure, there are people not happy with the company’s leadership who will continue to work there. But if somebody starts working against the company’s mission, they are almost always better off quitting,” said one former White House official.
[Related: Melania Trump says anonymous NYT op-ed writer ‘sabotaging’ the country]
