Trump official generous enough to tell us we should be thanking them

Ysabela Golden

The atmosphere in the West Wing has been tense since the New York Times published a rare anonymous op-ed article with the unexpected news that a man whose former claim to fame was saying “you’re fired!” is not universally adored by his employees. The article paints an opinionated picture of a loyal conservative staff who have lost patience with Trump’s lack of composure, “a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first” believing that “the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people.” 

The divided view of the White House presented by “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” isn’t anything we haven’t seen before – Trump has dealt with plenty of leaks in the past, popping up everywhere from headlines to the bestseller lists. “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” made very similar claims about Trump’s aides and their regard for the president’s abilities when it first started flying off the shelves last January; “Fear: Trump in the White House”, a new book written by Watergate journalist Bob Woodward that was attacked by Trump (before even being released) also contains interviews with “frustrated aides who sometimes resort to extraordinary measures to thwart the president’s decisions.” 

“Trump isn’t on the same page as his administration” isn’t a new claim – the release of the Op-Ed wasn’t even the first time we’d heard it that week. But the Times wasn’t wrong when it defended its controversial opinion to publish by saying the Op-Ed presented a new first person perspective on the subject. Sure, we’ve heard leakers, dissenters and disgruntled former employees. Who we haven’t heard from is someone who wants to play secret president while implying the actual president is so out of control that we should be grateful they’re here to keep our government from self-destructing. 

Someone who truly believes that Trump aides have been unfairly “cast as villains by the media” becomes hey, sometimes these “unsung heroes in and around the White House” manage to keep their employer’s decisions from leaving the West Wing. It seems like at least one aide is tired of Trump staffers being turned away from restaurants and turned down for dates because of their “perceived” complicity with the president. 

Since his election, conservatives have so frequently defended Trump’s every passing statement that it was almost refreshing to hear one try to blame him for all the corruption in D.C. in an attempt to save face for their party. Saying “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” is a lot easier than acknowledging that a significant chunk of the American people agreed with enough of what he stood for to vote for him in the first place.

Liberals might celebrate this self-termed “steady state” for providing evidence that Trump is unfit for office, but we’ve had a lot of those at this point and yet Mike Pence still hasn’t managed to drop the “vice” from his title. And as Senator Chris Murphy said on the debacle, “if you’re concerned about the stability of the president, the stability of the nation, I’m not sure why you prick him in the side, make him even more paranoid, and perhaps having a purge inside the White House of anyone he suspects of being connected with mainstream Republican causes.”

If the Trump aide who wrote this article truly believes that working around Trump in secret is integral to the safety of the nation, then telling Trump in front of the whole American public that a significant chunk of his employees are furtively plotting against him is about to make that job a whole lot harder.

If they just wanted to improve their reputation, then I’m sure they’ve been happy with the media attention.