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Who is mystery NY Times Op Ed Author

Ok…good deductions…

Could be

Pence
Jeff Sessions
KellyAnne

Interesting…!

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FFS, Trump only trusts family and Stephen Miller? Great. :woman_shrugging:t2:

His son Don Jr. has told people he’s worried Trump isn’t sleeping because of it, a source said. Meetings have been derailed by Trump’s suspicion. “If you look at him the wrong way, he’ll spend the next hour thinking you wrote it,” a Republican close to the White House said. Much of what’s fueling Trump’s paranoia is that he has no clear way to identify the author. One adviser said Trump has instructed aides to call the anonymous author a “coward” in public to shame him or her. “He’s going to continue to shame this person,” a person close to Trump said. “The author will break under pressure or will eventually say, ‘fuck it, it’s me.’” Plans to administer polygraph tests to staff have seemingly died. “Nobody knows who it is,” a former official said.

Besides family, one of the only people Trump continues to trust is Stephen Miller. “The op-ed has validated Miller’s view, which was also Steve Bannon’s, that there’s an ‘administrative state’ out to get Trump,” a Republican close to the White House said. “There is a coup, and it’s not slow-rolling or concealed,” Bannon told me. “Trump believes there’s a coup,” a person familiar with his thinking said. Trump’s relationship with Secretary of Defense James Mattis, which was already strained, has become almost nonexistent, a former official said.

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Ann Coulter is gunning for Jared as the writer of the Op-Ed. She is an insuffereable conservative mouthpiece, and follows the same logic as others who have said that it could be Jared and Ivanka. These two don’t want to be besmirched by T’s ill deeds.

Thinly veiled - CYA.

Ann Coulter thinks President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is the one who wrote the NY Times op-ed attacking Trump.

The author of the op-ed described a group in the White House that are actively working against the president’s agenda and impulses.

Coulter told the Daily Beast she thinks Kushner wrote it for a number of reasons including, “Because he and Ivanka are going to have to go back to the Upper East Side and go to the Hamptons.”

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She’s not a conservative, she’s a right-wing extremist with a white nationalist dog whistle.

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Thanks! You made my day macro! :joy:

At first I laughed like everyone else I know, but after further consideration whoever it is has left me relatively certain that the existence of this piece belies the fact that there are not, in fact, adults in the room. I’ve had my theories since it came out, but I gave up a few days ago when I realized that it doesn’t really matter, it was an incredibly dangerous thing to do. If just one person authored it, they destroyed any hope that anyone actually working to keep the President and his administration from turning the country into a crater could be successful. If they all authored it, it’s pretty clear that there are no adults, only a bunch of really sad, guilty people with hero complexes who have seen one too many political fantasy movies.

At first I thought Kelly or Mattis, but honestly I think those two are smarter than that. I doubt Carson, Mnuchin, Conway or Sanders have the wits to write something like this. Sessions has enough problems of his own right now, and the other big players seem to agree too strongly with the President’s world view to want to see it written at all.

Lesser-noticed Cabinet members? Aides? Maintenance? Although that last one would pretty on the nose. It was so reckless that to me it’s only further proof that all of these people need to be out of there as soon as possible.

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IMO, the opinion piece is a reflection of the state of politics in the country that allowed Trump to assume the office. It is an out growth of the extreme partiasan climate that has existed for years and the lies and viscous political advertising and campaigns.

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Anonymous author of Trump ‘resistance’ op-ed to publish a tell-all book

The author of an anonymous column in the New York Times in 2018, who was identified as a senior Trump administration official acting as part of the “resistance” inside the government, has written a tell-all book to be published next month.

The book, titled, “A WARNING,” is being promoted as “an unprecedented behind-the-scenes portrait of the Trump presidency” that expands upon the Times column, which ricocheted around the world and stoked the president’s rage because of its devastating portrayal of Trump in office.

The column described Trump’s leadership style as “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective,” and noted that “his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.”

The author of the column, which was titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration” and was published Sept. 5, 2018, was known to the Times but identified by the Times only as a senior official in the Trump administration. The person has not been publicly identified.

Trump lashed out at the anonymous author after the column’s publication. The president questioned both whether the author existed and whether the author had committed treason. He also demanded on Twitter that the Times turn over “the GUTLESS anonymous person” to the government “at once.” The Times did not.

The forthcoming book will list the author as “Anonymous.” Although the person does not reveal their identity in the book, they will discuss the reasons for their anonymity, according to people involved in the project.

“Picking up from where those first words of warning left off, this explosive book offers a shocking, firsthand account of President Trump and his record,” reads a statement about the book’s release.

The book will be published on Nov. 19 by Twelve, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing/Hachette Book Group. It comes at a treacherous period for Trump, as the House continues its fast-moving impeachment inquiry into the president’s alleged abuse of power.

The author is being represented by Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn of Javelin, the same literary agents who represented fired FBI director James B. Comey and former White House aide Cliff Sims for their memoirs from their time in the Trump administration. The book was acquired by Sean Desmond, Twelve’s publisher.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Impeachment Inquiry into Trump 2019

More intrigue coming out because of the upcoming book release on “A Warning.”

As Government Officials Testify Against Trump, Critics Question Why an Author Stays Anonymous

The official whose critical article will now be a book knows how the president “likes to distract attention from a message,” says the author’s a

A senior Trump administration official published an opinion piece last year under the name “Anonymous” in The New York Times.Credit…Samuel Corum for The New York Times

  • Nov. 1, 2019

WASHINGTON — William B. Taylor, Jr., the top American diplomat in Kiev, had just testified in front of impeachment investigators when a more secretive figure in the Trump universe resurfaced.

On the same day that Mr. Taylor provided the most explicit account to date of Mr. Trump’s campaign to pressure Ukraine to publicize an investigation of his political rivals, a publisher announced that the anonymous author of an Op-Ed published last year in The New York Times describing an active resistance to Mr. Trump’s agenda inside his own administration had written a tell-all book.

Administration officials like Mr. Taylor were going on the record and risking the wrath of a vengeful president, and running up large legal bills, to issue a warning about the state of the nation. And so some of Mr. Trump’s critics questioned why this particular “senior administration official” was only able to share his or her stories under the unsatisfying banner of “anonymous.”

“We’re way past the point of being coy,” said Joe Klein, who himself wrote an anonymous novel, “Primary Colors,” inspired by President Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. “You have decorated military officers getting death threats.”

We need to stand up and be counted,” he said. “This is probably not the time for anonymity.”

The White House was quick to use the same rationale to dismiss the writer, whose book, titled “A Warning,” is due out Nov. 19. “It takes a lot of conviction and bravery to write a whole book anonymously,” said the press secretary, Stephanie Grisham.

But in interviews this week, the book’s editor and agent defended the use of anonymity, arguing it was the best means for the author to achieve his or her ambition: persuading Mr. Trump’s supporters to desert him in the 2020 election.

**The author’s goal is to try to reach that small but electorally significant percentage of Trump voters who might be persuaded not to support him again,**said Matt Latimer of Javelin, the writer’s agent. “This author knows the president, and knows how he likes to distract attention from a message by targeting and raising questions and conspiracy theories about the messenger.”

Mr. Latimer and his partner, Keith Urbahn, did not know who wrote the Op-Ed describing the “adults in the room” who were “trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.” But they contacted everyone they knew in the administration and on Capitol Hill, trying to find the author.

The author wanted to stay anonymous, but was willing to go forward realizing being publicly outed was a risk.

“Our author is mindful that foreign intelligence agencies want to uncover their identity,” Mr. Urbahn said. “What better way for a foreign leader to curry favor than to offer up that long-elusive name in an Oval Office visit?”

“I’m very comfortable telling you that this person is a serious person and a good example of one of the adults in the room,” Mr. Desmond said in an interview. “If Anonymous were to be revealed or come out —- not that there’s a plan to do so — I have no worries whatsoever. I’m very proud to be publishing this person.”

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Justice Dept. Asks for Identifying Details on Anonymous Op-Ed Author

The Justice Department is trying to unearth the identity of the Trump administration official who denounced the president in a New York Times Op-Ed last year under the byline Anonymous, according to a letter from a senior law enforcement official on Monday.

In the letter, Assistant Attorney General Joseph H. Hunt asked the publisher of a forthcoming book by the writer and the author’s book agents for proof that the official never signed a nondisclosure agreement and had no access to classified information or, absent that, for information about where the person worked in the government, and when.

“If the author is, in fact, a current or former ‘senior official’ in the Trump administration, publication of the book may violate that official’s legal obligations under one or more nondisclosure agreements,” Mr. Hunt wrote to Carol Ross of the Hachette Book Group, which is publishing Anonymous’s book, as well as to Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn, the agents for the former self-described senior official.

Mr. Trump, people close to him said, has long been troubled by the existence of Anonymous, whose Op-Ed condemned him as essentially unfit for office and described a “resistance” within the administration trying to keep the government on course, identifying as part of that group. Mr. Trump said last year that he wanted the Justice Department to investigate the essay, declaring its writing an act of treason. Prosecutors said at the time that such an inquiry would be inappropriate because it was likely that no laws were broken.

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Exclusive: Book Claims Senior Officials Believed Pence Would Support Use Of 25th Amendment

The much-anticipated book “A Warning,” reportedly written by an unnamed senior White House official, claims that high-level White House aides were certain that Vice President Mike Pence would support the use of the 25th Amendment to have President Donald Trump removed from office because of mental incapacity.

According to the exposé, which is written by someone that The New York Times and the publisher of the book say is a current or former senior White House official, using the pen name “Anonymous,” highly placed White House officials did a back-of-the-envelope tally of which Cabinet members would be prepared to sign a letter invoking Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which says that if the president is deemed unfit to discharge the duties of his office, the vice president would assume the role.

That letter would need to be signed by a majority of the Cabinet, delivered to Pence for his signature and then submitted to Congress.

While discussions of invoking the 25th Amendment were never formalized, the idea that the vice president could go along with a Cabinet-backed plan to remove the president was certain to raise the ire of Trump, who is intolerant of dissent or any hint of disloyalty.

Passages from “A Warning,” set to be published Nov. 19, were provided to HuffPost by a source who did so only on the condition that their anonymity be protected and that the passages from the book would not be quoted from directly.

HuffPost has not confirmed Pence’s position on the invocation of the 25th Amendment but is publishing details from “A Warning” because the book is highly newsworthy and the Department of Justice has gone so far as to warn the author that he or she may be subject to nondisclosure agreements as part of their work as an employee of the executive branch.

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Book by ‘Anonymous’ describes Trump as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation

https://www.washingtonpost.com/b6b6c6f2-0150-11ea-8bab-0fc209e065a8_story.html

There’s a lot to unpack in this article, I recommend reading the whole thing. For those who are just curious about the contents of book read the passage below.

The book contains a handful of startling assertions that are not backed up with evidence, such as a claim that if a majority of the Cabinet were prepared to remove Trump from office under the 25th Amendment, Vice President Pence would have been supportive.

Pence denied this on Thursday, calling the book “appalling” and telling reporters, “I never heard anything in my time as vice president about the 25th Amendment. And why would I?”

One theme laced throughout the book is Trump’s indifference to the boundaries of the law. The author writes that Trump considered presidential pardons as “unlimited ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards on a Monopoly board,” referring to news reports that he had offered pardons to aides.

As he ranted about federal courts ruling against some of his policies, including the 2017 travel ban, the author writes, Trump once asked White House lawyers to draft a bill to send to Congress reducing the number of federal judges.

“Can we just get rid of the judges? Let’s get rid of the [expletive] judges,” the president said, according to the book. “There shouldn’t be any at all, really.”

The author portrays Trump as fearful of coups against him and suspicious of note-takers on his staff. According to the book, the president shouted at an aide who was scribbling in a notebook during a meeting, “What the [expletive] are you doing?” He added, “Are you [expletive] taking notes?” The aide apologized and closed the notebook.

The author also ruminates about Trump’s fitness for office, describing him as reckless and without full control of his faculties.

“I am not qualified to diagnose the president’s mental acuity,” the author writes. “All I can tell you is that normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness. He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity. Those who would claim otherwise are lying to themselves or to the country.”

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More speculation on who the Anonymous writer may be. The book A Warning covers a lot of meetings and situations…Here’s Vanity Fair’s take on it.

My guess is John Kelly. There may be some John McCain ‘maverick’ in him to do this…and Kelly as a gatekeeper was well documented to T’s disgust.

In a way, the guessing game is more fun. (Depending on the impressiveness of the author’s true identity, it could also be better for sales.) Perhaps the most obvious question is whether the author is still in the White House orbit. The jacket describes them as “A Senior Trump Administration Official.” Some reporters, however, are skeptical that they still work for the administration. At the very least, it now seems clear that the author is someone who has had significant face time with Trump, but lots of people have. Beyond that, we really don’t know anything more about the author than we did a year ago.

All sorts of theories have been tossed around, both publicly and in private conversations among Beltway insiders: It’s Mike Pence. It’s Kellyanne Conway. It’s Nikki Haley. It’s Jon Huntsman. A number of under-the-radar suspects have been suggested as well. As my colleague Gabriel Sherman reported last year, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are said to have theorized that the op-ed was written by John Kelly ’s deputy chief of staff, Zachary Fuentes. Others have floated names like Dan Coats, Jon Lerner, and Nick Ayers.

One of the most plausible theories may be the least satisfying of all—that Anonymous is an Alexander Vindman type, “a CIA analyst or National Security Council official who no one’s ever heard of,” but who nonetheless has legit proximity and credentials, said one of my White House correspondent sources. “In that case, it could be someone great…. Reporters who are actually well-sourced probably have the same view as me. I haven’t heard a serious reporter who thinks it’s a really high-profile member of the Trump administration.”

Anonymous has agreed to give a media interview as part of the book rollout, and the Javelin guys and the publisher are in the process of figuring out who the lucky news organization will be among the dozens worldwide that put in requests. The major networks have offered to film the author in shadow with his or her voice disguised, but a more likely option might be to go with a major newspaper, perhaps in collaboration with a broadcast outlet that would get an early look for its viewers. There’s already Hollywood interest too—Javelin and the publisher have received queries from various talent agents and producers over the past couple of weeks.

For journalists, all of that makes the case for scooping the author’s identity even more compelling. “They’re doing an interview and putting themselves out there, and given what we’re seeing on the Hill with people putting their names to testimony, I don’t think you could make some case that you’re endangering them,” said one of the White House correspondents I spoke with. “I’d report it in a heartbeat.”

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Still wondering…who it might be?
Top contenders

Nick Ayers (Worked for Pence, and he refused the Chief of Staff job for T)
John DeStefano
Bill Stepien
Andrew Bremberg

Read on…

In the initial anonymous op-ed there are quite a few clues as to what type of person in the Trump White House wrote it.

The piece emphasizes that the author believes strongly in traditional Republican principles like “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military, and more.” Those are the parts of the Trump administration that are championed. In contrast, the author denounces Trump’s “amorality.”

The content of the Times op-ed has been thoroughly dissected and could point to a number of Republicans under Trump. Blind guesses from Times staffers (who didn’t actually have any identifying information besides their own intuition) at the time included Vice President Mike Pence, then-White House Counsel Don McGahn, and then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

Of course, the two latter guesses are no longer at the White House, and Pence added his name, along with all of his staffers, to the list of official denials.

But what’s clear from the content of the op-ed is that whoever wrote it stands for the traditional Republican values iterated by the party’s top politicians in years past, which the author no longer believes stems from the Oval Office.

The author also name drops John McCain in the op-ed, and quotes Teddy Roosevelt and Cicero in “A Warning.”

In line with what the author touted as the accomplishments of Trump’s administration so far, the anonymous senior official also uses references that reflect someone who was a huge fan of Republican politicians prior to the Trump era, and is also someone who enjoys history and classics.

In the op-ed the author ends with a reference to Senator John McCain’s farewell letter, so McCain is clearly someone the author admires greatly.

“All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation,” the op-ed reads.

They also note their disagreement with Trump’s favor toward “autocrats and dictators” like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In “A Warning,” according to the review of the book by the Times, the author references quotes from historical and literary figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Cicero, the Roman statesman. They describe themself as a “student of history.”

And there’s another key mention of McCain in “A Warning” – the author says one of the last straws for their willingness to give Trump a chance was when he tried to raise the flag above half mast following McCain’s death.

Some of the vocabulary used in the author’s writing has given people an idea of who they may be.

Right after the op-ed’s publication in September 2018, a prominent theory of its authorship was that Vice President Mike Pence wrote it. Not only would Pence be one of the most dramatic reveals, but there was a word used in the op-ed that rang some alarms.

“Lodestar” was used at the end of the op-ed and made some sleuths think it had to be Pence, who has a history of using the clunky vocabulary term.

This may have been short-sighted, Vox wrote, because a lot of people use the word “lodestar.” Also, it’s possible that whoever wrote the op-ed specifically threw in vocabulary meant to cast suspicion elsewhere, to avoid being fired from their position in the White House.

Pence, for his part, has denied authorship, along with the author being anyone who works with him.

Omarosa Newman, Trump’s former confidante and White House adviser, hinted at the op-ed author’s identity in a Twitter poll.

In a Twitter poll, the former Trump adviser included four White House staffers who she said she believed were likely candidates for the piece’s authorship.

—Omarosa (@OMAROSA) September 7, 2018

Newman noted that her best guess would be the person “who is looking to exit the WH soon.” She also later said that the author had been quietly removed from the White House, but they still say they’re working there, so Newman’s poll isn’t necessarily reliable.

The list included Andrew Bremberg, the director of the Domestic Policy Council who was recently confirmed as US ambassador to the Office of the United Nations, and Nick Ayers, though he left the White House in January after serving as Pence’s Chief of Staff.

Bremberg has repeatedly been reported as eyeing an exit strategy from the White House.

John DeStefano was also on the list, but the long-serving Trump aide left the White House in May 2019 to advise Juul in its dealing with the Food and Drug Administration. There was also Bill Stepien, who is still currently the White House political director, but multiple people told Politico that Stepien was loyal to Trump as of late 2017.

One line of sleuthing apart from Newman’s poll also pointed to Bremberg.

Bremberg doesn’t generate a lot of press for himself, but he has deep roots in the traditional Republican party, having worked for former President George W. Bush’s administration and under Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

As one of the Twitter users behind the blog “Our Bad Media” (which has exposed plagiarism by Fareed Zakaria and Malcolm Gladwell), @blippoblappo, explained on Twitter, Bremberg’s role as head of the Domestic Policy Council focuses largely on deregulation, the first thing that was emphasized as a success under Trump in the op-ed.

The Hill profiled Bremberg in February 2017 and described him as Trump’s “details guy.” It’s the most comprehensive media attention paid to Bremberg thus far. He isn’t a very buzzy figure in the Trump administration, and his Google search results and social media mentions are significantly less dense than the oft-suggested candidates for the anonymous authorship.

“Some White House aides know little about Bremberg,” The Hill reported. But behind the scenes, he wrote a harsh memorandum on immigration – the type of traditional Republican policy heralded by the op-ed writer.

The Hill also wrote that those who know Bremberg were “encouraged” by his presence in the administration to defend the party.

“'It was encouraging to a lot of people who were a little nervous about Trump,” one source told the Hill, adding that they thought he could “preserve the peace in the party.”

'They knew the traditional principles would be preserved," the source told the outlet.

The lack of mainstream attention could put Bremberg in a good position to keep publishing material about the “resistance” from within because the work itself is what’s getting the headlines and buzz, not him.

Of course, all of these reported suspicions are unconfirmed. But as Republicans slip out of the White House one by one, there aren’t too many staunch traditionalists left behind in Trump’s White House who ring the anonymous author alarm.

Note: Andrew Bremberg is now appointed as US Ambassador in Geneva, a move that would get him out of the WH. (as of Oct 2019)

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed anti-choice advocate Andrew Bremberg to serve as U.S. ambassador in Geneva.

And a poll by Omarosa

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