Trump Senior Official in New York Times Op-ed: 'I am Part of the Resistance'

The voices criticising Donald Trump’s reign as U.S. President has reached an unprecedented crescendo with a Senior White House Official working under Donald Trump penning an anonymous opinion-editorial in the New York Times, shredding his presidency to pieces.

The unnamed senior Trump official has written that members of the administration are working to frustrate parts of the president's agenda in order to protect the country from his "worst inclinations".

The official writes, “The dilemma — which he (Donald Trump) 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.”

The official has also condemned the president’s character and his lack of affinity to principles of the Republican party through which he was nominated. “The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

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.”

The writer also describes a "two-track presidency", where the president's actions - such as his conciliatory attitude toward "autocrats and dictators", including Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin - are constrained and redirected by "adults in the room".

"This isn't the work of the so-called deep state," the author writes. "It's the work of the steady state."

The author also drops a bombshell – that some in the Trump administration have whispered about invoking the 25th Amendment, a constitutional provision that allows the vice-president and a majority of the Cabinet secretaries to vote to remove a president who is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office".

The opinion piece comes a day after excerpts of Bob Woodward's book on the Trump White House suggested that his top officials have been engaged in an "administrative coup d'etat" to protect the nation from the president, including removing key documents from his desk before he has a chance to sign them.

This article in the New York Times hence confirms what multiple newspapers since the beginning of Trump’s presidency have reported – that the U.S. has elected a man who is running the White House in a way that has never been run before – and he might be harming U.S. interests.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 06, 2018 09:44 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).