The New York Times building on Sept. 6, 2018. (ANGELA WEISS/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Republican officials have made the conscious decision to remain blind, deaf, and mute.
By Eugene Robinson / 09.07.2018
The Washington Post
Journalist Bob Woodwardās new book and an op-ed by an anonymous administration official portray President Trump as dangerously capricious and amoral, exhibiting textbook symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and behaving in ways that suggest, to some, early signs of age-related dementia.
But you knew that.
Weāve all known about Trump from the beginning. Weāve known that he was entirely unfit to hold any public office, much less wield the awesome powers of the presidency, regardless of what political views he might have. Trump demonstrates this fact every single day.
On Wednesday afternoon, the New York Times published an extraordinary essay headlined, āI Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.ā In it, an unnamed āsenior officialā claimed to be āworking diligently from within,ā in concert with āmanyā colleagues, āto frustrate parts of [Trumpās] agenda and his worst inclinations.ā The author went on to describe chaos, dysfunction and a president who changes his mind āfrom one minute to the next.ā
Even more alarming, however, was the response from retiring Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), one of the few GOP officials who ever dared to criticize Trump, even mildly: āThis is what all of us have understood to be the situation from day one.ā
Trumpās enablers in Congress have all been lying to us. They pretend there is a normal president in the White House instead of, letās be honest, a maniac. They know the risk the nation is running. They have the power to alleviate that risk, but they do nothing, instead counting on āmature adultsā in the administration to keep Trump from plunging the nation off some cliff.
According to Woodwardās book āFear,ā Trump was going to pull the United States out of a trade agreement with South Korea, but former top economic adviser Gary Cohn, who saw the move as unthinkable, simply swiped the order from Trumpās desk before he could sign it. At another point, the book reports, Trump phoned Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and commanded him to assassinate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. According to Woodward, Mattis played along, hung up the phone and told an aide, āWeāre not going to do any of that.ā
It feels as though we have entered a new phase of the Trump saga. As with all the prior phases, itās impossible to predict with confidence what will happen. But the combination of the Woodward book and the insiderās op-ed feels like an inflection point.
We learned about the insanity inside the West Wing months ago from Michael Wolffās āFire and Fury,ā but he got enough little things wrong to cast doubt on the big things he reported. We read it all again in Omarosa Manigault Newmanās āUnhinged,ā but she was a professional minor celebrity who had only glowing things to say about Trump until she got fired. Woodward, to say the least, is different.
Beginning with Watergate and Deep Throat, Woodward has set the gold standard for Washington-based investigative reporting. He doesnāt just get the goods; he keeps meticulous records, including recordings of many of his interviews. You will note that the denials coming from the Trump administration are actually carefully worded non-denials that skirt, rather than confront, the specifics of what Woodward wrote.
His account supports what weāve been told all along by award-winning White House correspondents from The Post, the Times and other media organizations.
As for the anonymous āsenior officialā who penned the op-ed in the Times, Iām not inclined to join the chorus of commentators who say he or she is being cowardly and instead should have gone public, resigned in front of television cameras, marched up to Congress and demanded to testify and . . . and then what? Exactly what would such a performance achieve?
Does anyone believe the Republican leadership in the House and Senate would do anything? As Corker said, Trumpās unfitness has been obvious from the beginning. Republican officials have made the conscious decision to see, hear and speak no evil. Weāre probably better off with the āsenior officialā still in place, saving us from Trumpās destructive whims.
The whistleblower wrote that āthere were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendmentā by which Trump could be removed, but āno one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.ā
After this week, however, itās clear that weāre already in a constitutional crisis of frightening proportions. The Cabinet will not act. Congress, under GOP control, will not act. The internal āresistanceā can only do so much.
Voters are the last line of defense. You must save the day.
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