Top Trump aides disavow NYTimes 'resistance' article as guessing game continues in Washington

Record ID: 1355245

  • Title: Top Trump aides disavow NYTimes 'resistance' article as guessing game continues in Washington
  • Date: 6th September 2018
  • Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (SEPTEMBER 5, 2018) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF NEW YORK TIMES OFFICE
  • Embargoed: 20th September 2018 19:39
  • Keywords: Trump New York Times resistance op-ed anonymous
  • Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / INTERNET / WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES / ORLANDO, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES / NEW DELHI, INDIA / INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, UNITED STATES
  • City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / INTERNET / WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES / ORLANDO, FLORIDA, UNITED STATES / NEW DELHI, INDIA / INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, UNITED STATES
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA0018WHQAFB
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Top aides to Donald Trump scrambled on Thursday (September 6) to deny authorship of an anonymous New York Times opinion column that slammed the U.S. president's leadership style and described "a quiet resistance" to him within his own administration.
    By midday, seven senior officials had disavowed the piece, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis, while criticizing both the author for writing it and the Times for publishing it.
    On Wednesday, visibly angry at a White House event, Trump called the Times article a "gutless editorial," and in a later tweet he suggested it was treasonous.
    The Times opinion section said the piece was written by a senior official in the administration and that it was taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous article because disclosing the author's identity would jeopardize the person's job.
    Senior aides, some of whom have also been denying episodes from Woodward's book this week, lined up to disavow authorship of the piece, known as an op-ed for its place in the opinion section.
    Pompeo, previously Trump's CIA director, said during a trip to India that he was not the author and condemned the Times for publishing it, while Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said Mattis did not write the piece.
    Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's spokesman Tyler Houlton said in a statement, "Secretary Nielsen is focused on leading the men and women of DHS and protecting the homeland - not writing anonymous and false opinion pieces for the New York Times."
    Nielsen, along with Pence and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats were among the favorites on Thursday among political gamblers taking an online stab at guessing the author.
    A spokesman for Pence said the vice president does not write anonymous opinion columns. "The @nytimes should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed," Pence spokesman Jarrod Agen said on Twitter.
    Coats said in a statement that speculation that he or his principle deputy wrote the piece was "patently false."
    Some of the guessing game over the authorship centered on whether the author worked in the White House or a federal agency. Language in the article, including the use of the unusual word "lodestar," was the subject of wide online speculation and language searches.
    White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders tried to shut down the speculation.
    "The media's obsession with the identity of the anonymous coward is recklessly tarnishing the reputation of thousands of great Americans who proudly serve our country and work for President Trump. Stop," she wrote on Twitter.
    Trump, a Republican, sought to portray the op-ed as a reflection of yet more anger by Democrats who have never accepted his surprise 2016 presidential election win.
    On the streets of a sun-soaked Washington, passersby weighed in.
    "Hopefully there are enough people inside that are insiders that were appointees of Trump that, you know, the time is coming for him," Lynne Desplanches, who was in Washington on a business trip from Seattle, said.
    Baltimore resident Patrick Clayborn, who had come to Washington to attend a rally, said the story could have been planted to distract from U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
    "When I don't want you to look at something that is very damaging or damaging, let me create a lot of distractions or allow a lot of distractions to flourish so that we don't look at the Mueller investigation, and we're looking at op-ed pieces, we're looking at Tweets, we're looking at Nike commercials, we're looking at...all the while, there are indictments happening and the like. So it could be, it could be smoke and mirrors," he said.
    "It's a horrible employee in any circumstance," Thomas Ashton, a federal government employee said, adding: "That's why you find a different job."
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