Several top Trump administration officials have denied being the author of an explosive and anonymous opinion piece that detailed a “quiet resistance” at work in the White House, amid fevered speculation over the identity of the writer.
The anonymous account, published on Wednesday by the New York Times, was said to have been written by a senior White House official, who claimed a coalition was at work to frustrate Trump’s agenda and “his worst inclinations” until he leaves, or can be removed from, office.
Vice-President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley were among a cast of senior officials and cabinet members to publicly reject responsibility for the anonymous account on Thursday.
The White House demanded that reporters abandon their “wild obsession” with unmasking the “senior administration official” who wrote the column.
“The media’s wild 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 the president,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Thursday.
Sanders directed reporters to call the “failing NYT” and provided a phone number to the opinion desk. “They are the only ones complicit in this deceitful act,” she added.
First lady Melania Trump also responded, calling on the author to come forward and say publicly what he or she was willing to write anonymously.
“If a person is bold enough to accuse people of negative actions, they have a responsibility to publicly stand by their words and people have the right to be able to defend themselves,” she said. “To the writer of the op-ed – you are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions.”
The president reacted with fury to the opinion piece. He fumed on Thursday in a tweet that the “Deep State and the Left, and their vehicle, the Fake News Media, are going Crazy – & they don’t know what to do.”
“The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds,” Pence spokesman Jarrod Agen wrote in a statement posted on Twitter on Thursday, as speculation swirled that the vice-president was involved in writing the piece. “The @nytimes should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed. Our office is above such amateur acts.”
The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds. The @nytimes should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed. Our office is above such amateur acts.
— Jarrod Agen (@VPComDir) September 6, 2018
Pompeo, who is visiting New Delhi, told reporters on Thursday: “It’s not mine” after fevered speculation over who wrote the article seized Washington.
Pompeo said it “shouldn’t surprise anyone” that the newspaper chose to print “such a piece” and if the piece actually was written by a top US official the outlet “should not have chosen to take a disgruntled, deceptive, bad actor’s word for anything.”
DNI Dan Coats has now officially denied that he wrote the New York Times op-ed: pic.twitter.com/H2QGVTDMRC
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) September 6, 2018
Pompeo accused the media of trying to undermine the Trump administration and says he finds it “incredibly disturbing”.
House speaker Paul Ryan called a press conference to say of the op-ed writer: “It’s a person who obviously is living in dishonesty. It doesn’t help the president. If you’re not interested in helping the president, you shouldn’t work for the president.”
Meanwhile, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, also issued a denial saying the speculation that he or his deputy wrote the op-ed was “patently false”.
“No,” Haley replied firmly, when asked by reporters if she wrote the opinion piece as she arrived at the United Nations on Thursday. A spokesman for the defense secretary, James Mattis, said the op-ed was “not his”.
A spokesman for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said it was “laughable” that he wrote the piece. And spokesmen for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar also denied responsibility.
Trump derided the article as “anonymous, meaning gutless” and lashed out at the New York Times for publishing it, insisting “they don’t like Donald Trump and I don’t like them because they’re very dishonest people”.
In a tweet on Wednesday evening, Trump insisted: “If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”
On Thursday, Rick Perry, the energy secretary, tweeted: “I am not the author of the New York Times OpEd, nor do I agree with its characterizations. Hiding behind anonymity and smearing the President of the United States does not make you an “unsung hero”, it makes you a coward, unworthy of serving this Nation.”
A spokesman for Andrew Wheeler, the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said: “That’s a no. Acting Administrator Wheeler supports President Trump 100% and is honored to serve in his cabinet. He also believes whoever wrote the op-ed should resign.”
On Twitter, many debated the importance of the author’s use of the word “lodestar”, which pops up frequently in speeches by the vice-president, Mike Pence.
After the column’s publication, the Washington Post reported that White House aides and outside allies of the president texted each other: “The sleeper cells have awoken.”
The White House immediately launched a hunt for the culprit, focusing their search on a half-dozen names, according to the New York Times.
The op-ed represents a shocking critique of Trump and is without precedent in modern American history. The former CIA director John Brennan, who has sparred fiercely with the president, called the op-ed “active insubordination born out of loyalty to the country, not to Donald Trump”.
“I see all the warning signs of a looming disaster,” he told NBC’s Today show on Thursday morning.
The anonymous author describes Trump as amoral, “anti-trade and anti-democratic” and prone to making “half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions”.
The writer claims aides had explored the possibility of removing Trump from office via the 25th amendment, a complex constitutional mechanism to allow for the replacement of a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”, but had decided against it.
“It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the author continued. “We fully recognise what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”