Listening to a part of testimonies and testimonials , the basic one liner can be expressed as further proof of switching various issues , and again the clear cut message is that ’ if we can’t clear up this mess, how in the world do you think you can? Kamala Harris was as erudite as Lindsey Graham, and proofs of honesty seemed like a calculated effort to reduce cynicism to the order of at least a marginal pitch as politically correct efforts to establish somewhat credible boundaries.the circle needs to be closed, at least to the point of allowable exatness, where the margin of error may safely held to be on neutral ground.
That divisive politics and policies are extra directed at situational , and only some issues laden with partisanship, became conflicting. and defensively posed; making public announcements and private beliefs a calculus of expected opinion shaping.
This defensiveness , supported by emotionally laden strategizing plays well , when folded into an expected. neutralization, kind of like averaging out the expected affect/effect of a carefully crafted product.
This is in line with the inversion, or introjective reduction from some kind of parity through a workable use of it.
But will it really work? The expectations and the results may provide a clearer picture.
At heart, is, whether if elected, will the basic motive be successfully shown to be grounded in justice , or,/ either based on executive over reach, capacity, and possible breach.
The level of lack of social realism also comes into play, when there are discernable limits, as to the variable indexes of trustworthiness, value judgements and credibility coming into play. How long before the optical clarity will result in a general public myopia , or awareness of it being not part of the solution rather then the problem in itself? Will the circle of doubt generally accept a legal definition of what overstepped common sense implies, and wade into untested territories of general neuroasthenia?
An again is it the case of unproven effective anesthetic, mitigating all doubt of variable SET differences , which have driven some heavy hitters mad? Can that be overcome ? Probably , given the right cues, and management.
For that to happen , they will need a hero or an exemplary act.
Who in today’s geopolitical climate is up for that?
Constitutional crisis?
This Is a Constitutional Crisis
A cowardly coup from within the administration threatens to enflame the president’s paranoia and further endanger American security.
DAVID FRUM
4:54 PM ET
YURI GRIPAS / REUTERS
Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis.
If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.
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The soft coup against Trump
On Wednesday, though, a “senior official in the Trump administration” published an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, writing:
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.
The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers. See, we only look complicit! Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story.
But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.
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Congressional Republicans Are the Real Authors of the Anonymous Op-Ed
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The Key Lesson of Ayanna Pressley’s Victory
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What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down the Mueller investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart, and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.
He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous.
The inadvisable president
And those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this piece. They will be worse because of this piece.
The new Bob Woodward book set the bad precedent. The high official who thought the president so addled that he would not remember the paper he snatched off his desk? Those who thought the president stupid, ignorant, beholden to Russia—and then exited the administration to return to their comfortable, lucrative occupations? Who substituted deep-background gripe sessions with a reporter for offering detailed proof of presidential unfitness, or worse, before the House or Senate? Yes, better than the robotic servility of the public record. But only slightly.
The most extraordianary quotes from Bob Woodward’s book
What would be better?
Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.
Your service in government is valuable. Thank you for it. But it is not so indispensable that it can compensate for the continuing tenure of a president you believe to be amoral, untruthful, irrational, anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.
DAVID FRUM is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. In 2001 and 2002, he was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
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Is this merely a partisan move? Or something more real?
Here is a new development , which is very surprising in view of the above:
Democracy Dies in Darkness
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Politics
‘The sleeper cells have awoken’: Trump and aides shaken by ‘resistance’ op-ed
By Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey
September 5, 2018 at 8:20 PM
Senior officials in the Trump administration have been working from within to frustrate parts of the president’s agenda to protect the country from his worst inclinations, an anonymous Trump official wrote in a column published by the New York Times on Sept. 5. (Reuters)
President Trump and his aides reacted with indignation Wednesday to an unsigned opinion column from a senior official blasting the president’s “amorality” and launched a frantic hunt for the author, who claims to be part of a secret “resistance” inside the government protecting the nation from its commander in chief.
The extraordinary column, published anonymously in the New York Times, surfaced one day after the first excerpts emerged from Bob Woodward’s new book, in which Trump’s top advisers painted a devastating portrait of the president and described a “crazytown” atmosphere inside the White House.
Taken together, they landed like a thunder clap, portraying Trump as a danger to the country that elected him and feeding the president’s paranoia about whom around him he can trust.
Trump reacted to the column with “volcanic” anger and was “absolutely livid” over what he considered a treasonous act of disloyalty and told confidants he suspects the official works on national security issues or in the Justice Department, according to two people familiar with his private discussions.
Trump questioned on Twitter whether the official was a “phony source,” and wrote that if “the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”
President Trump pauses to listen a question from a reporter regarding The New York Times’ anonymous op-ed after a meeting with sheriffs at the White House Wednesday. (Calla Kessler/The Washington Post)
In a column titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” the person whom the Times identifies only as a “senior official” describes Trump’s leadership style as “impetuous” and accuses him of acting recklessly “in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.”
Related: [Top appointees are ‘thwarting’ Trump, says ‘senior official’ in New York Times opinion piece]
The official writes that Cabinet members witnessed enough instability by their boss that there were “early whispers” of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office but decided instead to avoid a constitutional crisis and work within the administration to contain him.
“Many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office,” the official writes.
The column, which published midafternoon Wednesday, sent tremors through the West Wing and launched a frantic guessing game. Startled aides canceled meetings and huddled behind closed doors to strategize a response. Aides were analyzing language patterns to try to discern the author’s identity or at a minimum the part of the administration where the author works.
“The problem for the president is it could be so many people,” said one administration official, who like many others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. “You can’t rule it down to one person. Everyone is trying, but it’s impossible.”
The phrase “The sleeper cells have awoken” circulated on text messages among aides and outside allies.
President Trump holds a meeting with Republican House and Senate leadership in the Roosevelt Room at the White House Wednesday. (LEAH MILLIS/Reuters)
“It’s like the horror movies when everyone realizes the call is coming from inside the house,” said one former White House official in close contact with former co-workers.
The stark and anonymous warning was a breathtaking event without precedent in modern presidential history.
“For somebody within the belly of the White House to be saying there are a group of us running a resistance, making sure the president of the United States doesn’t do irrational and dangerous things, it is a mind-boggling moment,” historian Douglas Brinkley said.
The column added to the evolving narrative of Trump’s presidency, based on daily news reporting and books like Woodward’s that rely on candid accounts of anonymous administration officials.
“This is what all of us have understood to be the situation from Day One,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) told reporters. He added, “That’s why I think all of us encourage the good people around the president to stay.”
Related: [President Trump slams ‘gutless’ New York Times ‘resistance’ op-ed]
Trump was the first to speak for the administration and lashed out at the Times for its decision to publish the column.
“The failing New York Times has an anonymous editorial — can you believe it? — anonymous, meaning gutless, a gutless editorial,” Trump told reporters during an event with sheriffs in the East Room of the White House.
The president went on to brag about his popularity, although nearly all public polls show that more Americans disapprove of his job performance than approve of it. “Our poll numbers are great, and guess what? Nobody’s going to come even close to beating me in 2020,” Trump said, as the sheriffs assembled behind him burst into applause.
The president later tweeted a single word alleging a possible crime: “TREASON?”
In the Times column, the official writes about the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) in heroic terms, describing him as “a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue.”
This invocation angered Trump, who in his private talks with advisers and friends expressed particular dismay because he has long viewed McCain as a personal enemy, according to people familiar with the president’s thinking. The column reignited Trump’s frustration with last week’s remembrances of McCain and the widespread adulation of his life.
The president was already feeling especially vulnerable — and a deep “sense of paranoia,” in the words of one confidant — after his devastating portrayal in Woodward’s book. He was upset that so many in his orbit seemed to have spoken with the veteran Washington Post investigative journalist, and he had begun peppering staffers with questions about who Woodward’s sources were.
Trump already felt that he had a dwindling circle of people whom he could trust, a senior administration official said. According to one Trump friend, he fretted after Wednesday’s op-ed that he could trust only his children.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also denounced the opinion column in a ferociously worded statement that channeled her boss’s rage and echoed some of his favorite attacks on the media.
Her statement began by invoking Trump’s 2016 election victory and noting, “None of them voted for a gutless, anonymous source to the failing New York Times.” Sanders went on to demand that the paper apologize for what she called the “pathetic, reckless, and selfish op-ed,” and urged the anonymous author to leave the White House.
“The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected President of the United States,” she said in her statement. “He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing and resign.”
Related: [The Fix: Another hostage in the White House comes forward]
There were immediate calls from Trump critics for the author to step forward and share more information with the public, including perhaps testifying before Congress, about Trump’s fitness for office.
Both inside the White House and in Trump’s broader orbit, aides and confidants scrambled to identify the anonymous official, windmilling in all directions; within just hours of publication, they privately offered up roughly a dozen different theories and suggested traitors.
One aide, for example, suggested a staffer seeking glory and secretly hoping to get caught, while another mused that the official was likely a low-level staffer in a peripheral agency. Others wondered aloud just what constituted a “senior official in the Trump administration.”
A spokeswoman for the Times said she was unable to provide any additional clarity on how the newspaper defines a senior administration official.
Times editorial page editor James Bennet declined to provide further information about the writer’s position or identity but said the newspaper received the column before news about Woodward’s book broke Tuesday. He said the newspaper “would not have been able to publish” the column if it had not granted anonymity to its author.
“We thought it was an important perspective to get out,” Bennet said. “Our preference is not to publish anonymously and we seldom do it. The question is, do we think the piece was important enough to make an exception? We feel strongly that it was.”
Related: [All the speculation that’s fit to tweet: Who wrote that anonymous Times op-ed?]
The outing of the op-ed’s author is virtually inevitable, according to forensic linguists, who work in both academia and private industry, figuring out the authors of anonymous texts in lawsuits, plagiarism cases and historical puzzles.
“We take the questioned document and compare it to known exemplars,” said Robert Leonard, a linguist at Hofstra University who is often retained by defendants and prosecutors in criminal cases involving threats, plagiarism and libel.
But although many people immediately launched into amateur forensic investigations after publication of the Times piece, Leonard cautioned that “a problem with public people is that a lot of their published work is edited, so it’s like mixing fingerprints or DNA. You don’t always know who the real author is.”
Brinkley, the historian, said the most analogous example of disloyalty and advisers disregarding the president’s wishes was in Richard Nixon’s final year as president. He explained that Nixon would “bark crazy orders” to aides that they intentionally disregarded.
“You’d have to go back to Hans Christian Andersen, ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes,’ to see this syndrome where the president’s reality happens to be so different from his own senior advisers,” Brinkley said.
Paul Farhi and Marc Fisher contributed to this report.
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Philip Rucker is the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. He previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. Rucker also is a Political Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. He joined The Post in 2005 as a local news reporter.
Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at the New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things.
Josh Dawsey is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017. He previously covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.
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