A Soft Coup Against the President

David Graham: “It’s not just that many sources were willing to tell Woodward damaging stories about Trump: The most stunning examples are those where top aides reportedly thwarted his will. Even more stunning is an anonymous op-ed published in The New York Times Wednesday afternoon written by a purported ‘senior official in the Trump administration.'”

“The op-ed is so bizarre that it is tempting to dismiss it as fantasy—akin to the obviously bogus Twitter accounts that flourished early in the administration claiming to be by saboteurs inside the White House… Yet what the anonymous official says lines up closely with the accounts in Woodward’s book, in which officials steal documents, act on their own, and simply disregard orders from the president.”

“If you believe that Trump does not have the judgment and temperament for office—not a difficult conclusion to draw—this is a win of a sort. Yet the actions described in the book and in the op-ed are extremely worrying, and amount to a soft coup against the president.”