“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.” — John F. Kelly, White House Chief of Staff.
Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump in the White House describes the stealth tactics used by an inner circle of senior aides in the White House to try to control this President’s impulses and avoid disasters for both the president and the country. It describes an unsteady president who is detached from the the processes of government and who daily snaps at and belittles his senior staff members.
As a reporter, Bob Woodward has always been exhaustive in his fact-checking and in his documentation – though many of his sources remain unnamed in the book. Still, the book’s claim that some in the White House have been working to moderate the President’s behaviors was unexpectedly supported, the week before the book came out, by an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times allegedly written by a “senior official” in the White House.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. — Senior White House Official
The writer of this op-ed refers to himself and the others in this effort as “unsung heroes.” He reassures readers that there are “adults in the room.” The problem is that this is not how the Presidency is supposed to work. If senior officials in the Executive Branch are concerned about the ability of the President to fulfill the duties of his office, the proper Constitutional solution they should follow is to invoke the 25th Amendment, which establishes a procedure for responding to presidential disabilities.
The Vice-president, with a majority vote of the Cabinet, can declare the President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” and replace the President. If the President challenges this, a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress can make the removal from office permanent.
The anonymous op-ed writer reveals that, at one point, this option was actually considered:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until – one way or another – it’s over. — Senior White House Official
The irony is that the option they chose instead, to subtly subvert the President’s wishes, IS the “constitutional crisis” they fear, whereas invoking the 25th Amendment would actually be the proper Constitutional solution to the problem.
Since the op-ed was published, the President, his staffers, and Republicans in both the House and the Senate, have been obsessed with trying to identify the author. They all, of course, are missing the point. They should be asking, very seriously, whether these sources are correct. IS this president unfit for office? and, if so, what should be done about it? Of course, the Republicans in power don’t investigate these questions because they don’t want to know the answers….
For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted. (Helaman 5:2)
Sources: “Fear: Trump in the White House,” Bob Woodward, Simon and Schuster, 448 pp.
“Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s Presidency,” Philip Rucker and Bob Costa, The Washington Post, Sept. 4, 2018.
“In ‘Fear,’ Bob Woodward Pulls Back the Curtain on President Trump’s ‘Crazytown’,” Dwight Garner, The New York Times,
Sept. 5, 2018.
“I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” The New York Times, Sept. 5, 2918.
“Warren calls for 25th Amendment to be invoked against Trump,” Tal Axelrod, The Hill, Sept. 6, 2018.
“Stop looking for the anonymous writer. Start looking at Trump,” Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post, Sept. 7, 2018.