Tucker Carlson Claims To Have ‘A Pretty Good Idea Who Wrote’ The Anonymous ‘New York Times’ Op-Ed
Conservative Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson claims to have a “pretty good idea who wrote” the anonymous, anti-Trump New York Times op-ed, The Hill reports.
“We think we’ve got a pretty good idea who wrote this piece,” Carlson said.
“We’ve called the White House for comment on it tonight, but until we can confirm the identity, of course, we’re not going to accuse anyone in public.”
Published yesterday, the anonymous NYT op-ed, titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” has been occupying the headlines of the U.S. and international media for the past 24 hours. Highly critical of Trump, authored by a West Wing insider, the piece portrays the president as an impulsive, mercurial leader.
Perhaps more importantly, the op-ed dissects the underlying mechanisms within the Trump administration, alleging that there exists a resistance movement, with the end goal of undermining the president, steering the administration in a direction the author claims is beneficial to the health of the republic.
In seemingly the same breath, the author praises the administration’s accomplishments but adds that they’re not a product of President Trump’s leadership. The successes have, in fact, “come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”
The author’s identity remains unknown, so theories pertaining to who wrote the op-ed have already started to develop. Yesterday, as the Inquisitr reported, a wild theory spread on Twitter, like wildfire, alleging that Vice President Mike Pence is the anonymous author of the bombshell NYT op-ed.
Obsessed with an unconventional, archaic word the author used, “lodestar,” Twitter users came up with a theory that Mike Pence, who is known to have frequently used the unusual word, authored the piece.
"lodestar" (h/t @danbl00m) pic.twitter.com/SqKFlBTR0f
— David Mack (@davidmackau) September 5, 2018
Today, as reported by Time, Pence denied being the senior administration official who wrote the piece. “The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds,” Pence’s chief of staff Jarrod Agen said in a tweet, adding that the New York Times “should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed. Our office is above such amateur acts.”
Fox News Tucker Carlson’s comments, therefore, come after widespread speculation, and endless social media theorizing. But, according to the host, “Trump’s attempts to do what he promised to do on the campaign are not a travesty, they are a sign the system is working as designed.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exSEe4YUHCg
Carlson’s sentiment is, to an extent at least, shared by many prominent figures on the American left. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, for instance, argued on Twitter that the resistance within the Trump administration is nothing but a “covert coup.”
The irony in the op-ed from the NYT's anonymous WH coward is glaring and massive: s/he accuses Trump of being "anti-democratic" while boasting of membership in an unelected cabal that covertly imposes their own ideology with zero democratic accountability, mandate or transparency
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 5, 2018
CNN listed 13 Trump administration officials who “might be the author of the New York Times op-ed:” Don Mcgahn, Dan Coats, Kellyanne Conway, John Kelly, Kirstjen Nielsen, Jeff Sessions, James Mattis, Fiona Hill, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and Melania Trump.
