What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[The Minsky Moment]

I agree with the Trumpdefense that all the insults and expletive hurling is of no real substance.  The Mattis comment about the 5th/6th grade education is concerning (while also generous to Trump and insulting to 5th and 6th graders) but similar things were once said and thought about Reagan. The Cohn claims are pretty disturbing in what it says about the operations of that WH, but not exactly surprising.

The most troubling of the claims released so far is Trump's statement that he thinks the grudging statement made condemning racist white nationalism after Charlottesville was his worst mistake.  I don't believe he has denied that particular claim. The degree to which he has trafficked and continues to traffic with these Klansmen and virulent racists remains the most revolting aspect of this sad Presidency.

[Syt]

He's now retweeted the statements from Mattis and Kelly.  Originally tweeted with "Statement from ...." and now retweeted with "Thank you General Kelly, book is total fiction!" and "Thank you General Mattis, book is boring & untrue!"

He's also tweeting about changing libel laws. Oh, please, contest the content of the book in court. That should be fun. 

[Razgovory]

Oh, by all means change the libel laws.  You have enough conservatives being sued under the current libel laws as it is.  Loosen them up, and Fox News will go out of business.

[Zanza]

Why are they still referred to as generals? Aren't they civilians now?

[Tonitrus]

Retired US military folks typically get to keep/use their former titles.  Just like former Presidents.

[crazy canuck]

I think it is pretty common in other areas as well.  For example retired judges.  It would seem odd to call them Ms. or Mr.

[Solmyr]

Well, if this is to be believed, Trump has a full-blown underground resistance right in the White House... Cue conspiracy theories on how the US is being taken over by a shadowy cabal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

Sept. 5, 2018

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It's not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump's leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

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.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular "resistance" of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why 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 root of the problem is the president's amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the "enemy of the people," President Trump's impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Don't get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.

But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president's leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.

From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief's comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

"There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next," a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he'd made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren't for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what's right even when Donald Trump won't.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn't the work of the so-called deep state. It's the work of the steady state.

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.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.

[Valmy]

Why the hell would you write that before his administration is over? Worst sleeper agent ever.

[Solmyr]

Why the hell would you write that before his administration is over? Worst sleeper agent ever.

Maybe it's someone outside who wants Trump to start a full-blown inquisition in his administration and go totally unhinged, helping himself get impeached. 

[celedhring]

It reads pretty fake to me. Rather histrionic.

Hope the NYT have vetted this properly.

[Barrister]

Well that's not exactly a surprising article, given much of what we've seen.  But yeah, I have to question the wisdom of the author in writing it.

I would trust the NYT on this though.  It would be easy enough to verify who you are talking to before publishing.

[Admiral Yi]

It meshes with some of the stuff from the Woodward book.

[Barrister]

It meshes with some of the stuff from the Woodward book.

Exactly.  And as the article puts it you often see the White House take steps (in particular on foreign policy) that are very different from the words coming out of Trump's mouth.

[Barrister]

David Frum on the "Resistance Inside the Trump Administration"

This Is a Constitutional Crisis
A cowardly coup from within the administration threatens to enflame the president's paranoia and further endanger American security.

4:54 PM ET

David Frum
Staff writer at The Atlantic

Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The 25th 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 25th 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.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/this-is-a-constitutional-crisis/569443/

[Valmy]

I can't disagree with any of that.

This just gets to be more of a disgrace with every passing day.