Five days after the New York Times published an anonymous op-ed from a “senior official in the Trump administration,” Press Secretary Sanders blamed the media for giving it “so much” attention and said the media’s reaction was “sad and pathetic.”
Frankly, what has been sad and pathetic is the Trump administration’s response to the anonymous op-ed. The Trump administration has seemingly done everything possible to keep the anonymous op-ed in the news. Within hours of its publication, every White House cabinet secretary issued a statement denying that they were the one who wrote the op-ed.
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, in what appears to have only been a self-serving exercise, wrote her own op-ed in the Washington Post, in which she said that when she has disagreements with the president she challenges him directly. Haley wrote that anyone with true power in the White House can easily get in contact with the president and has no reason to write an anonymous op-ed. Therefore, Haley concludes, if the anonymous op-ed author “is frustrated by an inability to persuade the president” they should reign and not try to damage the country.
Haley not only used her response to anonymous to suck up to the president, but by going a step further than any of her cabinet colleagues and writing her own op-ed, Haley raised questions about whether the simple denials of her colleagues were a sufficient rebuke of what she deemed was a “dangerous” action by anonymous.
The White House promotion of the anonymous op-ed only continued when First Lady Melania Trump issued her own statement saying that the writer of the op-ed was “sabotaging” America with their “cowardly actions."
Why did the First Lady need to get involved? Did people inside the White House suspect that she was the author of the anonymous op-ed? By making a statement about the op-ed, Melania only kept the op-ed in the news and revived discussion about its content.
The anonymous op-ed depicts a White House in chaos with top officials actively working to undermine parts of Trump's agenda they deem dangerous to America.
In an interview that aired four days after the anonymous op-ed was published, Vice President Pence not only denied that he wrote the op-ed, but vowed to take a lie-detector test to prove he did not write it. The Vice President went on to argue that there could have been “criminal activity involved” in the writing and publication of the op-ed.
The Trump administration’s excessive response to the op-ed, combined with the Vice President suggesting that the op-ed posed a national security risk, explain clearly why the media gave it so much attention.
All indications are that the White House wants to keep the hunt for anonymous at the forefront of the news. When the media is focused on determining who is anonymous, they are not focused on hundreds of other more important stories. Trump wants to take attention away from the investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the over 400 children who remain separated from their parents as a result of the Trump administration and the federal deficit soaring 32% in the past 11 months to thanks to Trump’s tax cuts. Now is the time for the media to focus on what really matters and dispense with the coverage of who wrote the anonymous op-ed.
Comments