“This is all about leader versus leader. ManBaby versus man. Me versus Kim.”

 

freitasm:

 

Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency:

 

+1

Fear: Trump in the White House - by Bob Woodward

The full article quoted above is from The Washington Post - behind a paywall

Another good source:

BBC - Bob Woodward's book on Trump: The most explosive quotes

 

A Bob Woodward expose book has been a rite of passage for presidential administrations since the storied investigative reporter first made a name for himself by breaking Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal.

 

Now it's Donald Trump's turn under the microscope.

 

The picture revealed - of an administration having a "nervous breakdown of executive power" - is unflattering in the extreme.

 

The importance of this book - when compared with other recent sensational books on the subject - is that the author has an excellent reputation for accuracy over several decades, and takes audio recordings of all his interviews.

CNN - Bernstein: The Trump presidency is a national emergency (video)

Carl Bernstein says details from Bob Woodward's book, "Fear: Trump in the White House," should be a warning sign to congressional Republicans and the country that the Trump presidency is a national emergency.

 

Wikipedia

Carl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist and author.

 

While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Bernstein was teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal.

 

kingdragonfly: I know in New Zealand it's not unusual to call someone a "cheeky little monkey," but if you do this to an African American, it wouldn't be OK.

I'm not saying you'd be hit, but you would have definitely lost a friend.

From a lecture in Texas

"Professor talks race, sports, politics in new book"

https://news.utexas.edu/2010/09/08/professor-talks-race-sports-politics-in-new-book

How do you believe these stereotypes are perpetuated in sports media?

White sports commentators and journalists used to be very explicit in comparing black athletes to monkeys, gorillas and cheetahs.

Today they are more circumspect and instead tend to over-emphasize black players' physical attributes -- power, speed, strength and so on -- and conversely tend to highlight the 'intelligence' and ability to 'read the game' of white athletes, who supposedly lack the 'natural advantage' of their black peers, but can make up for it by their better play-making abilities.

ask Steven Adams how it went after he called other players cheeky little monkeys on a live interview after a game , all hell broke loose 

Released by QAnon (note New Zealand at bottom left folks!):

Reality:

I'm missing StarTrek and found Nazi UFOs *g* and Haunebu II instead! There is no white rabbit and the pink one has been stolen by a guy named A.H.

freitasm:

Released by QAnon (

This just hit the fan ...

The Guardian - Top Trump aide: White House 'resistance' explored removing president from office

 

An internal White House resistance is working against Donald Trump to “frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations” until he leaves – or can be removed from – office, according to an anonymous account written by a current Trump administration official.

 

The op-ed, published in the New York Times on Wednesday, represents a shocking critique of Trump and is without precedent in modern American history.

 

The anonymous author describes Trump as amoral, “anti-trade and anti-democratic” and prone to making “half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions”.

 

The writer claims aides had explored the possibility of removing Trump from office via the 25th amendment, a complex constitutional mechanism to allow for the replacement of a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”, but had decided against it.

 

“So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until – one way or another – it’s over,” the author writes.

 

In contrast to Trump’s Democratic critics, the author makes clear that “ours is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left”, but a coalition that wants to administration to flourish."

 

Trump has, of course, denied it all.

Now there's just an excellent driver from the right hand seat! (... and better drive control systems)

I just read the op-ed. It is hard to believe this is real. It is hard to believe that something like this would really be produced by a senior administration official. I don't quite know what to make of it, but if it genuinely is what it claims to be, America and the world are in deep, deep, trouble. 

This important article is behind a pay wall, so is reproduced below in its entirety.

New York Times Sept. 5, 2018

Opinion

I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration

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.

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

 

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.

 

The author doesn't exactly come across as the hero they think they are. They say they know he is dangerous and unfit for office but won't take the legal route of removing him. Instead they work around him in a fashion not unlike a coup to drive their own agenda. The bright spots they talk about have been disastrous for most normal people, the environment, and the economy of the US and the rest of the world.

Perhaps they are setting the stage for the step of blaming Trump for everything and removing him from office.