RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/405948-opposition-to-the-president-is-not-treason

POTUS ≠ US. It is a simple formula. If President Trump and his core supporters would internalize it, they’d be well served.

The presidency of the United States is the most significant, most powerful single office in our constitutional government. But, all the same, the president is a public servant. He is not the sovereign; we are. He represents the nation; he does not embody it.

Consequently, a betrayal of the president’s trust is not a betrayal of the country. It is dangerous to confound these two things.
The president is extremely agitated about an anonymous New York Times op-ed, penned by what the Gray Lady describes as “a senior official in the Trump administration.” I don’t blame him. The piece, in which the author brags about being part of a faction resisting the president from within, is dishonorable.

For an executive officer with integrity, there is a simple choice. If you object to the policies of an administration, or if you find the character of the president so objectionable that you have difficulty carrying out his directives, you can either (a) remain in the administration, do your best to veer the president toward policies you believe are in the nation’s interest, and then faithfully execute his lawful directives regardless of whether you agree with them; or (b) resign your position and engage in the public debate — in your own name, not in craven anonymity.

The official who authored the op-ed took the coward’s way out. He or she did not just betray the president. To the extent this self-serving preen has prompted a predictable presidential tirade and internal investigation, the author also has betrayed the selfless, patriotic administration officials who, every day, work diligently to govern and to pursue America’s best interests.

Moreover, the author has confirmed the indictment long lodged by Trump supporters: There is an entrenched “deep state” working against the president. Euphemizing it as the “steady state,” as Anonymous does, fails to camouflage the nature of the “Resistance.” And posturing about how the “steady state” beats back the president’s worst impulses does not conceal its imperious claim to be a permanent, unaccountable regime.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/trump-destabilizing-status-quo-is-chaos-impeachable-offense/

Trump is destabilizing the status quo, as he promised to do. The keepers of the status quo cry foul.

Until 2017, there were certain political assumptions that most people no longer really believed but also preferred not to question — given the likely animus from the so-called bipartisan establishment, a naked entity which, by convention, we all agreed was splendidly clothed.

China could freely cheat on trade, and the U.S. could take the commercial hit, because one day its misbegotten riches would force liberalization and thereby make China a member in good standing of the family of democratic nations. After 40 years, we are still waiting on the promised democratic transformation — at great cost to the industrial and manufacturing heartland of the United States.

NATO member nations always would promise, indeed swear, that they would meet their military spending commitments, even as they had no intention at all of doing so. Fine, we shrugged, since World War II it has been the duty of the United States to lead and protect the West. What other nation had America’s inexhaustible wealth and power to subsidize rich socialist democracies, and commensurate unconcern with its own insidiously hollowed-out industrial interior? Accordingly, American presidents would lecture NATO nations about their promised obligations and meanwhile expect public nods and private snickers. In the New York and Washington corridor, the gospel was never to question the changing role or funding of NATO but always to utter “NATO is the linchpin of the West.” End of discussion.

The Palestinians will always remain “refugees” in a way that similar contemporaneously displaced people who were also forced out of their homeland — Prussians, Jews of the Middle East, or Volga Germans — no longer have refugee status, after more than 70 years. A chaotic Trump recently accepted reality and quit funding the United Nations relief organization that supposedly attends to “refugees” who in reality are a political construct deemed useful for demonizing Israel around the world.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/that_silent_coup_in_the_white_house.html

With reference to the much ballyhooed early September op-ed piece in the New York Times authored by “Anonymous,” which set off iterative bomblets throughout the kingdom of Donald and his closest and supposedly most trusted aides, several points to keep in mind:

With technology available to all, not least to tech-savvy Millennials trolling the current presidency, feigning (perhaps) respect for their CEO, President Donald Trump, it is a simple thing to suss out writers’ frequent usage of standout terms and phrases, such as, of course, the so-called telltale “lodestar.” Even specific grammatical constructs can be programmed and revealed by the same modality.

It’s called forensic linguistics.

A few days ago, TheWeek.com wrote about this in a piece called “The delicate art of using linguistics to identify an anonymous author.” It noted: “There’s the anonymously-authored book Primary Colors, closely paralleling Bill Clinton’s campaign…”

Mike Pence took a lot of the initial suspicion of being the author of the Times piece, but he denied it, and there is no other evidence besides a single word – his common use of “lodestar” – to argue he was involved. That White House chief economics man, Larry Kudlow, has used such words, too, is no guarantee of anything dispositive, either, as it would be highly uncharacteristic of Kudlow to pen such a combative piece against a man he has professed as worthy of our attention and respect. Thus, the frequency of such idiosyncratic terms as “lodestar” is debunked: any high-schooler could have divined that Pence, say, hit that word X number of times. It would be, furthermore, a usage that would deflect adults into a slotted canyon of blame; a Millennial would savor that. An adult over the age of normalcy and thought would not have done that word usage search and then planted that telltale, so-called.

http://dailycaller.com/2018/09/10/bob-woodward-accuracy-issues-watergate-trump/

Bob Woodward’s new book “Fear” presents a scathing depiction of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Woodward has a muddy history with a trail of allegations that he embellished the truth or otherwise misled his readers.
Media coverage of Woodward’s book has been largely positive and ignores Woodward’s controversial record.

Longtime journalist Bob Woodward’s best-selling new book, “Fear,” presents a scathing depiction of President Donald Trump and his ability to perform his duties as commander-in-chief.

While senior Trump officials including Secretary of Defense James Mattis have denied quotations attributed to them in the book, media coverage of “Fear” has been largely positive, emphasizing the 75-year-old Woodward’s experience and trustworthiness.

But that coverage has left out part of the story: repeated, credible charges — including from well-respected fellow journalists — that in previous books Woodward embellished the truth, made dubious bombshell claims or was otherwise misleading.

Woodward’s former editor at the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, though publicly complimentary of Woodward, privately doubted some of the more dramatic elements of Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate-era bestseller, “All The President’s Men.”

Bradlee and Woodward’s former assistant at the Post, Jeff Himmelman, revealed Bradlee’s nagging doubts in a 2012 biography of the longtime editor.

Bradlee gave Himmelman full access to his files, which revealed that details about Woodward’s relationship with infamous Watergate source “Deep Throat” gnawed at Bradlee years later. Details such as Woodward communicating with Deep Throat by placing a flag in a potted plant on his balcony, or their dozens of shadowy garage meetings.