September 6, 2018

Trump Officials Are Tripping Over Themselves to Disavow That Anonymous Op-Ed

The first lady also chimed in with a non-denial.

As President Donald Trump continues to fume over a bruising New York Times op-ed by an unnamed administration official detailing their “resistance” work to combat the president’s worst impulses, senior officials are coming out of the woodwork to publicly disavow the anonymous writing and deny responsibility.

Here’s the parade of people who 100 percent, definitely did not do it:

Vice President Mike Pence 

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley

White House Counsel Don McGahn 

Administrator of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon

First Lady Melania Trump issued a statement condemning anonymous sources, which didn’t exactly deny any role in the publishing the op-ed. It also notably did not take issue with any of its contents:

Even still, their scrambled effort isn’t likely to do much in the way of tempering the White House’s inevitable witch hunt to track down the author. Just hours after the editorial was published, Trump demanded the Times‘ release the name of the author “for national security purposes.”

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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