The anonymous White House official who authored a New York Times op-ed and upcoming book criticizing President Donald Trump and his administration participated in a Reddit AMA (“Ask Me Anything”) forum on Tuesday.
Among the statements: “Trump will hear from me, in my own name, before the 2020 election.” (Nov. 26, 2019)
who knows what evil lurks in the heart of trump? anonymous knows! hehhehhehheh. a man of mystery who strikes terror in the very soul of the gangster, law breaker and criminal in chief!
assuming, of course, a heart and a soul therein able to be stricken with terror.
more from The hill on reappearance of shadowy anonymous:
[…]
“As far as anonymity is concerned, I will not keep my identity shrouded in secrecy forever,” the author wrote. “I am not afraid to use my own name to express concern about the current occupant of the Oval Office.”
The moderators of AMA wrote in a post that they could not “verify by our usual standards” that the poster is the anonymous author, but “the publishers of his book assure us it’s the same guy and we have no reason not to believe them.”
The author, known only as a “senior official of the Trump administration,” defended his choice to remain anonymous, saying anonymity has been used throughout American political history.
“Trump thrives on distractions, and anonymity is a way to deprive him of his favorite weapon of mass distraction — personal attacks — and force the discussion to center on the substance, his character,” they wrote.
The anonymous author first came into the limelight after writing a New York Times op-ed in September of last year saying they were “working diligently” to mitigate the president’s “worst inclinations.”Â
They released a book entitled “A Warning” this year, where they wrote that a mass exodus of administration officials was planned for last year to “call attention to Trump’s misconduct and erratic leadership.”
[continues]
Now that I finally have some time… Â I’ll be starting that book today.
Should be interesting.
Great song just used in my last video obsession: His Dark Materials
Old Best Friend
Awww, poor Sarah doesn’t like being called a liar. Poor baby.Â
Maybe she shoulda thought about that before she became the liar in chief’s spokesliar.
Regarding being called a liar, perhaps the first time one is asked to lie might be the occasion to say “I’ll pass k thanks bye” rather than “thank you sir may I have another”.Â
I’m just saying.
Happy Turkey Day to all and sundry! We shall be spending the day with the folks, watching football and munching. Dinner will be a slow cooked turkey breast with modest fixings on the side. And pie. Of course pie.
She’s like the Anna quote from The King and I
Someone already figured out who it is- surprised it took so long.  No, it’s not KellyAnne.
So I’m out driving around and I hear the comment related to the impeachment investigation, I think it was from Devon Nunes, this has become a circus. Well  you know how that goes – when you elect a clown expect a circus.
…that must make Devin the barrel.
Bink, I’d say.Â
I love the sound of shoes dropping.Â
And, I know this is impossible, but how great would it be if Ivanker was Anonymous? Â
Sounds like SFB is even worse than before his expedition to Walter Reed. He now thinks he ran against and won the election against Obama. Out of his freaking mind.
bink, so who is it?
my guess (if it’s someone still on board) is Pompeo or
(if it’s a former official) Dan Coats. Â
I ruled out Rosentein & Bolton ’cause they write like a lawyer and anon doesn’t imho.
given all the pricks there, how did they distinguish him from the rest? seems a daily occurrence when they’re in session, particularly when pontificating in hearings. 🙂
the hill:
Man accused of exposing himself in Senate office building
patd, I suppose they have security cameras in the Senate Office Building? I hope he smiled.
Devin! Ha!
I hope everyone has a great day with family and/or friends.
Thank you Jamie, ditto.
Uh, no one sexy or consequential, patd.
You can google it. i’m not posting the name cuz it hasn’t been verified, but they were identified using your method, which is the way to do that.
  With a few (hundred/thousand) hours of streaming, intermittent watching, and struggles to stay awake, I have been watching a lot of television, movies and assorted other things on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and many other platforms.  Having been watching television since it started in the early nineteen fifties I think myself as someone who can has seen a lot of it.Â
  Currently I have been watching a lot of the seventies that I watched originally. Back then we did not have repeats, unless we were lucky during summer. We were out of Vietnam, we were trying to survive the exit of Nixon, the recession of the mid-seventies, President Ford, and the arrival of President Carter. At the same time disco was killing music. Technology is moving from huge analog cameras to more processor controlled systems. The old studio system had been finally smashed into the ground. And, we were seeing more adult themed television. Our parents and grandparents were still running the networks and studios, but we Baby Boomers were forcing changes.Â
  Having watched Bones and NCIS, it was time to move to something else. Taxi popped up as a suggestion on Amazon. ‘Why not?’ So I am watching Taxi. Although the laugh track is horrible, the lack of reality in the staging (a garage floor is not smooth and covered in a brown carpet, and the horrible writing, I am enjoying most of the series. It actually broke a few bars and is enjoyable.Â
I still have a problem with almost all of the seventies television theme music. It sucks.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I made this meme tonight. 🙂
Corey, youdaman. Love that meme.Â
Busy tonight cooking stuff for tomorrow. Mom’s sweet potato casserole and pumpkin/pecan pie. (I know, I know). And gonna prep the veggies to cook stuff in the morning.Â
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Pence and Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be at a “Keep America Great” event on December 4th in my town. The address for the event is a building downtown. I will NOT be attending this event.
You can suss me the same way they did Anonymous: i’m the only person in the world under 40 embedding Ray Conniff vids.
let’s get this party started
Just because i’m an atheist who prefers to say “happy holidays” doesn’t mean i don’t dig this fine number:Â
See? We CAN peacefully coexist!
…ah, unparalleled schmaltz.Â
Fired Navy Sec. Richard Spencer’s op-ed from WaPo, reprinted without permission:
” The case of Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was charged with multiple war crimes before being convicted of a single lesser charge earlier this year, was troubling enough before things became even more troubling over the past few weeks. The trail of events that led to me being fired as secretary of the Navy is marked with lessons for me and for the nation.
It is highly irregular for a secretary to become deeply involved in most personnel matters. Normally, military justice works best when senior leadership stays far away. A system that prevents command influence is what separates our armed forces from others. Our system of military justice has helped build the world’s most powerful navy; good leaders get promoted, bad ones get moved out, and criminals are punished.
In combat zones, the stakes are even higher. We train our forces to be both disciplined and lethal. We strive to use proportional force, protect civilians and treat detainees fairly. Ethical conduct is what sets our military apart. I have believed that every day since joining the Marine Corps in 1976.
Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer was fired Nov. 24 after Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper took issue with how he handled a Navy SEAL’s war crimes case. (Reuters)
We are effective overseas not because we have the best equipment but because we are professionals. Our troops are held to the highest standards. We expect those who lead our forces to exercise excellent judgment. The soldiers and sailors they lead must be able to count on that.
Earlier this year, Gallagher was formally charged with more than a dozen criminal acts, including premeditated murder, which occurred during his eighth deployment overseas. He was tried in a military court in San Diego and acquitted in July of all charges, except one count of wrongfully posing for photographs with the body of a dead Islamic State fighter. The jury sentenced him to four months, the maximum possible; because he had served that amount of time waiting for trial, he was released.
President Trump involved himself in the case almost from the start. Before the trial began, in March, I received two calls from the president asking me to lift Gallagher’s confinement in a Navy brig; I pushed back twice, because the presiding judge, acting on information about the accused’s conduct, had decided that confinement was important. Eventually, the president ordered me to have him transferred to the equivalent of an enlisted barracks. I came to believe that Trump’s interest in the case stemmed partly from the way the defendant’s lawyers and others had worked to keep it front and center in the media.
After the verdict was delivered, the Navy’s normal process wasn’t finished. Gallagher had voluntarily submitted his request to retire. In his case, there were three questions: Would he be permitted to retire at the rank of chief, which is also known as an E-7? (The jury had said he should be busted to an E-6, a demotion.) The second was: Should he be allowed to leave the service with an “honorable” or “general under honorable” discharge? And a third: Should he be able to keep his Trident pin, the medal all SEALs wear and treasure as members of an elite force?
On Nov. 14, partly because the president had already contacted me twice, I sent him a note asking him not to get involved in these questions. The next day, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone called me and said the president would remain involved. Shortly thereafter, I received a second call from Cipollone, who said the president would order me to restore Gallagher to the rank of chief.
This was a shocking and unprecedented intervention in a low-level review. It was also a reminder that the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.
Given my desire to resolve a festering issue, I tried to find a way that would prevent the president from further involvement while trying all avenues to get Gallagher’s file in front of a peer-review board. Why? The Naval Special Warfare community owns the Trident pin, not the secretary of the Navy, not the defense secretary, not even the president. If the review board concluded that Gallagher deserved to keep it, so be it.
I also began to work without personally consulting Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper on every step. That was, I see in retrospect, a mistake for which I am solely responsible.
On Nov. 19, I briefed Esper’s chief of staff concerning my plan. I briefed acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney that evening.
The next day, the Navy established a review board to decide the status of Gallagher’s Trident pin. According to long-standing procedure, a group of four senior enlisted SEALs would rule on the question. This was critical: It would be Gallagher’s peers managing their own community. The senior enlisted ranks in our services are the foundation of good order and discipline.
But the question was quickly made moot: On Nov. 21, the president tweeted that Gallagher would be allowed to keep his pin — Trump’s third intervention in the case. I recognized that the tweet revealed the president’s intent. But I did not believe it to be an official order, chiefly because every action taken by the president in the case so far had either been a verbal or written command.
The rest is history. We must now move on and learn from what has transpired. The public should know that we have extensive screening procedures in place to assess the health and well-being of our forces. But we must keep fine-tuning those procedures to prevent a case such as this one from happening again.
More importantly, Americans need to know that 99.9 percent of our uniformed members always have, always are and always will make the right decision. Our allies need to know that we remain a force for good, and to please bear with us as we move through this moment in time.”
wow. thanks, bink, for reprinting that op-ed. bet there’ll be a few tweets by the egomaniac in response. especially to “…the president has very little understanding of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by a uniform set of rules and practices.”
wonder if the line will also be quoted during the impeachment hearings. it has the makings for a nifty poster, meme and cartoon to say nothing of the history books.
NEW THREAD