2. If you have someone who is mentally unfit to be president (as Trump seems to be) there is remedy: the 25th amendment. Instead, according to the op-ed & to Woodward's book, we have something far worse: an administrative coup.
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3. The virtue of 25th amendment solution is that it keeps everything in the open: unfit president is evaluated, cabinet & congress take responsibility. Everyone can be judged by their public actions. That's vastly superior to a secret coup.
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4. What we now have is a two-tier government: Trump tweeting and ranting & his staff executing separate policy. This undermines democratic legitimacy & ability of other countries to trust USA as much as actually executing Trump's policies would.
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5. Part of the intent here seems to be to shield GOP --including feckless congress -- from responsibility for the Trump fiasco. "It's not true that we were complicit -- we tried to stop him!"
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6. We have remedies for Trump: not just 25th amendment but congress could investigate & rebuke, staff could quit. The op-ed is a justification for why these remedies are not being applied.
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7. What is really masterful about the op-ed is how it co-opts the language of the opposition to defend working for Trump: civility, resistance, McCain.
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8. Of course, it's easy to use the language of the part of the opposition (what I call the Decency Resistance) because that language is itself a form of elite self-defense from being held accountable for Trump. See Heer here:https://twitter.com/heerjeet/status/1036074361369681920 …
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9. This should be a reminder that the real resistance is not among White House officials writing anonymous op-eds or even at John McCain's funeral. The real resistance is in popular organization -- protests, strikes, and electioneering -- aimed at changing the status quo
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10. For more thoughts on this, see here: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/151068/anonymous-white-house-official-admits-times-op-ed-administrative-coup …
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End of conversation
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Yes. The word of the day is
#Psyops. Glad to see your bullshit monitor is fully operational.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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