Note de do : Je parie que c’est Trump lui-même qui a écrit cette tribune anonyme afin de pouvoir mener sa chasse aux sorcières comme bon lui semble. En effet, par définition, l’« État profond » agit mais ne se manifeste pas ; et c’est une erreur de penser que Trump a été élu contre l’État profond. Il a été élu par l’État profond ! D’autre part, il est bien connu que le New York Times appartient aux services secrets et fait ce qu’on lui demande.
En quelque sorte, cette tribune anonyme est un 11 septembre à usage interne, c’est-à-dire pas dirigé contre la population mais contre certains éléments du pouvoir, ceux dont Trump va se débarrasser avec sa chasse aux sorcières.
Nid de rebelles à la Maison-Blanche
https://www.letemps.ch/monde/nid-rebelles-maisonblanche
Valérie de Graffenried
Publié jeudi 6 septembre 2018 à 18:33
Modifié jeudi 6 septembre 2018 à 19:3
Dans une tribune anonyme publiée par le « New York Times », un haut responsable de l’administration Trump dénonce l’incapacité du président à diriger le pays. L’ambiance de « chasse au traître » pousse des ministres à assurer qu’ils n’ont pas rédigé le texte
Depuis la publication d’une opinion anonyme explosive dans le New York Times, la chasse à la taupe bat son plein à Washington. Entré dans une colère noire, Donald Trump est déterminé à identifier le « traître ». Il aurait sa liste des principaux suspects. Des ministres jugent nécessaire d’assurer qu’ils n’y sont pour rien. Les démentis officiels pleuvent. Le vice-président Mike Pence a très vite fait savoir qu’il n’était pas le dénonciateur anonyme, puis le secrétaire d’Etat Mike Pompeo a embrayé. Même le directeur du Renseignement Dan Coats s’est fendu d’un communiqué. Qui peut encore affirmer que le chaos ne règne pas à la Maison-Blanche ? Le ver est dans le fruit.
Combattre ses « pires penchants »
Intitulée « Je fais partie de la résistance au sein de l’administration Trump » et rédigée par l’un de ses hauts fonctionnaires, la tribune a fait l’effet d’une bombe mercredi après-midi. Elle révèle comment une partie de ses ministres et conseillers luttent de l’intérieur pour contenir le président des Etats-Unis et combattre ses « pires penchants » et son « amoralité ». « Les cellules dormantes se sont réveillées » : selon le Washington Post, cette phrase a beaucoup été tweetée ces dernières heures dans l’entourage de Trump.
Le cadre décrit Donald Trump comme inapte à la fonction présidentielle, en raison de son comportement erratique et imprévisible, et de son instabilité. Son attitude est qualifiée de « mesquine », « impétueuse » et « inefficace ». « Les hauts fonctionnaires reconnaissent en privé leur incrédulité quotidienne face aux commentaires et aux actions du commandant en chef. La plupart travaillent à préserver leurs actions de ses caprices », révèle l’auteur. Plus loin, il écrit : « Nous sommes pleinement conscients de ce qui se passe. Et nous essayons de faire ce qui est juste, même lorsque Donald Trump ne le fait pas. »
Il évoque encore les rumeurs à propos de l’invocation du 25e amendement par des membres de son cabinet, « qui amorcerait un processus complexe de destitution du président ». « Mais personne ne voulait provoquer une crise constitutionnelle. Nous ferons donc tout notre possible pour orienter l’administration dans la bonne direction jusqu’à ce que, d’une manière ou d’une autre, cela se termine », souligne encore le fonctionnaire, qui rend en passant hommage au sénateur John McCain.
Le spectre d’un « deep state »
« Si cette opinion du New York Times n’est pas une provocation ou une forme de canular, qui tuerait d’un coup d’un seul la réputation du journal, cette tribune contre Trump de la part d’un de ses ministres ou conseillers est une bombe lancée contre sa présidence bien plus forte encore que le livre de Woodward », commente, sur Twitter, l’historien Corentin Sellin, qui suit assidûment l’administration Trump.
I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/…
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
The Times 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.
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.
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