Forget the substance of the NY Times Op-Ed – a piece stating Donald Trump as unhinged and incapable of understanding the simplest tasks or having the simplest skills or mindset necessary to lead this country. The Substance of the Op-Ed has not taken a back seat, it’s not even in the same vehicle. Today, the fascination is trying to figure out wrote the Op-Ed?
Just about everyone associated with the Trump White House has denied, some even going as far as expressing their desire to be hooked up to a lie-detector machine. The goal? To prove to their mighty leader that they did not write the Op-Ed.
But while White House employees are falling over each other in a mad rush to be the first in line for the lie-detector machine, media outlets are throwing in their two cents in the who-done-it controversy.
Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ recently stated that he is close to naming the White House author. He also cautioned that the anonymous author may not be a senior administration official, as originally stated by the New York Times.
“Willie had a pretty good source that suggested that it wasn’t someone that the country knows and actually has the name,” Scarborough said. “We won’t say it here today, but, but that name is slowly but surely getting around in Washington, D.C.”
Scarborough asked Times reporter Nick Confessore, an MSNBC contributor, whether the newspaper had overplayed their hand.
“I don’t speak for the paper, but, yeah, I would say that I would hope and I expect and I’m sure that my colleagues on the op-ed page would not use the phrase ‘senior administration official’ if it was not an actual senior person,” Confessore said.
“But that said that still leaves a fairly wide number of people,” he continued. “So if you adopt a strict definition of a senior administration official, it’s still dozens or 100 people that it could be, which is why it’s a good use in news stories, as well, that we often use to mask identities or have a source attribution. But hopefully, it is a person who merits that title.”
Meanwhile, the message of the Op-Ed is officially lost.
