Senator Ben Sasse said on Thursday that the account of a White House “resistance” effort published in an anonymous New York Times op-ed was “troubling but not unsurprising.”
“It’s just so similar to what so many of us hear from senior people around the White House, you know, three times a week,” the Nebraska Republican said during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewit.
Mr. Sasse explained that about two-thirds of the senior officials express the same views as the one expressed in the controversial op-ed, but said it was “unhelpful” to publish them anonymously.
The New York Times published an anonymous op-ed from a mysterious senior administration official on Wednesday, sparking a surge of anxiety and rumors about who the author might be.
The writer described a chaotic White House under Mr. Trump’s tenure, and acts taken by officials embedded into the administration to undermine some of the president’s actions that are “detrimental to the health of our republic.”
“I don’t understand the morality of why anyone would write the piece, because it seems pretty obvious to me that what it’s going to do is foster more paranoia,” he said.
However, Mr. Sasse said it is clear the White House “doesn’t work together well” and denounced the constant infighting within the topmost ranks in the Trump administration.
The Republican senator said any call to invoke the 25th amendment should have been made public because it will distract the public and the administration from improving. Instead, it made the president focus on “running around doing an interrogation of everybody.”
Mr. Sasse said the constant “drama” coming out of the White House including everything from the scandalous accusations made in new books and the sensational Cohen and Manafort cases “exhausts” the public.
“And I know that the founders would regard anything like this as you know, really unhelpful. You don’t run the country as a soap opera,” he said.
• Gabriella Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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