JAMES MATTIS/MEDIA/MIKE PENCE/MIKE POMPEO/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Top aides to Donald Trump scrambled on Thursday [9-6-18] to deny authorship of an anonymous New York Times opinion column that slammed the U.S. president’s leadership style and described ‘a quiet resistance’ to him within his own administration. By early afternoon, eight senior officials had disavowed the piece, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis, while hammering the author for writing it and the Times for publishing it. Trump seethed about the piece and presented it as one more jab from the ranks of disgruntled critics in denial about his presidential successes, even as Washington was consumed with speculation about who wrote it. First Lady Melania Trump said in a statement on Twitter, ‘To the writer of the oped – you are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions.’ The article, published on Wednesday, appeared just days after the publication of excerpts from a new book by famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward that portrays Trump as prone to impulsive decision-making. The excerpts described senior aides as sometimes disregarding his instructions to limit what they saw as damaging behavior.”
–Susan Heavey, Makini Brice, “Top Trump aides rush to disavow NYTimes ‘resistance’ article,” Reuters, September 6, 2018 5:43 am