House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said that President Donald Trump’s furious reaction to an anonymous administration official’s op-ed in The New York Times is a “manifestation of his instability.”
According to Newsweek, Pelosi said her “first thought” was that Vice President Pence wrote the opinion piece, which described efforts among staffers in the Trump administration to push back against the President’s instincts.
Not long after the op-ed was published Wednesday afternoon, Trump tweeted “Treason?” in all caps. He later demanded the Times identify the piece’s author “for National Security purposes.”
“The President saying its treason is, again, a manifestation of his instability,” Pelosi said. “But what was said in there is a reflection of what we hear from many Republicans around the country, not in Congress: That the party of Lincoln cannot survive as the party of Trump.”
Pelosi added that it “probably won’t take too long for us to find out who wrote it.”
“Who has denied it already? The vice president,” she said. “That was my first thought.”
Jarrod Agen, Pence’s deputy chief of staff and communications director, on Thursday issued a statement denying Pence wrote the op-ed, tweeting that the vice president’s office “is above such amateur acts.”
Several other White House officials also rushed to deny authoring the op-ed, including Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
The anonymous Trump official in the op-ed bashed the President’s “amorality” and praised the work of “unsung heroes” who push back against him, suggesting a coordinated effort from within.
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