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October 29, 2020

The New York Times' 'Anonymous' is an insignificant pipsqueak

By Andrea Widburg

In 2018, the New York Times proudly published an anonymously written piece from a purported "senior official in the Trump administration," knowing that this statement was a lie.  "Anonymous" claimed that Trump was an idiot, but that a brave band of "senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda."  In fact, the author was Miles Taylor, a low-level functionary in DHS when he wrote the hit piece.

The anonymous article, published on Sept. 5, 2018, bore the lofty title, "I Am Part of the Resistance inside the Trump Administration: I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations."  As noted above, to give the piece heft, the New York Times claimed that it came from a "senior official in the Trump administration."  We now know this statement was an outright lie, for the Times admitted that the author's "identity is known to us."

The article was a nauseating glue of arrogant piety and self-serving condescension.  On the one hand, "Anonymous" insisted that he and others like him "want the administration to succeed" and even agreed that "many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous."  Nevertheless, his brave little band of saboteurs loathed Trump, and no matter how effective he was, they were going to thwart him.  It was paragraph after paragraph of smug, self-righteous glop.

In the two years since the article appeared, there's been lots of speculation about who wrote it.  CNN's Chris Cillizza even wrote a lengthy piece on the subject, putting forward such people as then–chief of staff John Kelly, White House counsel Don McGahn, defense secretary James Mattis, and even Mike Pence and Melania Trump.  Media hacks love to gossip.  They still do.  They can't be bothered to investigate Joe Biden's dirty dealings with the Chinese, but they'll spend weeks canoodling with each other playing gossip guessing games.

The left also loves a Trump-hater, so "Anonymous" got a book deal.  His book, A Warning, expanded on the original thesis.

Eventually, suspicion landed on Victoria Coates, who had worked on Ted Cruz's campaign before joining the White House.  When the White House transferred her from her job as a national security aide to the Department of Energy, the New York Times said the transfer was because the White House suspected she was "Anonymous," an accusation the White House denied.

On Wednesday, "Anonymous" finally came forward, and it wasn't Victoria Coates.  Instead, it was some Ken Doll nonentity named Miles Taylor, who wasn't even on DHS's leadership page when he wrote the hit piece.  Showing the same unctuous self-righteousness that appeared in his first article, along with a pathetic ignorance about basic grammar, Taylor tweeted out the truth:

Taylor accompanied his confession with yet another pompous screed in which he explained why he's so much better than everyone else.  If I had to imagine purgatory, it would be sitting in a room listening to this guy trash other people and justify his higher morality and intelligence.

I hope you caught Taylor's assertion that "Trump is a man without character."  Let's talk about character.  Taylor lied when CNN's Anderson Cooper asked him if he was "Anonymous":

Even worse than that, Taylor allowed a terrible smear to lie against Victoria Coates's name.  And while he's acknowledged that he owes Coates an apology, none has been forthcoming (language warning!):

Miles Taylor is why the American people voted for Trump in 2016 and why, with all due disrespect for the polls and the pundits, it looks as if he's going to win again in 2020.  Americans have had it up to here and beyond with the self-righteous, dishonest, hypocritical, arrogant, self-serving professional governing class.  These people are a plague on the American political body, and they need to go find an honest living in the private sector where they cause less harm.

UPDATE: Because I was deeply irritated by Taylor's and the Times' highly dishonest puffery, which made Taylor seem important, I may have given the impression that Taylor was nothing more than a mere copy boy. In fact, he was a Deputy Chief of Staff to DHS Secretary Nielsen. In title rich D.C., he was a bureaucratic functionary. I continue to be unimpressed.

Image by Antonio Chaves.

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