Here’s how we know multiple people were behind the anonymous Donald Trump op-ed

| 9:00 am EDT September 10, 2018
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We still don’t know for sure who wrote the anonymous op-ed about Donald Trump in the New York Times, though we have our theories. You don’t know who wrote it either, though you surely have your theories as well. Here’s what we can tell you at this point: there is no longer any doubt that multiple people were behind the op-ed in question.

We’ve seen a number of Donald Trump’s top people publicly insist that they didn’t write it. We’ve seen some of them publicly condemn the author. We’ve seen a few of them publicly dispute the accusations made against Trump in the op-ed. We’ve even seen some of them reportedly use the confusion to try to privately stab each other in the back with unsupported accusations. But here’s what we haven’t seen: anyone publicly outing the author. Why is this important?

These people all work directly or indirectly with each other, many of them in the same building. They know each other’s internal processes. They know how every major player in the administration operates. There are plenty people who operate in close enough proximity to the author to have figured out the author’s identity by now. Since its publication, there has been more than enough time for them to tell others in the building about the author’s identity. In this infamously backbiting administration, by now someone has learned about the author’s identity who doesn’t like the author. So why hasn’t the author simply been outed? After all, there would be no easier way for a Trump official to gain favor with Donald Trump.

The only plausible explanation for this silence is that several top people were behind the op-ed. Word has spread internally, and although everyone in the administration has someone on the list of authors they don’t like, they’re not willing to sell out the entire list of people, either because they like someone on the list, or because they’re afraid of taking on such a large chunk of the power structure. There’s a reason why we’ve all had such a hard time figuring out which person is behind the op-ed: it isn’t just one person.