I Am the Anonymous NYT Op-Ed Writer from the White House
At last, the senior administration official comes clean.
It is a dark time for the Resistance. Although Donald Trump has been President for nearly two years, he’s proved himself capricious and narcissistic, irrational and vengeful, blockheaded, amoral, incurious, and wholly un-up-to-the-task of leading our nation.
But within his administration lurk officials who, though dedicated to achieving his policy goals, understand that he cannot be trusted to make them happen, at least not without alienating what few allies remain—or accidentally launching the United States into full-scale war with both our friends and our enemies. That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
I should know. Because I wrote the anonymous Op-Ed that appeared in the New York Times yesterday, throwing the White House into chaos. (Although, frankly, it was already pretty much in chaos. The past 24 hours have been business as usual.)
Now, before you ask me questions like “Why would you thwart the will of the electorate?” or “Why would you reveal your actions to the world?” or “What’s up with the ‘lodestar’ thing?,” I want to address a different question: “Wait, aren’t you just a travel writer?”
That’s a fair issue to address. To most of the outside world, it does appear that I am a travel writer, although a minority may recognize me as a food writer, and an even smaller fragment of the population might think of me as that annoying guy who just won’t get out of their Facebook feed. Since early 2005, I appear to have been flying all over the planet, meeting unusual people, going on crazy adventures, and eating food undreamed of by mere mortals. Horseback rides in Kyrgyzstan, hitchhiking Cyprus, schnapps-touring Austria—that’s the Matt Gross you thought you knew, right?
Wrong. It’s all been a lie, a cover made possible by the Fake News Media. I mean, come on! You really believed that a publication like the Failing New York Times would pay to send a “frugal” “traveler” to places like Paris or “Gdansk” (as if such a city really existed!) solely for the purpose of reporting back on where to sleep and what to eat—when it could just as easily make it all up, leaving its libtard readership none the wiser? Puh-leeze. The Travel section is created, as is the rest of the entire “paper,” by a cabal of self-hating Jewish homosexuals who had their consciousnesses uploaded to a mainframe back in 1972. It’s been profitable ever since—because, I might add, that mainframe runs on coal. Just ask Snopes.
In reality, I have been a Republican deep-state operative since 1996, when I was sent to Vietnam to oversee the unraveling of that communist system. (Big win!) Post-9/11, I drafted weekly memos for President Bush on the differences between Iran and Iraq, Sunni and Shia—excellent preparation for my time in the Trump White House. Along the way, I married a Taiwanese woman, partly to shore up that non-Chinese island nation’s democracy, but also because I really like dumplings.
This may, I know, come as a shock to those who think they know me. What happened to the liberal globe-trotter? The Brooklyn dad with kids in a diverse public school? The backyard barbecuer who puts Sichuan peppercorn and Urfa biber in his pork rub? The self-hating Jew who’d gladly pay higher taxes to cover the cost of single-payer health insurance for all?
All lies! All flimsy, easy-to-see-through-if-you’ve-been-reading-QAnon lies! The truth is that I am a senior White House official. In fact, “Senior White House Official” is my official title—that’s how dimwitted this administration is: our jobs are punch lines. I have been commuting to Washington, D.C., since mid-2015 (after my “consulting” stint at News Corp, which should’ve told you something!), and have pretty much been running the White House since January 2017. Mostly, that has consisted of snatching documents off the Resolute desk and replacing them with circa-1986 reproductions of Beetle Bailey comic strips. Don’t ask me why, but the President continues to hold out hope that Sarge will get the better of the feckless private. Anyway, it’s a useful distraction that allows me and my cohort—Elizabeth Gilbert, Skrillex, and the Backpack Kid, among others—to get on with the business of government. By which I mean, of course, the business of dismantling the government.
Okay, so why have I now chosen to reveal not only myself but my tactics? Because, obviously, it doesn’t matter! The President can’t read, first of all, so he has no idea what I wrote beyond what his other “aides” tell him I wrote. Second of all, by this point my “boss” will have his attention on something else—a lustful DM from Kim Jong-un, the inviting buttons of his speakerphone, or the possibility that Sergeant Snorkel will fall to his doom from that cliffside branch. You know how the Left is always complaining about “distractions”? Well, they’re not meant for the voters—they’re meant for Trump himself. And they work. Trust me.
From here on out, nothing will change. Why should it? Why should we invoke the 25th Amendment when we can accomplish all we desire literally under the nose of a President (and a populace) that can be so easily misdirected? Right now, for example, everyone is talking about “palace intrigue” and ignoring the fact that we—and you know who “we” are now—are systematically transferring what little wealth remains in the hands of the middle and working classes into the offshore bank accounts of the wealthy and the corporations that will soon be granted actual votes in national elections (provided they vote the “right” way, of course). You can all die, for all we care. Go on, please do! Our first duty is to ourselves, not to the President or anyone else, and nothing—no election, no mass outbreak of disease, no continuing collapse of society, and certainly no anonymous newspaper Op-Ed—is going to change that. The Deep State is ours, and ours alone. The President may be an amoral fool, but he’s our amoral fool. We’ve been winning so much, we’re honestly pretty tired of it. I’d go take a nap, but it’s “executive time” and I can hear Trump yelling at the TV in the Oval Office, so I’d better go hand him those documents doing away with what remains of your “voting” “rights.” A senior official’s work is never done.
Re that “lodestar” thing: Honestly, I just used to play a lot of Lode Runner when I was a kid, and that word reminds me of my childhood. Can’t I be nostalgic, too?
