Well, this is why admin officials sabotaging the POTUS and not fulfilling their oaths of office instead of resigning and going public is bad. If the "steady state" operatives can just make up rules, the rest of us are left doing the same.
None of this is legitimate.
I must disagree. What exactly have they pledged their oaths of office to do? I presume to uphold the Constitution of the USA, not an oath of personal loyalty to Trump nor even to faithfully implement every thoughtless, crazy, dangerous whim he might have. That would be true of a kingship or a dictatorship, but the Constitution instead carefully creates a government of shared and distributed responsibilities, obligations, and power. The legitimate US government is far more and consists of many more people than just Trump; even the Executive branch has never been just been viewed as a machine to do whatever the president demands. There is significant precedent of members of the cabinet and other members of the administration quietly working to alter, soften, or prevent extremely bad decisions of a dangerous or emotionally unstable President. e.g. cabinet members sought to constraint Nixon in his final days as president to prevent him, when drunk and bitter, from initiating a nuclear war.
I can easily see how a deeply moral person would view that patriotism and commitment to the authentic Constitutional form of government demand that they resist Trump's actions when these actions violate
his oath of office and/or are obviously extremely dangerous to the United States. Particularly when they find themselves far from alone among their colleagues in their concerns. And I for one am extremely grateful for these people and I see them as patriots. The easy thing is to go along quietly. The brave thing is to do the right thing. And how does one determine what the right thing is? Ah, there's the rub! But if the stories in Woodward's book are true the right thing is to act as in the Op Ed. Saying "Trump was elected and his is the true will of the people of the US" ignores the complicated reality and the actual Constitution which defined a chief executive not a king. Is fulfilling one's oath and responsibility to the USA simply following orders no matter what their impact? No matter how awful or disastrous?
Yes we've all been taught in high school that the highest action would be to refuse to implement the policy, resign, and denounce the President. In high minded theory, yes. But in practice such an action may well be highly questionable in its results. Inside the person can still work to prevent disaster; once resigned they are likely to be replaced by a yes-man lackey and then what? Others have resigned and come out publicly against the president: has it done anything? I can see how thinking that an action such as the op-Ed might be the best way to bring this all to public attention and to force the hands of those others resisting the worse of Trump and of the others working to enable the administration. In fact it probably
is the very best way to start a public discussion of the applicability of 25th Amendment.
