Melania: « You are not protecting this country — you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions. »
Jenny, who can we turn to, to give us something on the anonymous Trump administration official who wrote the New York Times “I am the Resistance” op-ed? For the price of a dime, Sarah Sanders says she has the number… and it’s not 867-530-niii-eee-iiine:
For those of you asking for the identity of the anonymous coward: pic.twitter.com/RpWYPHa6To
— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) September 6,2018
Did Sarah Sanders just doxx the New York Times? Not really, no. It’s not one of the numbers listed for the NYT on their own contact page, but other toll-free numbers are provided there, as well as other ways to get in contact with the paper. The number she gave out sounds a bit like a number that’s supposed to be public anyway — the “1234” combination seems crafted for convenience within a corporate PBX system. It’s listed as the local number for the paper at Buzzfile, so it’s almost certainly the destination number for the listed contact lines. If you want a good time on your own dime rather than on the toll-free numbers provided, have at it.
So fair play, but then again, so is handing out the public number of the White House switchboard, which some members of the media did in response:
just as an aside, the number to call to leave a comment for the White House is 202-456-1111 https://t.co/GoigtVfyAj
— David Mack (@davidmackau) September 6,2018
Call this the Call Center Operator Full Employment Act, with all the calls likely flying across the NYC-DC corridor. It’s cheaper than taking the Acela and protesting in person, anyway!
Still, the obsession continues, and not all of the responses are coming from the NYT. Not long after Sanders tweeted out their phone number, First Lady Melania Trump issued a statement of her own calling the op-ed “cowardly actions.” I guess this means that she’s not the author after all …
First Lady Melania Trump issues statement on anonymous NY Times op-ed:
« To the writer of the oped – you are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions.” pic.twitter.com/kzHJM00ZuM
— NBC News (@NBCNews) September 6,2018
Nevertheless, the media will continue to persist in unmasking the anonymous “senior administration official,” and high-level administration officials will continue to issue denials. Defense Secretary James Mattis did so earlier today, as did FCC chair Ajit Pai, intelligence chief Dan Coats, and jack-of-all-trades Mick Mulvaney, who is at least two SAOs and maybe more by now. Spokespeople for Jeff Sessions and Kirstjen Nielsen, both of whom have come under withering public attacks from Trump over their differences with the president, denied authorship as well. In fact, it appears from the linked Politico piece that all members of the Cabinet are now on record with denials except Wilbur Ross, and that just may be a matter of timing.
What this needs is a Friday afternoon document dump, which reveals it to be … well, you know who to call to make that yours. Jenny!
