Trump has a very suspect plan to smoke out the Times' op-ed writer

President Trump reportedly remains completely obsessed with finding the author of last week's anonymous New York Times op-ed, which alleged that a silent "resistance" exists within in the administration. Although he appears no closer to cracking the case, he apparently thinks he can smoke the person out with little more than his Twitter account.

In a new Vanity Fair piece describing Trump's growing paranoia, a person close to the president suggested that he's hoping to pressure the writer into coming clean. "He's going to continue to shame this person," the source said. "The author will break under pressure or will eventually say, 'F--k it, it's me.'" Trump has reportedly told all of his aides to specifically refer to the writer as a "coward," seemingly for this purpose.

The president's desire to hunt down whoever was behind the op-ed has evidently become so all-encompassing that meetings at the White House have been "derailed by Trump's suspicion," Vanity Fair reports. A Republican described as being close to the White House said of Trump, "If you look at him the wrong way, he'll spend the next hour thinking you wrote it."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The New York Times previously reported that the president's advisers were considering having administration officials take polygraph tests or sign sworn affidavits to figure out who wrote the op-ed. Vanity Fair now reports that this idea has been abandoned — apparently in favor of public shaming.