Appearing on MSNBC Live With Katy Tur Thursday afternoon, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens was predictably thrilled with his newspaper’s decision to publish an anonymous op/ed from a supposed “senior administration official” blasting President Trump. However, Stephens took it a step further as he used the article to compare Trump to a drug addicted parent.
“What this sort of reminds me of are households in which a father or a mother have substance abuse issues and everyone in the family decides that instead of simply addressing that issue dead on, they’re going to cover for the person who is suffering from substance abuse,” the pundit proclaimed. Continuing the offensive analogy, Stephens described a dysfunctional White House“family”: “They’re gonna clean up the vomit. They’re gonna pretend everything is fine. They’re gonna put up a nice facade to the neighbors. But at the heart of it, there is this danger, there is this rot.”
Rather than push back on Stephens’s over-the-top rhetoric, anchor Katy Tur doubled down on the comparison: “And the danger comes out. It’s not like you can totally cover up the danger or clean up the vomit, as you said, and make things run smoothly forever. You’re always going to miss something.”
She then argued for the President to be removed from office, even suggesting that the anonymous op/ed writer engineer such a coup:
And given that, and given that this seems to be sounding quite a big alarm about the President’s fitness for office from within the own – this person is within this administration, willing to put their own words down in an op/ed. I mean, that’s a huge step....is it their responsibility, if there are whispers about the 25th Amendment, to try to and invoke something like the 25th Amendment, to do something about it, if you’re as worried as you say you are?
Based on unsubstantiated gossip from an unknown source, the liberal media are ready to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States.
On Thursday morning, Tur’s NBC News colleague Megyn Kelly denounced the op/ed: “They have no right to subvert the President and the people’s wishes....whoever this person is, we did not elect them, and they have no right to subvert the President, i.e., the people’s will.”
Here is a transcript of the September 7 exchange between Stephens and Tur:
2:10 PM ET
(...)
BRET STEPHENS [NEW YORK TIMES]: What this sort of reminds me of are households in which a father or a mother have substance abuse issues and everyone in the family decides that instead of simply addressing that issue dead on, they’re going to cover for the person who is suffering from substance abuse. They’re gonna clean up the vomit. They’re gonna pretend everything is fine. They’re gonna put up a nice facade to the neighbors. But at the heart of it, there is this danger, there is this rot.
KATY TUR: And the danger comes out. It’s not like you can totally cover up the danger or clean up the vomit, as you said, and make things run smoothly forever. You’re always going to miss something. And given that, and given that this seems to be sounding quite a big alarm about the President’s fitness for office from within the own – this person is within this administration, willing to put their own words down in an op/ed. I mean, that’s a huge step.
Taking the discussion of whether or not he should have been anonymous off the table for a moment, if people feel this way, is it their responsibility to alert the public in an op/ed, or is it their responsibility to resign? Or is it their responsibility, if there are whispers about the 25th Amendment, to try to and invoke something like the 25th Amendment, to do something about it, if you’re as worried as you say you are?
(...)
