Who Are the NYT’s 1,104 ‘Senior’ Administration Officials?
30th October 2020
We learned this week that the “senior administration official” who trashed President Trump in a 2018 op-ed under the name “Anonymous” was, in fact, fairly far removed from the center of power as a mere deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of Homeland Security. “I think many people were under the impression — I know I was — that the article was written by somebody with a much more senior role,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl complained on Wednesday’s World News Tonight.
If the Times had given readers a more precise description of the op-ed’s author, though, it’s unlikely anyone would have cared. It was the description of a “senior administration official” that teased the imagination; “senior” being the key word that suggested real proximity to the President, such as a cabinet secretary, prominent West Wing adviser or even Vice President Pence. Learning that the writer was Miles Taylor, someone unknown to most Americans, revealed the op-ed for what it was: a cheap anti-Trump gimmick.