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Dozens of Trump administration officials, including cabinet members, West Wing officials, and other senior officials of federal agencies, have consistently prevented Trump from making his most difficult decisions. impulsive and reckless.
"To be clear, our resistance is not the" resistance "of the left.We want the administration to succeed and that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous." wrote the senior official. "But we believe that our first duty is to exercise this country, and the president continues to act detrimental to the health of our republic, which is why many Trump appointees are committed to counteract the impulses more Mr. Trump's mistakes until he was absent. "
It is impossible to quantify the efforts of this silent resistance. When asked to share examples of efforts to thwart Trump's more rash decisions, a former senior administration official told CNN: "It's a daily occurrence." Literally several times a day ".
But there are several illustrative examples, listed here:
Evacuation of South Korean military families
The order was a provocative measure that would have exacerbated tensions with North Korea and could have brought the region closer to war because North Korea could have interpreted that decision as the United States was preparing to strike North Korea. .
The then National Security Advisor, H. McMaster, tasked the National Security Council staff with preparing a presidential memorandum ordering the evacuation.
But behind the scenes, Defense Secretary James Mattis and White House chief of staff John Kelly worked to kill the order, convincing Trump to accept a reduced directive. But that too has never been implemented.
Tir Mueller
Trump ordered White House lawyer Don McGahn in June 2017 to lead the dismissal of Special Adviser Robert Mueller.
Withdraw from the Free Trade Agreement Between the United States and South Korea
A letter announcing the intention of the United States to withdraw from KORUS, the free trade agreement between the United States and South Korea, was on Trump's desk in September 2017, ready to to be signed.
The trade deal was finally renegotiated and Trump presented the renegotiated agreement as one of his biggest achievements in power.
Withdrawal of NAFTA
Later in the year, Trump decided to simply withdraw from NAFTA, ordering his secretary, Rob Porter, to draft a letter stating his intention to withdraw the United States from the trade pact between the states. United States, Canada and Mexico. book.
Porter wrote the letter, but consulted with Cohn and other officials on how to prevent Trump from taking a step that they believe would undermine the global economy and relations between the United States. and its two neighboring countries.
"I can stop that, I'm just going to take the paper out of his office," Cohn told Porter, according to Woodward's book.
The United States has now reached a preliminary agreement with Mexico on the renegotiation of NAFTA and is negotiating with Canada.
Imposition of tariffs for steel and aluminum
On this point, Trump finally prevailed – imposing tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, although it was eventually possible to find some exceptions.
But for months, Trump 's globalist – minded economic advisors, including Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, thwarted Trump' s repeated directions to develop tariff measures that he could take. , especially on imports of steel and aluminum.
Trump finally announced that he was advancing these rates in March, but in the summer of 2017, Cohn and Mnuchin convinced Trump to impose tariffs that could threaten support for tax reform. they led to Capitol Hill.
And when the tax reform legislation was passed, they argued their case: tell Trump that the tariffs would undermine the record-breaking stock market figures Trump had so often touted, CNN sources told the three sources close to the talks.
Expelling Russian diplomats
It's not always about the actions that officials have prevented Trump from taking. As an unnamed official in The New York Times wrote, some officials have also attempted to carry out actions that might be in contradiction with Trump's public positions.
"The result is a two-way presidency," wrote the official in the Times.
Trump employees persuaded him in March to carry out the diplomatic deportation of 60 suspected Russian spies working in the United States, in response to suspicion of poisoning by a Russian nerve agent on the ground. British.
Trump signed because he believed that it corresponded to the number of Russian officials that every American ally was expelling.
2018 NATO Summit
John Bolton, the newly installed national security adviser, pushed for the release before the summit, guaranteeing the US's key commitments on the military alliance before Trump threatens to overthrow these commitments, according to the Times. .
Upon arriving at NATO, Trump would vaguely threaten NATO's departure from the United States, unless NATO allies agree to spend more and convene a session of NATO. Urgency to discuss the issue of burden sharing on the last day of the summit. But the statement had already been released a day earlier, committing the United States to the alliance and its future growth.
The assassination of Assad
Woodward reported in his new book that Trump called Defense Secretary Jim Mattis after the Syrian arms attacks in April 2017 and said, "Let's kill him! Let's go."
After hanging up, Mattis told an assistant, "We will not do any of this, we will be much more measured."
In the end, the United States would launch military strikes against several targets of the Syrian government but would not take any action to assassinate Assad – which would have marked a major escalation of the US response.
Mattis denied making scornful remarks that were also attributed to him in Woodward 's book, but he did not specifically deny the anecdote about Assad.
Trump denied ever ordering or considering ordering the assassination of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad when he was pressed on Wednesday over the allegation, which is included in Woodward's book.
"I heard somewhere where they said the assassination of President Assad by the US Never again discussed," Trump said.
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