President Trump may be amoral, erratic, ill-informed, petty. He may speak admiringly of autocrats. His behavior may deserve invocation of the 25th Amendment.
So declared the anonymous senior Trump administration official who published an op-ed in the New York Times last week. And this Publius is not exactly alone in offering this refrain.
Trump and his many non-anonymous surrogates often use a similar talking point. To distract from virtually any White House scandal, they point to the administration's supposed economic achievements.
"I opened up our beautiful economic engine with Regulation and Tax Cuts," Trump tweeted Monday while defending his record against Bob Woodward's new book.