Screenshot: Fox News via Mediaite

The identity of the Trump administration official behind the anonymous op-ed that ran in the New York Times last week has been the source of much speculation (including by us), but what the debate had been missing were some perspectives from Turning Point staffers and former Trump campaign officials. Luckily, Fox News and CNN have us covered.


On Sunday night, Toilet Paper USA communications director Candace Owens appeared on Fox News’ The Next Revolution (what is that) and appeared to stun even the likes of former Bush spin doctor Dana Perino with her great theory that the New York Times simply made the whole thing up.

Perino started to say she believes the author of the anti-Trump op-ed was a political appointee before Owens interrupted. “But how do you know that’s true, though?” Owens asked. “How do we know it’s not just the New York Times publishing that?”


“You mean the New York Times wrote it itself?” Perino responded blankly.

“How do we know, is all I’m saying. How do we know?” Owens responded. “There’s no transparency whatsoever, it’s anonymous...we’re taking it at face value.” Well, that’s one theory.

On another network, former Trump campaign director and noted asshole Michael Caputo was on CNN Sunday to publicly speculate that the author of the op-ed is a woman who is also a “coward” and “diabolical.”

“Let me tell you, Fredricka, I’m fairly certain I know who it is,” Caputo told CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield. “I’ve been, you know, going through this parlor game just like everybody else has. And I’m also completely 100 percent certain that the person who wrote this is on the list of people who said they didn’t write it.”


Caputo claimed without offering proof that the White House is “getting there” on finding out who the author is, but said he believes it was a ghost writer and has his own guesses as to the senior official who was behind it. “Who was the person in the administration who has screamed about him in their own private office and gone forward and purged their entire office of Trump people?” he said.

“I’ll tell you this,” he continued. “I think that—first of all, this person will never admit it because in my mind, the author of this op-ed believes that she is a hero to the American people.”


“She?” Whitfield interjected, but Caputo ignored the question and went on to stress that Trump should focus on the midterms instead of hunting down the writer. “We are going down a rabbit hole, you know, by gaslighting the president into believing his closest aides with those clever words dropping this op-ed are plotting against him,” Caputo said.

The anonymous op-ed writer might just be a low-level staffer trying to salvage the tattered reputations of Trump’s enablers among members of the Republican establishment. But if there’s any humor to be found in this at all, it’s that the most paranoid dumbasses in the world now see snakes all around them and are clearly ready to turn on each other at the drop of a hat. And hey, look on the bright side: at least all of these deranged people have the ear of the most powerful man in the world at the exact same time!