Among Republicans, yesterday’s op-ed by an undercover member of the White House “resistance” has become a Rorschach test for the party’s complicated feelings toward Donald Trump. On the surface, there was a broad consensus regarding the 965-word New York Times column. Its author, most agreed, was surely a “movement conservative”—one of the many Republicans in Washington who celebrate the president’s conservative accomplishments, such as tax cuts and deregulation, but who are deeply uncomfortable with his erratic behavior and authoritarian impulses. This person was also surely a coward, although opinions immediately diverged on the precise nature of his or her moral failure.

Old-school conservatives and anti-Trumpers in the National Review mold condemned the op-ed writer for being self-serving in revealing what is, in effect, a conspiracy to undermine the president. “If you’re part of a secret cabal to contain the president’s erratic behavior, it seems counterproductive to notify the erratic president about it,” wrote Jonah Goldberg. Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume made a similar point. “If you’re in the Trump admin seeking to restrain his most reckless impulses, you’re doing the Lord’s work,” he wrote on Twitter. “If you write an anonymous article attacking him and taking credit for the administration’s achievements, you’re not.” David Frum had a more devastating prediction: “He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous. And those who do not quit or are not fired in the next few days will have to work even more assiduously to prove themselves loyal, obedient, and on the team. Things will be worse after this article. They will be worse because of this article.”

But when Trump asked whether the article was “TREASON,” Trump loyalists gave him a less nuanced, more unsparingly affirmative answer. “If it is somebody in the White House, then this is the definition of sedition,” Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide, told his old employers on Breitbart News Daily, adding that the person should have left if they could not execute the president’s vision and agenda. “This person should be rooted out. . . . I do not want to be in their shoes.” Those in the White House agreed, publicly turning on their unknown colleague. “This coward should do the right thing and resign,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement, echoing calls from Mike Pence, Melania Trump, and virtually every other major official in the administration.

Trump himself was torn between his instinct to deny the existence of the mole as fake news, and to capitalize on his or her existence as proof of the seditious forces arrayed against him. “So if the failing New York Times has an anonymous editorial—can you believe it? ‘Anonymous’—meaning gutless,” he fumed during an appearance honoring sheriffs, rattling off a confusingly long list of accomplishments, then tweeting later that if the “GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”

The response from Fox News largely mirrored the talking points coming out of the White House: Laura Ingraham hinted that the mole was “traitorous,” though admitted that it could be a “bit of a stretch,” while Lou Dobbs was less charitable on Fox Business. “Anyone who would betray the man they work for, the president of the United States, is a delusional, egomaniacal, self-aggrandizing jackass,” he said. As always, the hosts of Fox & Friends played the role of the concerned friend mounting an intervention. “I would get in the people that he trusts,” Brian Kilmeade suggested listing members of Trump’s immediate family—Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Don Jr., even, if it got that bad, Eric Trump—and have them be his eyes and ears. “Have your kids there who know you and understand there is a reason why he became a multi-millionaire, billionaire.” (Steve Doocy veered the conversation into less nepotistic waters by suggesting the author just quit.)