How to tell who's leaking what in the Trump administration.
The Trump administration doesn’t speak with one voice. It talks over and around itself and up and down and sideways. When the White House is a set of anonymous-quote–spewing rival factions, you need to do some extra work to figure out where your news is coming from.
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Level One: Bannon
Sussing out that this “senior White House official” was Bannon himself would have been easy even if the Washington Post hadn’t lifted the veil of anonymity hours later. One tell was that the quote advanced a narrative favorable to Bannon, a guy who is not, shall we say, well-liked. The bigger signal was the source’s use of a conspiratorial, faux-intellectual, mostly nonsensical word. Reince Priebus has never de-operationalized anything in his life.
Likewise, consider the line “You’ll see the setting of the predicate,” uttered anonymously to the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza before the House Intelligence Committee held its first public hearing on Russian intervention in the election. The statement is confusing and arcane as a piece of rhetoric. It also presumes there’s some kind of deep tactical framework for what should be a straightforward procedure. That sounds a lot like Bannon.
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Level Two: Jared Kushner
It seems probable that Kushner or someone in his personal junta leaked to Politico that Bannon was not as accepting of his National Security Council eviction as he claimed publicly—that, in fact, megadonor Rebekah Mercer had to persuade him to stay on at the West Wing. Kushner may have also told the Times that Trump resented Bannon’s fanatical advocacy for the Muslim ban, a measure that became an early stain on the president’s record.
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Back in January, an unnamed adviser told Chris Cillizza that “a little bit of undercompetence and a slight amount of insecurity can breed some paranoia and backstabbing.” The source added, “We have to get [White House chief of staff] Reince [Priebus] to relax into the job and become more competent, because he’s seeing shadows where there are no shadows.” Though Priebus has sparred with Bannon, this quote murmurs “Kushner,” tempering casual, dispassionate cruelty (a measure of stupidity and a bit of self-doubt will naturally produce bad behavior) with a manager’s desire to optimize his staff’s performance. The quote is not personal; it is a diagnosis. Also, Bannon would never deny the existence of plotting “shadows.”