Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


Analysis: Trump's Conservative Critics Are Speaking a Code

Associated Press

   WASHINGTON - Like whisperers in a tempest, conservative-minded
   officials across the breadth of Donald Trump's government are letting
   it be known what they think of him, and some of it isn't pretty.

   But they are speaking oh so softly, in a kind of code, to a country
   that may only hear shouting.

   Jim Mattis is just the latest in a string of leading lights from the
   conservative establishment to throw shade at Trump. As with others --
   the chief justice, a special counsel, various Republican lawmakers who
   hope to have a political future -- the ex-Pentagon chief's words are
   subtle, filtered through notions of duty, decorum, deference to
   history, the greater good.

   Crack the code and you can sometimes see deep discomfort with Trump,
   the contours of a searing repudiation. In the view of many
   institutionalists of the right as well as the left, he is bulldozing
   values that America holds dear.

   Yet the negativity is couched in words of moderation and caution. What
   effect does that have in Trump's America?

   These are sober, restrained players in a fracas produced, directed and
   dominated by an in-your-face president.

   "The well-informed public understands what they're saying and how
   deeply concerned they are," said Cal Jillson, a political science
   professor and historian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
   "The rest of the public might not get it."

   Says Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management specialist who has studied
   Trump's rise in business and politics: "In a fight between crassness
   and discretion in the new millennium, crassness will win every time."

   Washington's well-known partisan fever coexists with a more decorous
   tradition in some quarters -- of raising eyebrows instead of raising
   hell, of saying things in so many words without actually using the
   words. People such as Mattis, former special counsel Robert Mueller and
   Chief Justice John Roberts are steeped in those ways.

.