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‘Lodestar’ and ‘first principles’: Twitter’s hunt for the White House turncoat

Why people think Pence wrote the NYT op-ed.

Photo of David Covucci

David Covucci

donald trump and mike pence

The New York Times published an op-ed on Wednesday from a “senior” administration official that detailed the right-wing resistances within the administration, hoping to protect the country from some of President Donald Trump‘s worst impulses.

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Naturally, Twitter wanted to know who might be behind such an explosive story and went to work scouring the op-ed for answers.

A couple key phrases popped out to people, but none more than the word “Lodestar,” a phrase that people immediately felt pointed to Vice President Mike Pence.

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Others online spotted it soon after, and it immediately started to posit that Pence was behind it, with the hashtags #LodestarGate and #VeepThroat, a la the psuedonymous Deep Throat, who brought down the Richard Nixon administration.

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Still others, though, found other phrases, like “first principles” to be indicative of a number of officials.

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https://twitter.com/MichaelRCaputo/status/1037658905969651712

While speculation ran rampant, administration officials began denying it. Pence’s office issued a forceful statement, saying the vice president puts his name on opinions.

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Which led to its own joke.

https://twitter.com/CaptId/status/1037675705692246021

As the story has grown, numerous people have come out to deny it, including Pence.

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This morning, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders put a bit of a fork in it, saying that any inquiries about the matter should go to the New York Times from now on.

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Mark Felt, the original Deep Throat, routinely denied he was a source for the Washington Post, so do take all these denials with a grain of salt.

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Because someone had to write it.

 
The Daily Dot