Bettors are playing the odds as to the identity of the anonymous official who wrote a New York Times op-ed, claiming to be part of an internal “resistance” to U.S. President Donald J. Trump.
The op-ed said many senior officials within the Trump administration are “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
WATCH: An anonymous White House insider has written to the New York Times to sound the alarm on U.S. President Donald Trump’s “erratic” and “amoral” behaviour.
There were various guesses as to who could have authored the piece on Wednesday.
One Twitter thread honed in on the use of the word “lodestar” — and noted that the term has often been used by Vice President Mike Pence.
The Washington Post speculated that the op-ed could have been a “last act of defiance” by deceased senator John McCain, who was also known to use the term “lodestar.”
Meanwhile, ex-Trump administration employee and reality TV star Omarosa Manigault Newman tweeted that she provided clues to the identity of the author in her book Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.
She also tweeted a poll suggesting four possible names:
The guessing game has reached bookies in various quarters.
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They largely list Pence as the odds-on favourite to have been the op-ed’s author.
Here are the odds as listed by OddsShark:
Pence was also at the top of the list posted by betting site MyBookie.
Other names on the list had much longer odds, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (+200), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (+400) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (+400).
Least likely to be the author, according to MyBookie, were senior advisor Stephen Miller (+1,500), Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (+1,200) and the president’s daughter Ivanka (+1,200).
Trump himself tweeted his response to the op-ed, as broadcast on Fox News.
He followed up that tweet with a single word.
“If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”
- With files from The Associated Press
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