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WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.”

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Jack Hammer posted:

No one gives a crap what the communist AP is lying about now.

Yes, thinking people do read the Associated Press. We care what is being said. Is it true? Look at Mattis; isn't he conservative enough for you? There's nothing wrong with being a moderate independent. We weigh both sides of an issue rather than merely accepting what someone says because he or she is a Dem. or Rep. 

Mattis isn't conservative, he's a known Muslim sympathizer and out
spoken Iran Deal supporter along with being against other conservative
policies.
 
All that 'we weight both sides of an issue' is pure BS, you know it like
everyone else. So climb off that high donkey you always come riding
in on sideways with your uppity upper lip in the wind, your lying.

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