Donald Trump has demanded the New York Times hand over a senior White House official who penned an incendiary article claiming to be part of a "quiet resistance" against the President.
According to the anonymous op-ed, a group of high-ranking officials are doing what they can to thwart Mr Trump's "misguided impulses until he is out of office".
"The dilemma - which he does not fully grasp - is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations," the unnamed senior official states.
"I would know. I am one of them."
The writer - a male - said their resistance wasn't against the Trump administration's general direction, which they backed, but his "amorality".
"Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision-making.
"Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright."
Any success the administration has had in tax reform and deregulation, the author states, has come despite Mr Trump - not because of him.
The op-ed comes a day after excerpts from a new book by Watergate journalist Bob Woodward claimed Mr Trump's staff call him an "idiot" behind his back, and that his own chief of staff John Kelly calls the White House "crazytown".
Mr Trump called the book's claims false, but the anonymous official's account of goings-on behind closed doors suggest it's closer to the truth than the President would like to admit.
"Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.
"There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next."
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The author says Americans need to know there are "adults in the room" at the White House, trying their best to steer the country in the right direction.
"This isn't the work of the so-called deep state. It's the work of the steady state."
The US President has repeatedly denounced the use of anonymous sources, and the publication of the article riled him up.
"If I weren't here, I believe the New York Times probably wouldn't even exist," he said at the White House.
"Someday, when I'm not President - which hopefully will be in about six-and-a-half years - the New York Times, CNN and all of these phony media outlets will be out of business, folks, they'll be out of business, because there'll be nothing to write and there'll be nothing of interest."
Shares in the New York Times Company have doubled since Mr Trump's election in November 2016, after years of stagnation.
Mr Trump took to Twitter to call for the Times to hand over the author.
"Does the so-called 'Senior Administration Official' really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source? If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!"
Earlier he tweeted just one word, in all-caps: "TREASON?"
'Reckless and selfish'
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders called the article "pathetic, reckless and selfish" and called on the author to resign.
"Nearly 62 million people voted for President Donald J. Trump in 2016," she said. "None of them voted for a gutless, anonymous source to the failing New York Times."
Mr Trump got close to 63 million votes, but his opponent Hillary Clinton got nearly 3 million more - but lost due to the vagaries of the United States' Electoral College system for electing their leader.
Ms Sanders said the paper should apologise "just as it did after the election for its disastrous coverage of the Trump campaign", repeating a lie Mr Trump himself has made on several occasions.
While the paper told readers it underestimated the real estate mogul during the campaign, there was no apology.
"We're incredibly proud of our coverage of the 2016 campaign. There was no suggestion either in our note to staff, or the note to subscribers, that we were apologising," a spokesperson told fact-checking site Politifact.
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