The New York Times op-ed attributed to a senior administration official revealing a vast resistance to President Trump from within his inner circle is extraordinary in many ways, but it’s worth pausing to consider the anti-democratic implications of what is being described.

“Americans should know that there are adults in the room,” the op-ed reads. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”

That last line — “we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t” unsettled me when I first read it, and remains hard to digest. As a conservative, I opposed Trump in part because of my fears that he would destroy institutional norms, and I now fear that institutional norms are being obliterated in the name of stopping him.