I think it is worth clarifying how this letter came about.
Multiple signatories made it clear they weren’t told who else was signing the letter. They were asked by someone they trusted to add their name, and then found out when it was released who was on it.
Was this naive? Absolutely. I once worked in the office of a vaguely well known guy and every six months or so a request came in for an authgraphed photo. He had a strict rule that he only personalized photos for people he knew. He said it was because when some famous shooter (Mark David Chapman? Squeaky Fromme? John Hinkley? I forget now) was arrested, in their stuff the police found a warmly personalized autographed photo from Betty Ford. Not that she probably ever autographed it herself, but it was embarassing.
Anyway, it seems very clear that Williams and his confidants like Bari Weiss set out to write a letter that seemed inoffensive on its face, and then keep a lot of signatories in the dark about who was behind it and who else was signing. It was a pretty cynical set up, and Williams’s evasiveness about how it happened makes this clear. His ongoing nastiness and bad faith – the weird South of France episode – make it clear he had some cheesy plan that isn’t rolling out exactly the way he wanted.
They added the vague Trump reference when they realized they needed cover to get more liberal signers. They probably kept Greenwald off because they didn’t think he’d keep his mouth shut. The timing with Bari Weiss’s nutty resignation letter and her suggestion that she has big new plan certainly sounds like it’s a pretty cynical move to launch a new project. We’ll see.
