Larry Kudlow rips the person who wrote the NYT op-ed, delivers impassioned defense of Trump

White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow denied on Friday that he was the anonymous senior official who wrote The New York Times op-ed piece that has rocked the Trump administration, and he had harsh words for whoever did.

He called for the author to go on the record and work with the president, instead of against him.

“Why don’t they come out of the woodwork and at least display some honesty and be quoted on the record so we could engage them in a decent discussion?” Kudlow said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

“If there’s a disagreement, then come out of the woodwork, put yourself on the record, and let’s talk.”

Kudlow denied doing anything to oppose President Donald Trump’s policies, adding that he was devoted and “honored” to be serving in the Trump White House.

“Would I work against him? That’s just crazy,” Kudlow said. “That is just nuts of course. I have nothing to do with this. I’ve been working my tail off for six months, and he’s on the right track. Instead of these egotistical personalized vendettas against a president who himself is a patriotic American, instead of that, why don’t we try to help him?”

Other government officials have raced to deny that they were the anonymous author this week. The nearly 1,000-word column, published Wednesday afternoon, described a secret campaign by officials inside the administration to “thwart parts of [the president’s] agenda and his worst inclinations.”

The column ran just one day after excerpts from journalist Bob Woodward’s upcoming book about the Trump administration, which also kicked off rounds of finger-pointing in Washington.

Kudlow pointed to Friday’s jobs report as a positive byproduct of Trump’s policies.

The economy added more jobs than expected in August, and wage growth posted its biggest increase of the economic recovery in August. Payroll gains beat expectations and the unemployment rate held near a generational low of 3.9 percent, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Friday.