• One word in an anonymous New York Times op-ed written by a senior Trump administration official has captivated people on social media.
  • The word is “lodestar.”
  • Vice President Mike Pence is known to use the unusual word in speeches, prompting speculation he wrote the op-ed.
  • Pence is also widely considered to be one of the most loyal members of the Trump administration.
  • The op-ed claims there’s a secret resistance movement against President Donald Trump in the White House.

One word in a New York Times op-ed written by an anonymous senior Trump administration official has captivated people on social media.

The op-ed claims there’s a secret resistance against President Donald Trump in the White House. It set off a firestorm online after it was published Wednesday, and now people are trying to identify the author.

Some have latched on to the word “lodestar” as a possible clue.

The word has been used by Vice President Mike Pence in past speeches, and the fact it’s not typically heard in casual conversation has prompted speculation that he may have been the person who wrote the op-ed.

But it has also been reported in the past that staffers who give the press anonymous quotes sometimes use idioms or phrases often employed by other members of the Trump administration to throw the president off.

"To cover my tracks, I usually pay attention to other staffers' idioms and use that in my background quotes. That throws the scent off me," a White House official told Axios in May.

Pence also has a reputation for being deferential when it comes to Trump, rarely challenging him on major issues, which makes it seem unlikely he'd have written the op-ed.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on who may have written the op-ed.