President Trump is right: The deep state is alive and well. But it is not the sinister, antidemocratic cabal of his fever dreams. It is, rather, a collection of patriotic public servants —
For years, Democrats and liberal commentators mocked and derided the notion of an American "deep state" fundamentally opposed to President Trump as a baseless conspiracy theory. But then something funny happened. In the space of a few weeks, the same people have decided not only that there
really is an unelected coterie of unfireable Washington bureaucrats working behind the scenes to undermine the president and overturn the 2016 election results, but also that
it’s a good thing.
It was such a drastic and rapid change of tack that not everyone got the memo. For example, Wikipedia’s page on “Deep state in the United States” still
leads off with the words “In the United States, the term ‘deep state’ is used to describe a conspiracy theory,” with five citations to the Democrat Party line.
Yet even as they mocked, some media outlets grudgingly acknowledged the central dynamic in early 2017. “Like it or not, leaks abound when career people feel their agencies are being unfairly attacked,” Politico Magazine
explained. A commentator at the same outlet
conceded that, “truth be told, charged with leaking for its own purposes, thwarting Trump’s policy priorities, and ousting his appointees, this Deep State sure looks quite guilty in the context of a chaotic first six weeks in office.”
Still, the “conspiracy theory” mockery
continued for two more years, right through this summer. Then, something very important changed: Ukraine-gate.
By September at the latest, The New York Times
knew what Adam Schiff had
known since August: The so-called whistleblower who set off the latest effort to overturn the 2016 election and remove President Trump from office is the epitome of a “deep state” actor -- a CIA operative with extensive ties to Obama administration officials and Democratic politicians.
Further reporting only made it worse. RealClearInvestigations later
named the whistleblower as Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst who worked closely with Obama’s spymaster John Brennan -- one of the most hyper-partisan boosters of the Russia collusion narrative -- and Democratic 2020 front-runner Joe Biden. Ciaramella was allegedly removed from his post at the White House
specifically for leaking, which would explain why he was forced to rely on second- and third-hand information in his complaint on Trump-Ukraine. When Democrats tried to substantiate Ciaramella’s complaints, they called up Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. A former commander quickly came forward to
call Vindman “a political activist in uniform” — an Obama devotee who could be the “deep state operative” from central casting.
And suddenly, as this was coming to light, the press
changed its tune about the existence of the deep state.
In its coverage of the current and former administration officials testifying before Congress, The New York Times
called the Democrats’ witnesses “practically the embodiment of the ‘deep state’ that the president has long accused of trying to take him down.” The newspaper’s opinion page
screamed that “President Trump is right: The deep state is alive and well” and hailed the deep state moles — who supposedly didn’t exist a month ago — as heroes.
The quickest narrative reversal in history reached fruition last week as former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin
sat on stage with two Russia-gate stalwarts, Brennan and
disgraced former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. “Thank God for the deep state,” McLaughlin said, to the delight of the Trump-hating audience.
Really, Mr 'West', you need to catch up with your reading the DNC talking points.