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Trump versus ‘deep state’?
On the foreign policy front, whenever Trump and his supporters have encountered some resistance to their radical moves, they have deployed and succeeded in implanting in the consciousness of many Americans the concept of “the deep state”.
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US President Donald Trump speaks to the press during a meeting with President of Finland Sauli Niinisto at the White House October 2, 2019, in Washington, DC. (AFP/Brendan Smialowski )
I
n November 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States in large part because he promised to be an agent of change. It would be hard for anyone to deny that he has fulfilled that promise in ways that will shape global politics and society for decades to come.
Whether he is voted out of office this coming November, is impeached and removed from office in 2020 or retires from the office after serving for a second term, Trump will have left an indelible imprint on America’s self-perception. And he will have significantly changed the world’s perception of the United States of America in the process.
On the foreign policy front, whenever Trump and his supporters have encountered some resistance to their radical moves, they have deployed and succeeded in implanting in the consciousness of many Americans the concept of “the deep state”.
The only real parallel that makes the “deep state” term vaguely applicable is that it is indeed the US military that has at times resisted the execution of Donald Trump’s spur-of-the-moment decisions. But US military brass has not done that by colluding with shady characters, much less criminals. The sad reality is that collusion with shady characters is indeed the modus operandi of the current US president.
The president is able to pull this off because Congressional Republicans, long a bulwark against presidential overreach, have completely fallen in with the radicalism and extreme risk-taking that has become the hallmark of the Trump administration.
In many ways, the “deep state” claim follows a long-established pattern of the Republican Party’s communications strategy. It holds that, in order to avoid being (correctly) blamed for inappropriate or even illegal actions, just charge that it is the Democrats who are actually engaging in such practices.
In the hyper-charged political atmosphere that has prevailed in the US for some time, that approach almost always works.
