How Deep Is Your State?

From the time he became a presidential candidate in 2015, Donald Trump warned Americans of a government conspiracy working to keep him from winning office and putting America’s interests first. He began using the phrase “deep state” in 2017, and by 2020, he was tweeting the term comfortably, cracking jokes about the “Deep State Department” and insisting that he still had “a long way to go” in fighting “some very bad, sick people in our government.” In other words, Trump vs. the deep state became one of the former president’s own preferred ways of explaining his administration’s triumphs and travails.

Trump’s numerous critics typically responded in two opposite ways. First, they indignantly denied that any such thing existed, claiming that Trump’s fondness for the idea was just another of his outlandish conspiracy theories. Or, second, they said that of course there is (and always has been) a non-sinister deep state, and then they praised it for standing tall against the impositions of the likes of Trump.

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