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The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda
a book by Jason Chaffetz
(our site's book review)
The Amazon blurb says that Former Congressman and current Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz explains how we ended up with a politicized federal bureaucracy that actively works to promote the Democratic party agenda and undermine Donald Trump.
The liberal media loves to characterize the Obama years as free of scandal. They pretend this is true because virtually every office in the executive branch worked to withhold evidence of wrongdoing, silence witness testimony, destroy federal records, classify embarrassing information, and retaliate against truth tellers. Yet these same tight-lipped lifers leaked like a sieve once President Trump was sworn in, freely promoting the illusion that everything he does is the new Watergate.
Obama tells us 'I am not a crook!' but we know better
Sometimes even conservatives portray the Deep State as nothing more than dumb inefficient bureaucracy. In fact, it’s the opposite; the Deep State is intentional, unconstitutional, and organized. See Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market.
The entrenched leadership within the civil service resists exposure, accountability, and responsibility—at the highest levels, they fight back, outlast, and work the system, with the motto CYOA (cover your own ass)
In The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda, Jason Chaffetz reveals an entrenched leadership within the civil service that resists exposure, accountability, and responsibility. At the highest levels, they fight back, outlast, and work the system for their own advantage. And they certainly don’t like disruptive forces such as Donald Trump.
Jason Chaffetz
As Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Chaffetz was the tip of the spear challenging the Deep State and trying to hold them accountable. He and his colleagues took on the powerful forces at the IRS, the EPA, the DOJ, the Department of State, and more. The deeper he dove in, the more shocking he found the brazen approach by the power brokers. The balance of power has shifted. The Deep State has gotten used to operating anonymously and without consequence. This is a problem bigger than we can even imagine and getting worse. Unless we do something dramatic to wrest back control, we risk losing the ability to successfully challenge wrongdoing by the most powerful bureaucracy in the world. See Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security.
'Leftwingers are losers . . . losers . . . losers . . . losers . . . losers . . . losers . . . losers . . . losers . . . '; Jason Chaffetz officially joined Fox News to be yet another Rightwing echo slinger
Jason Chaffetz officially joined Fox News to be yet another Rightwing echo slinger. Like they need even more contributors toeing the party line! His call to action in The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda is "This election cycle, ask your candidates for Congress what they will do to restore the checks and balances we need. What will they do to assert the will of the peopIe over the will of the bureaucrats? Where do they stand on impeaching executive branch officials? Would the candidates support civil service reforms? Do they know what inherent contempt power is and would they be willing to reclaim it? These are not simple issues, but they are important ones. We need a government with three fully functional branches. The American people are the only ones who can give it to us."
Could anyone asking their candidates for Congress what they will do to restore the checks and balances we need get the candidates to seriously do something to restore the checks and balances? No, writing Congresspeople will get you a prepared response sent from one of a few dozen prepared response stacks by an intern. The response will assure you they're doing what they can to help restore the checks and balances, help the environment, lower taxes, help the homeless, etc., or whatever you inquire about. This pretense mollifies constituents but does nothing to deal with the problem mentioned. Like most of politics, it is built on lies, pretenses, demographics, but more than anything else, money. If you contribute enough, you'll be invited to donor dinners where you may even get a chance to chat with the person, who will be glad to tell you what you want to hear. But, oddly enough, it still will have no effect on getting the person to help us restore the checks and balances we need, which s/he would have no idea how to address anyway.
Does Jason Chaffetz honestly think that writing Congresspeople will get Congresspeople to restore the checks and balances? Fat chance.
It brings up the question, does Jason Chaffetz honestly think that writing Congresspeople will get Congresspeople to restore the checks and balances? No, our partisan Congresspeople will simply follow the party platform and toe the party line. No one believes that ALL Republicans doubt climate science. And yet when there are votes, they all vote as a block to block anti-pollution measures to save the environment. They'll vote for Big Oil and ignore the citizens' wellbeing. They try to avoid being thrown out of office as a party traitor, so political expediency and job security trumps environment and the wellbeing of constituents, according to their actions.
What will they do to assert the will of the peopIe over the will of the bureaucrats? asks Chaffetz. This one's a no-brainer for a politician. Mix together three pro-people statements, stir in three anti-bureaucrat statements, toss in a couple of dashes of pro-family, pro-community adages and finish with a dollop of political humor (How can you tell if a polititian is lying? His mouth is moving.) or lawyer jokes (What are 100 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.)
Chaffetz told Politico that "the pitch I made to the steering committee is we really have to triangulate the problem if we're actually going to get to reform. In order to fix the problem long term, we can't just be the highlighter pen. We do a good job highlighting things, but we don't do a great job of fixing things." Chaffetz quit politics in 2017 to write The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda, do the speaking circuit as a pundit, and be a contributor to Fox News. But his rightwing speaking and book writing will help a polarized country increase its polarization but will do nothing to help us restore the checks and balances we need, which he would have no idea how to address anyway. Here's a question for Chaffetz: Isn't his book and Fox News punditry another "highlighter pen," failing to in any way do a "great job of fixing things"? (Which he had seemed to think was an urgent matter—why isn't it still urgent?)
Isn't his The Deep State book and Fox News punditry another 'highlighter pen,' failing to in any way do a 'great job of fixing things'?
They say that as Oversight Committee chairman, the Republican Chaffetz had come under fire for a lack of vigor in investigating President Donald Trump. A clear case of who will oversee the Oversight Committee chairman, similar to the NSA abuses Snowden exposed that got us asking ourselves who will watch the watchers? During his tenure as a US Representative, his political positions included opposition to the Affordable Care Act, same-sex marriage, and the scientific consensus on climate change. He has expressed skepticism over mandatory vaccinations and pledged to hold hearings to determine their safety. He has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration's conduct in the 2012 Benghazi attack. Chaffetz scored 0% in 2015, and 3% lifetime, on the National Environmental Scorecard of the League of Conservation Voters. He has been critical of Planned Parenthood. He opposes net neutrality and has held hearings to investigate the FCC's decision to adopt net neutrality rules in 2015. In other words, he is a stereotypical science-denying rightwing Republican.
"The deep state is less a sinister conspiracy than a risk-deflecting bureaucratic juggernaut, according to this wonky jeremiad against the executive branch. Chaffetz, a Fox News commentator and former Congressman who was chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, paints federal agencies as a 'vast, self-perpetuating bureaucracy' that will 'weaponize everything in their power to destroy President Trump,' but devotes just two chapters to that ostensible struggle, with sketchy rehashes of anti-Trump intelligence leaks, anti-Trump emails by two FBI employees, and foot-dragging on Trump’s immigration agenda by ICE higher-ups and sanctuary cities." (Source: The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy Donald Trump , Dave Larabell, Publishers Weekly)
Chaffetz, a Fox News commentator and former Congressman, paints federal agencies as a 'vast, self-perpetuating bureaucracy' that will 'weaponize everything in their power to destroy President Trump,'
Chaffetz says the deep state is undermining democracy but he ignores the democracy-dismantling wrecking-ball Republicans also in the deep state
What the Trump campaign termed The Swamp has morphed into a fiendishly clever, multi-pronged enemy of the president—under its hydra-like thumbs, the deep state villians are willing to undermine American democracy in order to thwart Trump’s populist revolution
"In many ways, what the Trump campaign termed The Swamp during the election has morphed into a fiendishly clever, multi-pronged enemy of the president. Under its hydra-like thumbs, the members of this shadowy force are willing to undermine American democracy in order to thwart Trump’s populist revolution and the danger it poses to the global elites. The Deep State is also the subject of a bumper crop of conservative books this spring and summer, each dedicated to explaining the phenomenon to Trump loyalists, who might be wondering by now why America has not yet become 'great again.' (This desire to explain Trump’s struggles with governance also explains the popularity of QAnon, a now-famous conspiracy theory centered around the idea that the president is secretly doing a really good job.)" (Source: A Deep Dive Into the Deep State: Unpacking the Summer of Trump Conspiracy Theories , Anna Merlan, Rolling Stone)
Jason Chaffetz Mocks Elizabeth Warren With Native American Statue (okay, it's not the actual photo—we built it to illustrate the story)
"Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) might have set himself up for selfie-inflicted damage Thursday. Now a Fox News contributor, he posted a photo on Twitter that mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) His post was in reference to her recent release of DNA test results that showed, as she has long claimed, evidence of a Native American ancestor six to 10 generations ago." (Source: Jason Chaffetz Mocks Elizabeth Warren With Native American Statue Photo, Twitter Flips, David Moye, Huffington Post)
"With each successive batch of text messages released between then-FBI agent Peter Strzok and then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, the evidence supporting a politically motivated Deep State within the federal government spills out into the open. Based on my own experience, this particular set of text messages is the tip of the iceberg. While serving on the House Oversight Committee, I saw firsthand how those in control of our bureaucracy brazenly abuse their power – spying, manipulating and misleading – in an effort to perpetuate their stranglehold on the government. What I witnessed and wrote about in my new book –The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda – was a bureaucracy that allowed agencies to become weaponized in the service of political battles. In the beginning, that meant protecting President Obama by using federal power to target political opponents or by covering the tracks of the corrupt or incompetent within his administration. By the time I left Congress, the Deep State’s focus had shifted to thwarting the administration of the newly elected President Donald Trump." (Source: Jason Chaffetz: The Deep State is real – I've seen it up close and it's far worse than you can imagine, Jason Chaffetz, Fox News)
Then-FBI agent Peter Strzok and then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page are like Jack's beans in the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale. They were worthless beans, and Jack's mother threw them on the ground. But then nature took over and they grew into a beanstalk that grew into the clouds. The original story had:
Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an English man:
Be he alive, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
But the modern Chaffetz-flavored version has:
Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the texts of an FBI man:
Even if they're silly—like what's under Lisa's robe,
I'll find a deep state conspiracy to kill Mueller's probe.
What kind of people would tune in and waste their time listening to the farce about the Strzok-Page texts? Why, the deplorable kind, of course!
'Based on my own experience, this particular set of text messages is the tip of the iceberg' says Chaffetz, referring to the Left's deep state conspiracy to sink Trump
"Based on my own experience, this particular set of text messages is the tip of the iceberg." says Chaffetz, referring to the Left's deep state conspiracy to sink Trump (but what else could he say now that he is a Fox News contributor?). The Left's deep state is "a bureaucracy that allowed agencies to become weaponized in the service of political battles." says Chaffetz. And his book uses the idea that if he uses the phrase Deep State every few words it proves there must be such a thing. In truth, there is, but it is not the Left's conspiracy to sink Trump, since the shadow government, a.k.a. deep state, is happy with Trump, since he is giving the rich oligarchs (like him) everything they want and more. No, the deep state is:
The people that control us are the oligarchs and neocons of the shadow government. The U.S. is an oligarchy, as even Bernie Sanders and Jimmy Carter admit—among dozens of others. See Democracy—an American Delusion. Politicians keep alive the illusion of the USA as a democracy to "keep the natives from getting restless," so to speak.
- Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World
- When Corporations Rule the World
- The Rise of the American Corporate Security State
- The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption
- Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America
- The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It
- The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government
- National Security and Double Government
- A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption
- Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the Global Economy IMPLODED -- and How to Fix It
- The Shadow Government
- Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market
- Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security
Various authors see the shadow government from various perspectives—like the blind men and the elephant, but the overall gist is creepily similar