Donald Trump has the incredible ability to bait his political detractors into becoming exactly what he accuses them of being.
If Trump says liberal elites hate democracy, they invent a radical legal theory to keep him off the ballot. If Trump says Democrats are weaponizing the justice system, they bring novel lawsuits designed to bankrupt him. And if Trump says there are people in government working against the American people, The New York Times brags that “the ‘deep state’ is actually kind of awesome.”
It comes as no surprise that America’s self-proclaimed “newspaper of record” is leading the charge to defend the “deep state.” After all, this is the paper that published an anonymous op-ed in 2018 — two months before the midterm elections — from “a senior [Trump] official” claiming to be “quiet resistance within the administration.”
That, my friends, is the very definition of the “deep state”: a government employee going beyond the bounds of his job description and the Constitution to undermine a democratically elected president.
There are hundreds of thousands of men and women in government who do good work, day in and day out. They do their jobs as defined by law and carry out the policies set by the president. But there are others who act as self-appointed “protectors” of institutions against politicians they don’t like. What they and The New York Times ignore is that our system of government vests power in those politicians because they were elected by Americans. When bureaucrats subvert democratically elected officials, they’re really subverting the people who voted those officials into office — people like you.
Weaponizing the Government Against the People
Unfortunately, I also see this in my work on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The vast majority of the men and women in the intelligence community are focused on protecting Americans from foreign threats, but there are some who care more about politics than public service, recoil at the thought of congressional oversight, and think the American people can’t be trusted on matters of national security. This is a particularly dangerous form of delusion because it’s not just a dereliction of duty, but leads to secrecy and intrigue that undermine the important work of the intelligence community and public trust in vital institutions.
We see this across the government. President Joe Biden’s Department of Veteran Affairs routinely ignores a bipartisan law aimed to protect whistleblowers and fire bad employees. The Defense Department tweaks funding formulas to maximize political pain for members of Congress who don’t go along with its appropriations requests. And sometimes, government scientists overstep their bounds by attempting to dictate policy on everything from schools to airline travel in the name of “public health.”
The common thread is that some government employees are acting of their own accord, as opposed to carrying out the policies of their elected bosses. In some truly insidious cases, these individuals even weaponize the government against their perceived political opponents.
In 2020, 51 former members of the intelligence community — including Barack Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — signed a letter claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information campaign.” The letter, organized to help Joe Biden and hurt Donald Trump, became grounds for legacy and social media to censor the laptop story. As I argued at the time, these officials crossed the line by abusing their influence to achieve a partisan goal. The damage they caused not only interfered with Americans’ votes in the 2020 election but also made our country less safe.
In another case, a few political appointees in the FBI’s D.C. headquarters abused their power to investigate Trump’s 2016 campaign despite lacking “actual evidence” of a crime. Numerous senior FBI officials knew what they were doing was wrong and outside the bounds of their duty, but they did so anyway because of their desire to stop Trump from becoming president.
Donald Trump has been the biggest target of these “deep state” actors, but he is far from the only one. Unethical bureaucrats who abuse their authority to push ideological agendas are a threat to all Americans.
For example, in 2022, the FBI’s Richmond field office issued a memo that called for surveillance of “radical traditionalist Catholics” who prefer the Latin Mass over bogus concerns of extremism. Meanwhile, Biden’s Justice Department continues to ignore the hundreds of attacks against Catholic churches that have occurred over the past four years.
Those men and women who believe they are above the law and can abuse authorities to punish their perceived political opponents have done more to harm trust in our institutions than anyone else. Their misconduct tarnishes the hard work of countless federal employees who serve their country with honor and distinction. Trying to blur the lines between these two groups, as The New York Times does, hurts the very institutions the Times purports to defend.
Hating Those They Claim to Protect
The Times understands the distinction, so why did it publish a splashy article praising the “deep state”? Unfortunately, the answer is very simple: Despite claiming to love democracy, many liberal elites distrust the vast majority of the American people — even despise them. This fact explains why they tried to ban Trump from the ballot. It is why they try to censor conservatives on social media. And it is why they push for unilateral policy change through the courts and corporations, instead of through Congress.
Rather than celebrating government workers who step over the line, we should be demanding their accountability. Politicians are accountable to voters, but federal employees are shielded from them. This protection gives them a sense of entitlement, which far too many use to pursue their own agendas. That needs to stop.
In 2020, the Trump administration proposed bringing government employees in roles that influence federal policy into a new employment category, Schedule F. Such a change would reduce the ability of unelected bureaucrats to obstruct and delay policies with which they disagree. If government workers “resist” the lawful orders of their bosses, they should be treated like they would at any other job — they should be fired.
Looking ahead to another Trump administration, it’s clear why liberal elites want to protect the “deep state.” They hate Donald Trump and everything he stands for. But what they’re really doing is denying voters their choice, and that’s an actual threat to our democracy.
Marco Rubio is a U.S. senator from Florida.
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