In the wake of Donald Trump’s historic victory, permanent Washington’s hysteria is reaching new heights daily.
“Federal bureaucrats wrestle with fight-or-flight response to Trump election,” reads one headline. Justice Department officials are “terrified,” according to another, fearing they may be sidelined, fired, or unable to “resist” as they did during the president’s first term. Pentagon officials are reportedly preparing their response to orders to “deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of [purportedly] apolitical staffers,” another dispatch reveals.
Several of Trump’s less conventional nominees, who hold views anathema to the bureaucracies they are poised to helm and threaten to disrupt them dramatically, have only further fueled the federal freakout.
As unhinged as related stories from regime mouthpieces may seem on their face, one would be wrong to dismiss them as merely the Trump-deranged’s temper tantrum over a lost election. Rather, what these reports collectively illustrate is the hubris of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. They foreshadow perhaps the bloodiest coming political battle in Trump’s war to restore Americans’ control over our republic. This will require overcoming myriad entrenched forces. First and foremost among them is the administrative state wherein these bureaucrats reside — an arguably unconstitutional branch unto itself that has usurped and combined the powers of the legislative and judicial branches, defining tyranny.
The hubris among those in the administrative state is that they believe they know better than We the People, and that therefore they must substitute their policy preferences for our own by any means necessary. Who we voted for then doesn’t really matter because even when we give our elected representatives a mandate, the policy predilections of the “executive” agencies in-name-only must prevail.
This is the true threat to democracy, and the dangerous status quo that has prevailed for too long and exploded into public view during the first Trump administration.
The second Trump administration was elected as the antidote — to make radical, not incremental, changes in personnel and policy, and make the people sovereign again. Our ruling regime’s fear that Americans would self-govern rather than remain subjects explains why the president faced impeachments, indictments, and assassination attempts, among other attacks.
Loudest Howls from Deep State
The Department of Justice (DOJ) led the lawfare inquisition against Trump and those in his orbit, Jan. 6 protestors, pro-lifers, practicing Catholics, and engaged parents. It has effectively criminalized dissent. A hyper-politicized and weaponized DOJ is the death knell of the rule of law and justice in this country.
The Department of Defense’s politicization at its highest levels is equally disturbing. It would be bad enough if, as Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has lamented, lowered fitness standards and an emphasis on wokeness and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” eroded the lethality of our fighting forces. But as recent reporting suggests, we also face an apparent crisis of insubordination — a breakdown in the chain of command that poses a dire threat to our security. It is an invitation for our enemies to test us.
News that some at the Pentagon plan to thwart the Trump administration comes on the heels of outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s Pentagon-wide letter affirming that the U.S. military stands ready to “obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command” under the new administration. The insinuation is that unlawful orders rather than simply disfavored policies might be forthcoming, and that the military would disobey them. In fact, resistance forces have been telegraphing such efforts for months, replete with “tabletop exercises” simulating a standoff between Trump and the generals, in what journalist Lee Smith hypothesizes represents a sinister plot to divide the military.
This from a defense establishment whose former senior officials, arguably in violation of their codes of conduct, if not certainly in violation of the public trust, have attacked Trump as a fascist; a defense establishment from which hails the last chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who allegedly told Chinese counterparts he would tip them off to any coming attack and conspired with the former speaker to prevent Trump from using nuclear weapons; a defense establishment that played “shell games” to keep troops in Syria against Trump’s wishes.
Past Subversion of President’s Policies
Resistance efforts of course are likely to span far beyond these agencies, and though they may take more “banal” forms — as a former Trump administration official recently told me — they will be no less corrosive to our republic.
As James Sherk, a former top civil service reform advisor to President Trump on the White House Domestic Policy Council, has detailed, during Trump’s first term, bureaucrats across a raft of agencies commonly subverted the president’s policies through “withholding information, refusing to implement policies, intentionally delaying or slow-walking priorities, deliberately underperforming; leaking to Congress and the media; and outright insubordination.”
This is precisely why Trump and his transition team have emphasized loyalty as perhaps the key criteria for those who will serve in his second administration. The media frames this in terms of bad faith, characterizing loyal staffers as toadies who will rubberstamp lawless acts.
Set aside for the moment that the president has historically surrounded himself with people holding a diverse array of views — as with his initial slate of appointments this term — encouraged his personnel to debate them before him, and weighed all perspectives before making final decisions. And set aside that the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations actually engaged in the lawless and authoritarian actions that regime media dishonestly claims Trump would engage in in his second term.
Loyalty means fidelity to the president’s agenda — dogged devotion to helping him execute the mandate for which we voted in the face of staunch opposition. This should be the bare minimum of what is required of personnel. It’s what every administration would expect of its staffers. It means that presidential personnel bring all of their skills and abilities to bear, provide their best possible advice, and when shots are called, do everything in their power to craft and implement policy as effectively and expeditiously as possible.
What the media is implicitly saying, in referring to loyalty pejoratively, is that they want Trump to hire disloyal appointees who will sabotage, subvert, and stymie the duly elected president — to prevent the American people from getting the policies we voted for.
The fear, in truth, is that if Americans get what we want, the ruling class will lose its power, prerogatives, and privileges.
Every day, the incoming Trump administration will face resistance from uniparty congressmen, establishment judges, blue states, corporate media, popular cultural institutions, and beyond. But the first point of friction will always be with the Leviathan administrative state.
The task for the Trump administration then will be to execute its agenda not only while the resistance challenges it in a thousand-front war, but with limited appointees, political capital, and time.
Hiring cabinet and sub-cabinet officials who build teams firmly aligned with the president’s mission, comprised of those who are smart, tough, and will zealously work to fulfill the mission every day — prioritizing essential policy reforms, anticipating the ways they may be circumvented, and using every tool at their disposal to execute accordingly — is the first step towards overcoming the challenges at hand.
Trump’s campaign also showed us the power of the bully pulpit — of the ability to go over the heads of all the hostile forces of propaganda and bring the message straight to the American people. That the president’s picks for vice president and cabinet have shown themselves to be compelling and charismatic speakers suggests the administration may well exploit these talents to maximum political effect. It would do well to do so.
The future of our republic may rest upon these efforts.
Ben Weingarten is editor at large for RealClearInvestigations. He is a senior contributor to The Federalist, columnist at Newsweek, and a contributor to the New York Post and Epoch Times, among other publications. Subscribe to his newsletter at weingarten.substack.com, and follow him on Twitter: @bhweingarten.
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