Two and a half years into his presidency, US President Donald Trump has revealed that the President is not truly in control of the federal government.
In theory, the Constitution vests the executive power in the President. He is the head of the executive branch of the federal government, the highest-ranking federal government official. What the President says goes: the executive branch carries out the will of the President, as well as Congress when Congress passes laws.
This is how government is supposed to work: the People’s Elected Representatives, i.e. the President and Congress, give the orders, and the unelected executive branch staff and officials carry out those orders. The executive branch doesn’t get to make policy; it only exists to carry out the orders of democratically-elected officials like the President. In theory they exist only to turn the President’s vision into reality. In theory.
But that’s not how it actually works in America these days.
In reality, there’s the President, and then there’s the Government. The two are not necessarily one and the same, and the latter does not really have to answer to the former if it chooses not to.
Watch this clip of President Trump openly discussing the existence of a military industrial complex which pushes for endless wars in the Middle East. It’s quite an extraordinary thing for the US President to go on-record and say:
“Well, I’m the one that talks about these wars that are 19 years, and people are just there, and don’t kid yourself, you do have a military-industrial complex. They do like war. You know, in Syria, with the caliphate, so I wipe out 100 percent of the caliphate. … I said I want to bring our troops back home. The place went crazy. You have people here in Washington, they never want to leave,” Trump said.
“I said, you know what I’ll do, I’ll leave a couple hundred soldiers behind, but if it was up to them, they‘d bring thousands of soldiers in. Someday people will explain it, but you do have a group, and they call it the military-industrial complex. They never want to leave. They always want to fight,” he continued.
Wait, I thought the President was in control? I thought if he wanted the troops out of Syria, the troops leave Syria. Right? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Guess that’s only in theory. In practice, I guess there are other people who have a say in the matter—even though they weren’t elected by the American people.
This is what people mean by “the deep state” or the Permanent State or the Bureaucratic State. The Deep State is the name that has stuck, but they all basically mean the same thing. That is the true government; the unelected, unaccountable officials–whose names most Americans have never heard–pursuing their own agendas at literally all costs, and above all others, including that of the democratically elected President.
Another case in point of the President not really being in control of the government: Trump ordered John Brennan’s security clearance be revoked almost a year ago, but it hasn’t been.
“Once again, more evidence has emerged proving not only that the “deep state” is real, it has become an existential threat to the president of the United States and the security of the country he was elected to lead.
The New York Times published a report noting that Attorney General William Barr would be ‘professionalizing’ the effort against the intelligence community (the deep state’s core element) after POTUS Donald Trump “somewhat clumsily last year to revoke the security clearance of the former C.I.A. director who played a role in opening the Russia investigation.”
That would be former CIA Director John Brennan, one of the most vociferous anti-Trump voices on the planet clearly the guy who facilitated “Spygate” on behalf of a criminal president, Barack Obama.
Further, the Times noted, POTUS “then wanted to release classified documents to prove he was the target of a ‘witch hunt.’ Both attempts petered out, hampered by aides who slow-rolled the president and by Justice Department officials who fought Mr. Trump, warning he was jeopardizing national security. “The White House never followed through with the complex bureaucratic work it would have taken to strip the clearance, according to a person familiar with the process.”
The White House “never followed through,” huh? That’s the New York Times’ way of saying the Deep State overruled the President’s orders. Jon Dougherty remarks:
“Complex bureaucratic work?” Is the Times kidding? How about a) the president ordered it; so b) staffers carry out whatever work is necessary to fulfill the president’s order. Like other administrations.
The real story, then, is that a sitting, duly elected president’s orders have been purposefully ignored as though staffers within the intelligence community bureaucracy have the authority and the right to do so.”
John Brennan still has a security clearance against the President’s wishes. Why? Because the Deep State wishes it so.
Sen. Rand Paul said just as much:
“From the tone and tenor of the Times report, you get the impression that Brennan’s clearance was never revoked, and that elements within the deep state deliberately refused to follow the president’s order to do so.
That’s exactly what happened, according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who says he witnessed the order first hand. “What do you think about this recent New York Times story that Brennan still has his security clearance?” CNN host Brianna Keilar asked Paul Wednesday evening during an appearance on the little-watched network.
“People talk about the Deep State, now the Deep State’s actually protecting their own and not listening to the President’s orders,” Paul said. “I was sitting in the White House when President Trump said ‘I want his security clearance taken’ and I saw the order given. I saw the Chief of Staff was there, not the current Chief of Staff, the previous Chief of Staff.”
There’s the President, and then there’s the Government, and more and more these days it seems as if they are two separate entities.
We’re now learning that just because you install an outsider–a person at odds with the Uniparty agenda–in the White House, does not mean you can actually change the government’s policies. Just because we changed the President doesn’t mean we have changed the Government. Over the decades, the power of the unelected deep state has grown exponentially, and now it is collectively more powerful than the President.
The corruption runs very, very deep in Washington. The Uniparty’s power is entrenched more deeply than any of us could’ve imagined just a few short years ago. This is not to say Trump hasn’t made any difference, but it is to say that Trump winning the 2016 election was merely the beginning of what will be a very long, difficult battle against a sprawling, ossified beast.
What Trump has revealed since becoming president is that the President isn’t really in charge. It’s not a pleasant truth; it should bring no one any pleasure that this has been confirmed, but at least we know it for sure now.
My only hope is he can be the beginning of a movement that may take decades. The alternative is an uprising that may take the form of a civil war. Either way, this will not stand the test of time.