Trump’s anger reaches its apex when his unethical bidding is not carried out. Advisors might be sitting around the Oval Office, ostensibly to discuss monetary policy or some other issue, and we will suddenly see the president’s eyes darken. He’ll glance around the room, fidget with the Diet Coke in front of him, and then launch into a long harangue about how his lawyers have failed him, how the attorney general has failed him, how this person or that person needs to be investigated. One time, apropos of nothing, he launched into a tirade about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who by then was long gone: “Man, he is one of the stupidest creatures on this earth God ever created!” The aides in the room tried not to look at one another. Hoping the storm would pass, they wondered as usual, “What does this have anything to do with… anything?”
Trump is particularly frustrated that the Justice Department hasn’t done more to harass the Clintons. In his first year in office, he complained to Jeff Sessions that the department hadn’t investigated people who deserved it, citing the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Days later he tweeted about the issue, writing, “Where is the Justice Dept?” and noted that there was “ANGER & UNITY” over a “lack of investigation” into the former secretary of state. “DO SOMETHING!” he demanded. The directive was not given to anyone in particular, but it’s obvious to whom Trump was speaking. However, Sessions was effectively recused from the matter since it was tied to the Russia investigation.
In December 2017, the president pulled Jeff aside after a cabinet meeting for what was intended to be a private conversation. “I don’t know if you could un-recuse yourself,” Trump told him, according to the notes of an aide, who believed the president was talking about investigating Hillary Clinton. “You’d be a hero. Not telling you to do anything.” The president reportedly mused that he could order General Sessions to investigate if he wanted to, but then added that he wasn’t going to do that. We were all familiar with these “wink, nods” from Trump. He suggests he can order someone to do something, but he hopes he doesn’t have to do it explicitly—that way he’s not tied to the outcome. Trump’s little hints are in fact improper demands masquerading as innocent suggestions, and the administration’s history is strewn with them. In any event Jeff didn’t budge, surely a contributing factor to his eventual firing.
Trump nominated another attorney general, and right away he started telegraphing similar requests. In a March 2019 interview, the president sent not-so-subtle signals to recently confirmed attorney general Bill Barr, telling a reporter that he hoped Barr would “do what’s fair” when it came to investigating Clinton. Not long after, he again took to Twitter, openly calling for an investigation into the “crimes committed” by his 2016 Democratic opponent. The messages weren’t meant for nonprofit groups or part-time investigators to take up the cause. They were clearly meant for the Justice Department. He was skirting the lines of propriety once again. Presidents are not supposed to influence investigative decisions like this, but Trump knew what he was doing. Bill Barr certainly knew. All of us knew.
Our Founders had many differences, but most were united in their apprehension of powerful presidents. They had just broken free of a tyrannical king, after all. Revolutionary-era thinkers discussed the topic ad nauseam. As American historian Bernard Bailyn explained, the Founders’ conversations on power “centered on its essential characteristic of aggressiveness: its endlessly propulsive tendency to expand itself beyond legitimate boundaries. Like water, it will flow into whatever space it can reach and fill it.”
Thus, the American colonists concluded that protecting liberty required putting checks on the wielders of authority. They built institutions meant to be circuit breakers on government power. Under a system of checks and balances, they hoped even the worst intentions of public officials would be frustrated by the machinery itself. This was the rationale for divvying up responsibility by creating an executive branch, run by a president; counterbalancing it with a legislative branch, consisting of the House and the Senate; and further leveling the playing field with a judicial branch, which contained the courts and the US Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of the law of the land.
The Trump presidency is one of the biggest challenges to our nation’s checks-and-balances system in modern times. Donald Trump has abused his power to undermine all three branches of government, at times flagrantly and at times in secret. In the process, he has weakened institutions vital to the functioning of our democracy, assailing them as “corrupt.” Trump is not fazed by the precedent that he is setting by making it easier for his successors to wield the executive office for personal or political gain. In fact, he is actively working to break free of the protections inherent in the American system meant to limit that power.
We ought to care about that. A lot.
Burying the Deep State
Theodore Roosevelt was no one’s idea of the Republican “establishment.” Many traditional Republicans despised him. Throughout his career, he was considered a renegade, a maverick, a guy who liked to shake up the system. Once he succeeded to the presidency, he also understood that he couldn’t change government on his own. In his autobiography, Roosevelt offered a reflection on those who helped him, including his cabinet and the large group of people within the federal bureaucracy.
“As for the men under me in executive office, I could not overstate the debt of gratitude I owe them,” Roosevelt wrote. “From the heads of the departments, the Cabinet officers, down, the most striking feature of the administration was the devoted, zealous, and efficient work that was done as soon as it became understood that the one bond of interest among all of us was the desire to make the Government the most effective instrument in advancing the interests of the people[.]”
More dissonant words could not be spoken about the Trump administration. Rather than affectionately praise the civil service, the current president has launched a brutal assault on them. We are talking about the millions of people who carry out the daily duties of government, whether it is delivering the mail or monitoring economic developments. They act as a “check” on power by making sure the laws are executed faithfully and not subverted by a rogue politician. These days, however, such people are routinely mocked, maligned, ignored, and undercut by the Executive Office of the President. To Trump, their ranks are replete with traitors, an evil “Deep State” out to get him and destroy his presidency.
Early on, he claimed he didn’t like that phrase. In an interview with the Hill newspaper, Trump said he avoided it because “it sounds so conspiratorial.” He added, “And believe it or not I’m really not a conspiratorial person.” This was like the Marlboro man saying he wasn’t a smoker. It wasn’t remotely believable. As the Hill pointed out, Trump used the phrase only two weeks earlier to describe an opinion piece written by… me. The Deep State was a threat to democracy, he claimed in a tweet, but what he really meant was that it was a threat to him because he was being exposed for who he really was.
Those seeking Trump’s favor, or money from his supporters, have made repeated references to the term. They’ve written variations of the same book—from Jason Chaffetz’s The Deep State: How an Army of Elected Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda, to Jerome Corsi’s Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump, to George Papadopoulos’s Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump, to Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie’s Trump’s Enemies: How the Deep State is Undermining His Presidency, and a collection of alliterative titles by Judge Jeanine Pirro, also making the exact same points: Deep inside the government are a group of people out to destroy democracy, Donald Trump, and America.