President Trump’s former adviser Stephen K. Bannon reportedly pushes back in a new book against the “deep state” theory believed by some current members of the administration.
The “deep state conspiracy theory is for nut cases,” Mr. Bannon is quoted as saying in a new book released next week, “Deep State: Trump, the FBI and the Rule of Law” by James B. Stewart, The Guardian reported Friday.
Proponents of the deep state theory purport in part that holdovers from previous administrations are secretly manipulating the government from within. Mr. Trump himself has repeatedly referenced the theory, and senior White House adviser Stephen Miller recently said that a “deep state operative” is behind the whistleblower complaint that triggered Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry into the president last week.
Mr. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, reasoned in the book that a “deep state” does not exist within the U.S. government because “America isn’t Turkey or Egypt,” The Guardian reported.
Referring to existing government bureaucracy, Mr. Bannon said that “there’s nothing ’deep’ about it. It’s right in your face,” according to The Guardian.
Mr. Trump has suggested that a “deep state” exists as recently as on Twitter last month, and Mr. Miller, a senior presidential adviser, made a similar claim on Fox News last week.
“This is a deep state operative, pure and simple,” Mr. Miller said Sunday about the unknown member of the U.S. intelligence community who filed a whistleblower complaint that resulted in Mr. Trump facing the possibility of impeachment.
Mr. Bannon, 65, was the executive chairman of conservative website Breitbart News until leaving to join Mr. Trump’s election campaign and eventually his administration. He served as a White House chief strategist for about eight months before leaving in August 2017 and subsequently re-joining Breitbart briefly.
While a Google search conducted for references to “deep state” appearing on Breitbart.com returned about 17,600 results, Mr. Bannon has pushed back against the label in the past.
“There is a cabal of Republic establishment figures who believe Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States. This is a crisis,” Mr. Bannon said last year. “I am not a conspiracy guy … I have said there is no deep state. It is an in-your-face state.”
More recently, Mr. Bannon last week compared the start of the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump to the “shot at Fort Sumter” that spurred the American Civil War.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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