The Deep State is Losing Its Political War Against Donald Trump
Despite the deep state’s savage, relentless attacks against Trump and his supporters, whose cause represents the last best hope for American freedom, there is still a chance that good will prevail.
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In recent weeks, Donald Trump has distanced himself even further from his Republican party challengers. According to the latest Harvard/Harris poll by IP, he now leads his closest competitor – Florida governor, Ron DeSantis – by a nearly 50-point margin. At no point during the 2016 Republican primary season did Trump command such whopping leads, even once the field narrowed towards the end of the season and Donald Trump’s claim to the party nomination became increasingly certain. The fact, however, that Trump leads by such wide margins so early, even with the likely prospect of other primary candidates to still enter the race, would suggest an unprecedented situation for a presidential race involving a non-incumbent.
So, what explains the difference between 2024 and virtually every other primary before it? Well, the most obvious explanation can be ascertained by the fact that at least 6 in 10 Republicans believe the 2020 race was illegitimate: that is to say, stolen. Likelier a higher portion still – probably close to one hundred percent – believe, short of being outright stolen, 2020 was at least highly suspect in terms of the basic ground rules. Between the ballot harvesting measures, rapacious censorship of non-regime approved voices by Big Tech and social media generally, untrustworthy voting machines prone to foreign entanglement, interference by deep state agencies, and a host of other suspicious if not downright unlawful techniques used by the deep state to influence the outcome of the 2020 election – only a fool would deny that the Biden regime rests on anything but extremely dubious authority. In terms of puppeteering legitimacy, the Biden regime has done itself no favors. Normally, a democratic administration that was confident of its electoral mandate would – at a bare minimum – readily encourage free speech from contrarian networks, to say nothing of not labeling the opposition party dangerous domestic terrorists. Instead, Biden has gone in the complete opposite direction: choosing to play the part of ruthless despot – allocating virtually all its time and energy to clamping down on the opposition and foiling dissident voices, who have been able to reemerge, if not flourish, by the opening up of new free speech channels like Twitter and Rumble, with the most bald-faced propaganda conceivable. As the saying goes, if it walks like a despot and talks like a despot, it probably is one. This has mobilized not only Trump, but virtually every other Republican primary challenger to at least pay homage to the idea that the intelligence agencies, headed by the FBI and CIA, as well as the Justice Department, have been weaponized by the ruling class against the American people. Two indictments already lodged against Donald Trump, each one based on unreliable evidence and long shot legal theories – with a third one likely on the way from Georgia – affirm the view that justice in America has completely eroded into a banana republic-type system.
Given this dire state of affairs – and it must be emphasized that the present situation is quite dire indeed – it naturally raises a few questions – the most obvious of these being: why have a Republican primary in the first place? If all Republican candidates could at least pay lip service to the view that something about 2020 was deeply off kilter – in other words, there is universal agreement that, in some fundamental sense, the 2020 election deviated from the norm of every election before it – then from that follows the conclusion that there should at least be common agreement over the need to fix election procedures, particularly in vital battleground states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia. Any observer can point to countless abnormalities surrounding the 2020 election: for one, voter registration skyrocketed up to nearly 11 million people from 2016 as the country was locked down for most of the year due to COVID mandates, allowing the convenient excuses of voting by mail, coupled with a total overhaul of traditional registration methods, in an attempt “to streamline the process.” These are reflected in the total number of people who supposedly voted in the election – well over 155 million people, according to official data, which of course accepts the major caveat that Biden’s 81 million voters are valid – meaning that about 92% of all registered voters cast a vote that year. The extraordinarily high voter and turnout rates should ring alarm bells, and, given the despotic trajectory of the country ever since Biden was installed into office, should readily bring to mind reminders of truly authoritarian regimes, such as North Korea and Communist China that are run by despots who fudge vote totals with impunity to feign the impression of democratic legitimacy and national solidarity.
To the extent that elections will still matter anymore in America, it is only to add a sheen of credibility to a regime that has gone totally rogue. The primary process, which is arguably an even greater indignity to people who are aware of what is going on, is being reduced to a mere formality; something that checks off the boxes of constitutional procedure – in other words, mere theatre to help legitimize the regime. Donald Trump was the only man to pierce the veil, so to speak, of the regime – he was the one opportunity, which will be exceptionally difficult to replicate again, by which the ruling class would actually be held accountable by a truly democratic agent. To the extent the other Republican primary challengers have a role to play, whether unwittingly or not, they are pawns for the regnant authoritarian regime, who can at least claim that the motions of constitutional procedure were followed. Otherwise, it would not make sense how simply swapping Donald Trump for Ron DeSantis would do anything towards fixing the deep-seated, unresolved issues baked into the electoral system. Even if it were true, as DeSantis’ supporters allege, that a simple substitution is all that is needed to magically wipe away the “irregularities'' in a state like Pennsylvania, for instance, that as recently as just last November helped catapult a John Fetterman into the United States Senate (how, precisely, DeSantis would fix the issue, nobody on their side has yet meaningfully addressed), that still only deals with one part of the problem. The other part, which is arguably even more entrenched and difficult than the lingering issues with election integrity, is how to effectively bring the deep state to heel, whose tentacles now stretch as far up North as New York and down South as Georgia.
The latter reason underscores why the DeSantis movement (and this can be said of every Republican primary challenger to Donald Trump) is considered so insulting – even traitorous – by the MAGA faithful, and is reason why the more DeSantis escalates his campaign against Trump, the faster his base of supporters dissipates. If DeSantis were truly aware of how stacked the deck is against Donald Trump, he would drop out of the race immediately and endorse the 45th President– knowing full well that the primary process is but one hurdle to be overcome in what will be a herculean effort to get him reelected. In addition to the latest indictment, Trump’s voice is still being stifled by mainstream media outlets to this day, which complement the role of the justice system and agents of the deep state that wield actual political power to stop Trump in his tracks. The non-institutional powerbrokers in the mainstream media, such as Fox News, operate as fake or controlled opposition, simulating the appearance of dissent by platforming someone who sounds like a dissident voice, such as Ron DeSantis, but who, like the Bush family before him, is far too much beholden to special interests that make him largely a non threat to the Uniparty establishment. In this regard, Fox News and other legacy “conservative” outlets play a critical role for the regime by helping to filter regime-approved opinion out from unacceptable views and policies, particularly from political actors who pose an actual threat to the ruling class. Despite leading in every major poll, Donald Trump has been effectively shadow banned by Fox News, only receiving the occasional interview by a Sean Hannity and maybe Bret Baier, who will never fail to regurgitate worn-out critiques against the 45th President, such as whether it is presidential to tweet (or now ‘Truth’) bad things about one of his primary challengers. The role Fox News and networks like it play is twofold: first, they help filter out non-acceptable Right-wing voices from acceptable, or “harmless,” ones in an effort to manufacture political consensus; second, and more perniciously, they help further legitimize the Uniparty consensus – and specifically, the Biden regime – by, again, simulating this idea that, despite the Biden regime’s out-and-out authoritarianism, there at least remains the appearance of democratic accountability based on the laughable premise that a so-called conservative network is permitted to even operate in the first place.
On a related note, Donald Trump has received some criticism from his primary challengers, particularly the DeSantis campaign, for entertaining the prospect of not participating in the Republican Primary debates this cycle. From Trump’s perspective, which is a perspective that is quite reasonable considering the facts, the debates would only serve to boost the ratings of legacy cable networks, who have otherwise used every opportunity to spurn Donald Trump – by either trafficking constant, negative coverage or misinformation about him throughout the eight years in which he has been involved in national politics, or, in the alternative, censoring any positive coverage of him – whether they be rallies, press conferences, or other media appearances. As Trump sees it, appearing in a primary debate would be a lose-lose situation: not only would the adverse corporate media network be empowered, but furthermore, it would give needless oxygen to men like Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence, who do not even deserve to be standing alongside Donald Trump on the debate stage in the first place, which in turn risks creating an illusory display of equivalence between the candidates, in the minds of viewers.
Ultimately, however, despite the concerted efforts by the deep state to bring down Trump, there still remains a life force – a glimmer of hope – that keeps the American experiment, despite its anemic state, alive. On one side of the equation, this is reflected in DeSantis’ – and really, every other Republican primary challenger’s – rapidly declining poll numbers, an implicit nod by the electorate to the view that Trump alone is entitled to his party’s nomination, which in turn suggests an overwhelming majority believe he is the only one who can rightfully lay claim to his party’s mantle. On the other side, this rising groundswell of support for Trump is even reflected across polling for the general election, where Trump is now observed in many so-called reputable polls commanding significant margins over Biden in a head-to-head matchup.
What all this points to is the silver lining that, despite the deep state’s savage, relentless attacks against Trump and his supporters, whose cause represents the last best hope for American freedom, there is a chance – however small – that good will prevail in the end. That there is a ray of hope, a new summertime awaiting on the other side of this seemingly endless winter; that America might have been dealt the greatest blow by its enemies in its history, but never so fatal as to permanently upend the cause of human freedom — the American experiment. The remaining signs of life will help inspire and keep the momentum alive for the movement Donald Trump spearheaded – and will continue to lead, so long as there is any desire at all among the American people, aided by the grace of God, to preserve government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Paul Ingrassia is an Associate at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022 and is a member of the New York Young Republican Club. He was also a two-time Claremont Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @PaulIngrassia, Substack, and Rumble.