From The Propaganda Professor:
If you spend any time at all interacting with right-wing fantasyland (and it’s inescapable these days, since right-wing fantasyland constantly impinges on reality), then you’ve certainly heard plenty about the “deep state”. The deep state is, the wingers claim, a well organized and malevolent shadow government composed of (liberal) bureaucrats, (Democratic) politicians and (leftist) media figures intent on using underhanded means to bring down the Forty-Fifth White House Occupant, destroy America and establish Marxist/ Muslim rule. Not necessarily in that order.
One of the more spittle-flecked among them, Dan Bongino (all you need know about him is that he had a cozy niche on the mercifully defunct NRATV) is very typical and by no means unique. Do a Google search for “Dan Bongino deep state” and just see how many hits you get of his ramblings and rantings on the subject. At one point he sums up the deep state delusions of the tin hat crowd thus:
They want a scalp, and believe me when I tell you the deep state is going to get one.
To be fair, there are a few on the right who are rather more sane and real — although some of them may be… well, dead. The late Charles Krauthammer, who was a staunch Republican until the end and was even a frequent contributor to the ever-entertaining National Review, was nonetheless quite skeptical about this particular right-wing bogeyman:
I don’t believe in the tooth fairy, the Knights Templar, Bilderberg, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a vast right wing conspiracy, or, for that matter, a vast left wing conspiracy. Are there in the U.S. government individual bureaucrats that are Democratic holdovers that would love nothing more than to damage [45]? Yeah, of course there are. Is there a concealed web of conspirators, malevolent permanent hidden shadow government? Rubbish. And I would add that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone without the help of Ted Cruz’s father.
But this attitude is quite uncommon among GOP loyalists.