As I write this, America has seen just two cases of individuals infected with coronavirus person-to-person in the United States. But you wouldn’t know it.
If a newly landed Martian had to judge the size of this threat to our nation, they would be excused for thinking that the Spanish flu or bubonic plague had reemerged in new antibiotic- and prophylactic-resistant strains and that the end of Western civilization is just around the corner.
From the doom-laden music used to undergird CNN’s coverage of the virus, to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer lambasting President Donald Trump for his putative mismanagement of the “emergency” and his decision—which apparently has outraged the Democratic National Committee—to make his deputy, Vice President Mike Pence the lead coordinator for our nation’s response, the impression is one of disaster.
One is reminded of President Barack Obama’s chief-of-staff and all-round hatchet man, Rahm Emmanuel, and his now immortal phrase: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
According to Forbes and Statista, America is more ready to deal with this—or any similar threat—than any other country in the world. From the size of our economy, to the trained experts available to us, and the cutting-edge technology and medicines we have at our disposal, we have capabilities that other nations only dream of and will never attain.
Deep State
When I joined the Trump White House, at first, I refused to even use the term “Deep State,” publicly or in private. It smacked to me of tinfoil-hat territory. While I love conspiracy theories as a form of diversionary entertainment, there’s a reason they are called “theories” and not “facts.” But then, I experienced the Deep State up close and personal.First, it was subtle. As a matter of course, I would attend National Security Council meetings in the classified SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) facilities under the West Wing and in the Eisenhower executive building. Whatever the issue would be—how to defeat ISIS, the threat from China, how to deal with Russia—I saw a clear pattern.
At the highest national security policymaking level of the nation, outside of the Oval Office, I saw the same behavior. However long the meeting, one hour or longer, whoever was in the room and on the secure outstation screens—the CIA, DIA, Joint Chiefs, NSA, et cetera—no one in the room or on the net would mention the commander-in-chief’s name, or what the president had said with regard to the specific issue we were there to grapple with.
As a result, it would be left to me, time and again, to the legal immigrant with the foreign accent who was there as deputy to the president for strategy, to remind all involved what the president’s explicit objectives were, since it was clear that the GS-15s, the SES and SIS executives—collectively, the “careers”—considered themselves the true authorities on the matter.
The unelected bureaucrats couldn’t care less that 63 million Americans had chosen a new president and a new path for America—they were America’s collective master.
Then, after I had waited six months for three of my former pupils, who were now members of the Intelligence Community, to be detailed by name to work for me in the White House on a special project I was running—a personnel action that was otherwise routine and should have taken 10 days at most—I was enlightened as to why they still hadn’t been sent over to the White House to work for me.
A visiting “career” from the FBI, one of the agencies that was meant to have sent me their employee months ago—and who happened to be a Trump voter—informed me behind closed doors, “Sebastian, you need to understand that the seventh floor of the Hoover Building [the leadership of the Bureau] looks at this White House as ‘the Enemy.’”
It was hard for me to believe this at the time. But now, we have the evidence.
Now, we know that John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, voted for the Communist Party just before he joined the CIA. We now know that the Obama White House okayed the first-ever interagency—FBI, CIA, and NSA—counterintelligence operation against a presidential campaign and then a presidential administration.
We now know that they were prepared, not only to issue multiple secret surveillance warrants against members of the Trump campaign, but that at least two of the warrants were illegally obtained. And that, most egregiously, FBI agents were ready to forge CIA documents in order to obtain said warrants and to railroad a three-star U.S. Army general, Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn.
It’s remarkable that President Trump has survived so far against a federal bureaucracy so riven through with seditious and criminal actors, let alone achieved so much in just 3 1/2 years.
If he survives the continued machinations of the Deep State and its collaborators in the mainstream media and is, God willing, reelected, his biggest challenge will not be natural or manmade biological agents from abroad. It will be the enemy that lies within the halls of his own government.
President Trump needs to grab the Deep State by the throat right now. Before it’s too late.
