How can the will of the people and American national interests overcome the power of a federal bureaucracy that is determined to pursue a leftist ideological agenda regardless of the results of elections?
According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, that’s the key question facing the incoming Trump administration as it seeks to reverse the damage done by a powerful administrative state that exists as an unelected fourth branch of government. The key to understanding this challenge is unraveling the way this deep state assisted former President Barack Obama in imposing a dangerous foreign policy aimed at creating “equity” between American power and influence and that of nations like Russia and Iran.
Former Pentagon security analyst Adam Lovinger joins Tobin to discuss his new book, The Insider Threat: How the Deep State Undermines America From Within. It details how U.S. defense policy was harmed by Obama and his supporters inside the federal government. It also tells the story of how his career was derailed by left-wing bureaucrats who wished to sabotage Trump’s first administration and punish any dissent from inside the government. Lovinger discussed the way the Obama Doctrine applied the toxic woke ideas of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to international affairs by seeking to empower hostile nations like Iran while downgrading the U.S. relationship with allies like Israel. In practice, this led to what he called a “sinister” and “perverse” campaign of “bureaucratic subversion” that aided Moscow and Tehran while harming Jerusalem.
Lovinger’s decision to move from the Pentagon to serve in the National Security Council under Trump was punished by left-leaning Obama holdovers in the Pentagon with the removal of his security clearance in a rigged case rooted in prejudice, such as the claim that taking his family on a bar mitzvah trip to Israel violated protocol. He compared the way he was treated by the government to the persecution of Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jewish military officer who was falsely convicted of treason due to antisemitism.
The Russia collusion hoax that helped sabotage Trump’s first term was, Lovinger says, a product of not only the partisanship of the deep state but also the way it was manipulated by Russia. Rather than Trump being an agent of foreign subversion, Lovinger believes it was the president’s opponents who wound up doing exactly what Moscow wanted.
Lovinger believes that Trump won’t make the same mistakes and that his choices for cabinet appointments reflect a necessary understanding that he will fight back against what the author calls the “Deep State playbook.”
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