"The agenda Americans actually voted for"

Is "exposing the deep state" really "one of Trump's greatest accomplishments"?

I don't think so. "Unelected bureaucrats" are often derided for being apolitical in a political environment, but the concept of a "deep state" is an overstatement. I recognize federal employees are often self-interested, and dislike threats to their continued employment, but I perceive resistence to President Trump's policies as the result of his attacks on their professionalism, not pre-existing agendas.

If the deep state were really a thing, it would have been just as much an issue in 2009, and let's face it -- it wasn't.

But the thing that bothered me most about Edward Scarry's piece was the line, "Each one of these government employees believed their agendas were more important than the one Americans actually voted for." [Source] That's a mischaracterization. In the 2016 election, the agenda the American people actually voted for was not Donald Trump's.

He won the Electoral College vote because of quirk in our Constitution. Not a defect, but also not a feature. Regardless, Scarry is wrong to call Trump's agenda the one Americans wanted. The truth is that Trump spent four years as president despite the majority of American voters *not* wanting him...

..in two separate elections.