Free Republic

Trump is draining the swamp —Rebuilding government may be impossible In the 2013 novel “A Delicate Truth,” John le Carré presents the “deep state” as a moneyed, cultured élite — the “non-governmental insiders from banking, industry, and commerce” whose access to information allows them to rule in secret. Trump’s conception is quite different. A real-estate baron, Trump is at war with the clerks — the apparatchiks who, he claims, are seeking to nullify the election by denying the prerogatives of his Administration. This attack on “bureaucracy” is really an attack on the State Department, the intelligence community and ordinary bureaucrats...

Over the past 28 years there has been a sea change in the media. Not only has the monopoly of the so-called mainstream media been shattered but the phenomenal rise of conservative media has been truly stunning. It began in 1988 with the national syndication of Rush Limbaugh and his distinctive brand of conservative political commentary espoused in an entertaining and captivating way, which opened the flood gates for other conservatives, together with Rush, to dominate the talk radio airwaves. In the 1990’s the internet, through hundreds of websites, gave voice to journalists to report stories either ignored or downplayed...