Did the so-called Deep-State protect the country from Trump?

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. A few years back, we started hearing about a sinister, unseen force threatening American progress. It was the deep state, an unnamed group of officials within the U.S. government that would always use their leverage in the federal bureaucracy to oppose change, either because the deep staters were wedded to ill-advised policies of the past or because they sought to protect their own power, status, salary and pensions. The menace of the deep state was an idea particularly propagated by backers of President Donald Trump.

Our guest, David Rothkopf, says if there is a deep state, we should probably be thanking rather than condemning it. His new book recounts many instances during the Trump administration when veteran government officials quietly intervened to undermine some of Trump's most troubling orders and policy initiatives, not because they threatened the officials' personal interests, but because they were illegal, unworkable, immoral or against the country's interests. David Rothkopf is a former editor of Foreign Policy magazine, who worked on international trade policy in the Clinton administration. He's written several previous books. He's now a columnist for The Daily Beast and host of the podcast "deep state Radio." His new book is "American Resistance: The Inside Story Of How The deep state Saved The Nation."

David Rothkopf, welcome to FRESH AIR.

DAVID ROTHKOPF: It's a pleasure to be here.

DAVIES: You know, this idea of the deep state was popularized by Steve Bannon, among others, you know, the guy who was a big backer of Trump and then went into the White House for a period of time. I think it's fair to say that there's some resistance to change in all big organizations, and particularly in the government, maybe. But the notion of the deep state suggests something more, like this ongoing conspiracy, people who meet and plot to foil the agenda of the president or Cabinet secretary that they distrust. Is there any evidence of that, of a deep state structure or organization?

ROTHKOPF: No, no, quite the contrary. First of all, the popularization of the term really hit just as Donald Trump was beginning to run for president. And it was part of an effort by the Trump campaign, Steve Bannon, who you mentioned, to sell this idea that the government wasn't to be trusted, that you needed an outsider. You needed somebody who could break through Washington. And if I may, you know, I think, you know, we talk a lot these days about the big lie, the big lie having to do with the election of 2020. But the real origin of this idea goes back to another big lie, a big lie I would attribute back as far as the Reagan administration. And that's the idea that the government is the enemy, that our government - that any service by the government is a burden on the people, not an aid to the people. And there's a reason that that's perpetuated because if you believe that, then you don't believe the government.

You can offer an alternative narrative; hence the second big lie. If you believe it, then shutting down government programs becomes something that is desirable, even if they actually help people. And so selling the idea of a deep state helps advance an agenda that's anti-government, anti-regulation, outsider driven and doesn't want to be held accountable by those people in the government who are actually following the law or placing their oath of office, their oath to the Constitution, ahead of loyalty to an individual or to a party.

DAVIES: You know, as I looked over your background and your career, it occurred to me that if anyone might be accused of being too cozy with the deep state, it would be somebody with your history. I mean, you served in the Commerce Department in the Clinton administration. You were an editor of the magazine Foreign Policy. You were a managing director of Kissinger Associates - right? - the firm of Henry Kissinger. So I can imagine how someone might look at you and say, well, this is a guy who is too steeped in conventional status quo wisdom. I wonder if you could just talk a bit about what critics of people who serve in the government don't understand about these people who actually come to work every day. I covered government, and I have a sort of a different view of it myself. But what are these folks, if they're not, you know, plotting to protect their little private interests and oppose change?

ROTHKOPF: It's a good question. The vast majority of people who I've encountered who work in the U.S. government - and I include in this Republicans, Democrats, independents, people in every branch of the government - actually, in my experience, end up going into the government because they believe in the idea of public service. In fact, no one is getting rich going into the United States government. Many people who work in the government, who choose a career in the government, are choosing a path that does not offer the kind of financial upside that jobs in the private sector offer. Although people do move back and forth between the government and the private sector in our system.

I'm not saying it's all great. You know, bureaucracies can be slow. Bureaucrats can be irritating to deal with. There are parts of the government that are dysfunctional and wasteful, and those are things we need to fix. But going after everybody in the government with some broad-brush approach as a conspiracy theory like the deep state conspiracy theory does, does no one any benefit, not the people in the government nor the people that they end up helping.

DAVIES: You talked to a lot of people who worked in the Trump administration for this book and got the benefit of their experience. You know, a strong theme of the Trump campaign was a disdain for existing practices and existing policies in government, you know, embodied in the phrase drain the swamp. And in some respects, it wasn't just a slogan because when a new administration comes in, you know, they have to staff a lot of new jobs, you know, I guess a few dozen or really a few hundred that are important policymaking jobs. And typically, what administrations have done is set up a transition operation, you know, to look at what do we need to do? How do we find these people? How do we vet people to make sure they're both qualified and have integrity without terrible skeletons in their closet? How did the Trump administration approach the task of taking over the government?

ROTHKOPF: The Trump transition was the most chaotic and dysfunctional transition that the U.S. government has ever seen. And there have been some pretty tense ones, you know, but this was entirely a series of self-inflicted wounds. Trump resisted the idea of having a transition office until people around him, including Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, persuaded him that, you know, it was actually the law. You had to have one. And Christie set one up. And then as soon as Trump got elected - and I think this was in part because Trump didn't actually expect to win - he said, let's shut that office down. We're going to do this a different way. And, of course, he thought he knew better with everything, and he thought he's going to just pick a couple of folks who he trusts, put them in, they can hire their own people, and it'll be a little bit like the way he used to run a business.

But, of course, what he didn't understand is that people who take senior government jobs get vetted for those jobs because there are security issues associated with those jobs, because they have to be confirmed by the United States Senate. He didn't really understand the relevance of certain kinds of experience in those jobs. He felt, in fact, that he was going to run the government a lot like he ran his company.

There's a myth that he ran a big company - he didn't really. He ran a small family-owned company where there were a couple of dozen people who sort of made critical decisions regarding real estate holdings and so forth. And he just thought, well, anything important is going to come up, it's going to come through me or a couple of people I know. And keeping it close like that is good. And that led to a very chaotic process where people weren't vetted. People were brought in who, you know, were not just ill-equipped for their jobs, they were grotesquely wrong for their jobs.

DAVIES: Can you think of an example of how the chaotic transition process got him bad people or led to appointments that had to be reversed?