Trump Will Have His Own ‘Deep State’—and His Own #Resistance
It’s more likely than not, as of this writing, that Joe Biden will defeat Donald Trump once the final votes are counted. That is only a half a victory for the alliance of centrist Democrats and national-security veterans known colloquially as the #Resistance.
That loose coalition, influential amongst Democratic elites and prominent on social media, was looking not only for a Biden victory but a landslide repudiation of Donald Trump. Their theory of governing a post-Trump country depends upon a repudiation of MAGA—what Biden called a battle for the soul of America. While the margin of victory was wide, around four million votes, it wasn’t the hoped-for political annihilation. John Sipher, a former CIA officer prominent in the #Resistance, summed it up by tweeting Tuesday night that he didn’t understand his country. That echoed the major criticism of the #Resistance coming from both Republicans and the left.
As Trump likely moves out of the White House, he leaves behind a Republican Party remade in his image, as well as a security apparatus he attempted to dominate. That puts a Trump in exile in position to have a #Resistance of his own—one that unites loyalist former security officials whom Trump gave the credential of running intelligence agencies with serving officials at Trumpy redoubts like the Department of Homeland Security. Already, on Thursday, his former acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, baselessly insisted before a bank of TV cameras that Democrats are stealing the vote in Nevada. Meanwhile, without Trump in office, the original Democratic #Resistance coalition may not be so stable.
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