A couple of years ago, Moyers & Company had as a guest Mike Lofgren, who had been a Congressional Staffer for 28 years. During his long stint in Congress, he became aware of the Deep State (Shadow Gov't)...which is a conglomeration of like-minded public & private individuals. If you're not familiar with that group, simply Google/Bing the term.
As Lofgren pointed out, the Deep State doesn't care whether Repubs or Dems are in power at the national level... those labels are meaningless to the true Powers-That-Be. Genuine Repubs and genuine Dems don't exist anymore at the very top echelon of the Fed Gov't. Mostly Neoliberals exist there. That's Lofgren's conclusion after working 28 years in Congress.
Jump forward to today.
Trump will be squashed and/or completely marginalized by the Deep State, mostly because he has no ideology. He's nothing but an opportunist, and they won't abide that. Either that will happen, or he'll simply self-destruct.
One would think that the Deep State might favor a guy like Corporatist Trump. They favored Corporatist Clinton instead because she represented the status quo. Although Trump adheres to Corporatism, he also appears to be: against Globalization; too unreliable; too volatile; anti-status-quo; too thin-skinned; and too egotistical. None of that (if true) would bode well for Neoliberalism and Corporatist Globalization... the darlings of the Deep State.
Don't get me wrong---Trump will not be good for Main Street or the USA in general. He's not a Populist. He's a dangerous opportunist who says anything he thinks his audience wants to hear. He's a billionaire Corporatist, a Crony Capitalist, and an ego-maniacal flip-flopper. [I just watched a clip of his speech at the CIA. Despite all his previous denigrations (often vicious) of the intelligence community, he says he's their biggest fan. Typical Trump--- he says whatever his current audience wants to hear. In this case, I doubt that the audience believed him.]
Apparently, Trump has little to no idea what he's up against. The main point here is this: the Deep State runs this country. Elected puppets have very little to do with it. They primarily are figureheads. They give the illusion of a democracy. In addition, Trump now has an approval rating of 32%. Not only that, but he lost the popular vote by about three million. He has no "mandate". Finally, never mind the entire Fed Gov't, even only the Executive Branch is so huge that it's essentially unmanageable. It's nowhere near a monolithic institution overseen by one person. Half the time (I'm guessing), the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. Getting around bombastic Trump won't be especially difficult.
I'll give Trump this much--- he did get us out of the TPP. That's significant... and it's one of the reasons that the Deep State will utterly marginalize the guy.
Not only my opinion. Be Well
p.s. For those who may not know: the Deep State is NOT a "conspiracy theory"; it's a well-accepted concept. Plus, for the most part, it's in plain sight and operates right out in the open. [Example: shortly after Trump issued memos suggesting that the DAPL (pipeline) and the Keystone XL Pipeline both should be restarted, an Administrator at the Badlands National Park tweeted scientific facts supporting the concept of Climate Change.]
