 All right, let's take one more of these. This one got 22% of the vote. This one's kind of interesting and more along the lines of what I think I know. The so-called deep state, does it really exist? Or is it a conspiracy theory? Trump supporters say that the deep state conspires against him. Is that claim really true or just another conspiracy theory? So that's basically, what is the deep state? Is it real and is it conspiring against Donald Trump? So first, what is the deep state? It's hard exactly to tell from the way people talk about it. It's not obvious because for the most part it seems like the deep state is the bureaucracy. That is the civil servants, those people in the government who are not political appointees, but who are then no matter whether it's a Democrat or Republican, they are, life is, this is their job in life. And this could be across the entire government bureaucracy and it could be in the intelligence agencies, it could also be I guess in the military, where these are not political appointees and they don't have any allegiance to any particular president. And it's appealing the term deep state because you know, there's a lot of bureaucracy. There were a lot of these civil servants. The state is unlimited today in its powers. These people have enormous power and influence because partially because they know what goes on. They know the reality out there. And you know, it's appealing to think that they will do anything to for example, prevent government from shrinking because then they would lose their jobs. And you could also imagine that they have a lot of influence and a lot of power over presidents, over what kind of advice and what the scope of the advice he gets. And the story is right now, the story has been released since Trump was elected. I mean, he set this up perfectly, is that basically the deep state has been conspiring from day one to get rid of him. And this is consistent with Trump's whole modus operandi in a sense of there's always a conspiracy out there. Remember, he was a birther. He was one of the people advocating for conspiracy that Obama was not born in the United States. So I mean, Trump is not just susceptible to conspiracies. He is an advocate of conspiracies and somebody who promotes conspiracies. And this one is particularly useful. It's a particularly useful conspiracy because anything happens, he can say, it's the deep state. They're after me. They wanna get me. It's right now with the impeachment. It's a lynching, which is just a horrible thing to say. But it's basically a conspiracy against me. And he set it up from the beginning that the bureaucracy and the people in the intelligence services, the FBI were fundamentally against him. Now, of course, there's a certain truth to that. There were a lot of people in government that hate Trump, some of them for good reason and some of them for bad reason. Many of them, I mean, my guess is that overwhelming number of bureaucrats who work for the government in regulatory agencies and a bunch of other situations are probably on the left side of the political spectrum. And I don't think that would be true in the intelligence agencies. I don't think that's necessarily true in the FBI. And I don't think that's necessarily true in the military, certainly not true in the military. But certainly in the bureaucracy, one could imagine that many of the people are leftists and therefore do resent a Republican president and probably resent Trump more than anyone else. So it's a kind of conspiracy theory that has credibility in a sense that, yeah, you could see it happening. I think where it kind of fails or where it seems to me just very, very dubious is Trump's whole view of particularly the intelligence services. Now, I'm not a big fan of the CIA when it comes to their ability to analyze a situation and their ability to predict the future and their ability to predict the threats to the United States and so on. You know, they failed too many times, whether they failed diagnosing the Soviet Union in the 1970s or they failed seeing the rise of al-Qaeda, whether they failed giving the right data and information to capture Bin Laden much sooner than they did or Mullah Omar or helping crush the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. I think there were other problems, strategic problems, but I'm just not impressed with the performance of the CIA over the, you know, certainly since the 70s, maybe forever. But I doubt that the CIA has populated a bunch of leftists who are scheming to get rid of Donald Trump. I think there are a lot of people in the CIA, a lot of people everywhere in government that are very concerned about Donald Trump because Donald Trump is a, what does he call himself, an unstable or a stable genius, but I think he's an unstable moron. I think it's the better description. I think that was, moron was the term used by Secretary of State, who, Secretary of State was not part of the deep state, he was a Trump appointee. So one aspect of this is just I find it, I don't find it believable that career intelligence services people and certainly more than, you know, maybe a few, but that the entire agency system, including the people at the top, including people that Trump himself is appointed, are part of some conspiracy to get rid of Trump. It's just, to me, ludicrous that that is actually going on. A few operatives here and there and certainly there are people at the FBI who have shown themselves to have been very anti-Trump and scheme against him from day one, but I doubt that even in the FBI, it's widespread and is institutionalized, which is the implication of the whole deep state rhetoric. And I think that's also true certainly in the military, where I don't think there's this vast military conspiracy to get rid of Donald Trump to, you know, to conspire against him in a systematic, organized way that's institutionalized. I just don't see it. So, and one of the points of evidence I would suggest in this is that many of the people who have been critical of Trump, many of the people who have been probably more critical of Trump than anyone, other people who he appointed and have actually left his administration, whether it was Tillerson or whether it is Bolton or whether it is Mathis or whether it is Kelly or a lot of these guys and many of them have not spoken up yet, but I suspect that when they do, it's gonna be very, or whether it's Scaramucci or whatever, right? Not that I trust Scamucci necessarily, but the point is that people who actually he appointed think just as badly as him as people within the bureaucracy. So, I doubt that there is a deep state conspiracy. I doubt there is such a thing as a deep state. I mean, one of the things the deep state conjures is that it is a conspiracy that it is organized. It's not a bunch of bureaucrats in different places not liking Donald Trump and maybe trying to undercut certain of his programs. It's an organized effort, a conspiracy with a leader and cells that are in government trying to undercut the president and produce what he has called a coup. That I think is ludicrous and it's just not happening. And again, I think a big part of this is the fact that the people who think the worst of Donald Trump or the people who actually actually were appointed by him. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen, here's a television recommendation. I think one of the best television shows ever, ever produced. There was a show on the BBC. So, it's a British show, but you can see it maybe on BBC America, maybe on Netflix. I don't know, but you can certainly find it. You used to be able to find it, PBS maybe. You used to be able to find it on American TV. And that is a show called Yes Minister. Yes Minister. And Yes Minister was built in this premise. You've got some guy getting elected to parliament who is then appointed in a British system to be a minister, right? Minister of something, something, something affairs, right? Now, he now has reporting to him a bunch of civil servants. Civil servants who have been at this job for decades. Civil servants who know the government inside out. Civil servants who know everything. Right? By the way, those of you filling in the baseball scores, thank you. Much appreciated. After this, I'm gonna go catch the final innings of the game. And what the show does in a brilliant way, and ultimately there's a show called Yes Prime Minister when one of the ministers becomes Prime Minister. The show shows brilliantly how stupid most politicians are and how easily manipulated they are by the civil servants. And basically what the show shows is how the civil in a humorous, funny, but really, really, really, really smart way. And I love smart humor. I can't think of a comedy, a modern comedy that I like, particularly a film, because it's all dumb humor. The whole point of since, I think that the beginning of dumb humor, I mean, there's always been kind of dumb humor, kind of slapsticky, but it was never, it really got dumb and kind of relished the dumbness with dumb and dumber. I think dumb and dumber was the beginning of the end of American comedy. Anyway, this is smart comedy. And it shows how easily manipulated these people are, these politicians are, how clever the civil servants are. And it's not like the civil servants have a big agenda. It's not like the civil servants care who the minister is. It's not like the civil servants really care about any particular policy. What they really want is they don't want changes to status quo. What they really want is to maintain their power. What they really want is to maintain control. What they really want is the politicians not to interfere. They want to run things. And it is hysterical. So I highly, highly recommend yes minister. So do I think the bureaucrats are fighting a lot of the attempts of Trump people to reform certain things? Absolutely. Do I think some of the people in the State Department elsewhere are resisting some of Trump's foreign policy? Absolutely. And good because some of it's really, really bad. Do I think that they fight with them and they give them bad advice? Yes. Do I think there's some there that are conspiring behind his back and would do anything to get rid of him? Sure, of course. But is it a vast conspiracy? Is there such a thing as a deep state in the sense that there are people manipulating it, people controlling it, people running it and it is functioned as a single unit? No. No, no, no. I don't think so. I think it's a disparate group of civil servants some of whom don't like Trump but are not gonna do anything, some of whom fight it, some of whom might conspire against him but it's not some deep conspiracy that's going on. By the way, I'll repeat, I highly, highly recommend Yes Minister. It is one of the great television shows of all time. It's so smart. And it's so on the money because politicians are generally, generally speaking, they're not smart people. And they can be bamboozled easily. And because their incentives are so manipulated, they can be manipulated easily by smart civil servants. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broad. Using the super chat and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next...