In the classic comedy Carry on Cleo, Julius Caesar (as played by the late Kenneth Williams) utters the immortal lines: “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.” Something of the spirit of Williams’ Caesar seems to animate Donald Trump as he chunters angrily on Twitter about an alleged conspiracy against him.
The US president rages about the “greatest witch-hunt in American history”. He has also frequently accused members of his own government of conspiring against him, tweeting darkly that this is “Big stuff. Deep State ”.
This accusation — that there is a “deep state” of government employees and agencies determined to destroy the Trump presidency — has become standard stuff among the president’s most ardent supporters. Two recent best-selling books have popularised the idea and the phrase: The Plot to Destroy Trump by Ted Malloch and Roger Stone; and Killing the Deep State by Jerome Corsi. The president’s closest supporters and relatives have also embraced this notion. His son, Donald Jr, tweeted: “The Deep State is real, illegal and endangers national security.”