Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

The ‘deep state’ and ‘the swamp’ are both favorite Trump targets. Here’s the difference.

The ‘deep state’ and ‘the swamp’ are both favorite Trump targets. Here’s the difference.

Nine days before the United States Presidential Election, supporters of former President Donald Trump flood the streets of midtown for a sold out campaign rally in Madison Square Garden, October 27, 2024, in New York City, New York.

(Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Donald Trump has promised to do many things once he reoccupies the White House. Among the most famous, and most desired by his biggest fans, is his vow to “drain the swamp” and “ demolish the deep state.”

The first and arguably most important challenge for such a project is definitional. What is the deep state? And what is the swamp? Are they different? How so?


Trump doesn’t have a clear answer. He often uses the terms interchangeably. And he’s not alone. Many in the media do the same.

That’s understandable if you try to put yourself inside Trump’s head (something I don’t necessarily recommend). During his first administration, he was repeatedly undermined by leaks and other schemes from within the federal bureaucracy, including his own Cabinet. Whether this was the work of the deep state or the swamp is something of a tomayto-tomahto distinction for someone who divides the world into friends and enemies. But any serious effort to get rid of either one requires making distinctions.

As the metaphor implies, the swamp is a hot, humid, malarial ecosystem teeming with all manner of critters, each with its own self-interested agenda. (And if you’ve spent a summer in D.C., you know the term has more than figurative verisimilitude.) The idea of the nation’s capital being a pestilent redoubt where politicians go native once they contract “ Potomac fever ” has been around for generations. George W. Bush’s administration even issued a handy memo to his staff on how to spot signs of infection.

The term “deep state,” on the other hand, conjures a colder, more sterile image of disciplined, professional, secretive operators networked across government and united around a single, nefarious agenda.

The biggest difference between these two concepts is the most important one: The swamp exists; the deep state doesn’t.

My Dispatch colleague Kevin D. Williamson has likened the deep state to the term “Vikings,” a catchall for a disparate “collection of pirates, traders, slavers, settlers, squabbling potentates” and others. Vikings fought Vikings all the time because the Vikings were not a monolithic or unified group.

And neither are the warring factions and fiefdoms that make up Washington. For instance, the Wall Street Journal recently reported intense infighting among and within various intelligence agencies over the origins of COVID-19. The FBI — deep state HQ, according to many in Trump World — was fairly convinced that the pandemic started with a lab leak, the newspaper reported, but competing agencies conspired to keep that verdict from reaching the president’s ears.

The whole idea that the deep state is an evil organization, like Hydra in the Marvel comics or SPECTRE in the James Bond movies, is little more than a conspiracy theory. It’s based on the bizarre assumption that government bureaucrats and political operatives are incredibly competent and disciplined at doing super-secret stuff but fairly incompetent and lazy in their day jobs.

Then there’s the swamp. This catchall term describes something real: Washington’s vast, cacophonous conglomeration of favor-dealing, rent-seeking, back-scratching, self-dealing, special-pleading interests. The founders called them “factions.”

What makes the swamp so hard to drain is the collusion between the state and these factions. Real savings won’t come from purging the federal bureaucracy, a workforce that hasn’t grown appreciably since the 1960s. As the political scientist John J. DiIulio Jr. recently noted, a huge share of the bureaucracy consists of contract managers for private-sector firms. Businesses and nonprofits — including defense contractors and healthcare systems — employ more than three times as many people who ultimately get paid by taxpayers as the federal government does.

Those factions are also political constituencies. And that’s why I suspect we will hear a lot more about fighting the deep state in 2025 than we will about draining the swamp. The nice thing about conspiracy theories is that they can’t be disproved. Blaming failures on shadowy forces is standard fare for politicians because angering their constituencies is hard.

Besides, there’s little evidence that Trump has any desire to drain the swamp so much as to reward those swamp creatures he likes. Industrial policy and protectionism, two of his top priorities, are among the oldest forms of swampiness because they create vast new markets for exemptions, subsidies and anti-competitive lobbying. Indeed, the proliferation of Big Tech moguls and cryptocurrency speculators around Trump makes it seem as if Mar-a-Lago is subsiding into the Everglades before our eyes.

The ‘deep state’ and ‘the swamp’ are both favorite Trump targets. Here’s the difference was first published by the Tribune Content Agency, and was republished with permission.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast.

Read More

A Witch Hunt Won’t Feed America
red meat in white plastic bag

A Witch Hunt Won’t Feed America

Missouri’s food economy runs on undocumented labor. Turning a blind eye won’t work anymore.

In meatpacking plants across Missouri, hundreds of workers clock in before dawn, keeping one of the state’s most essential industries up and running. Many of them are Latino immigrants, some undocumented, who have become the invisible backbone of Missouri’s $93.7 billion agriculture economy. They’re the ones who process the pork and clean the poultry that end up on our dinner tables.

Keep ReadingShow less
Two speech bubbles overlapping.

Recent data shows that Americans view members of the opposing political party overly negatively, leading people to avoid political discourse with those who hold different views.

Getty Images, Richard Drury

How To Motivate Americans’ Conversations Across Politics

Introduction

A large body of research shows that Americans hold overly negative distortions of those across the political spectrum. These misperceptions—often referred to as "Perception Gaps"—make civil discourse harder, since few Americans are eager to engage with people they believe are ideologically extreme, interpersonally hostile, or even threatening or inferior. When potential disagreement feels deeply uncomfortable or dangerous, conversations are unlikely to begin.

Correcting these distortions can help reduce barriers to productive dialogue, making Americans more open to political conversations.

Keep ReadingShow less
A medical professional wearing gloves, putting a band-aid on a patient's shoulder.

RFK Jr. has publicly challenged the safety of vaccines, although the evidence he cites is widely disputed by mainstream scientists, medical institutions, and public health experts.

Getty Images, Jackyenjoyphotography

Just the Facts: Vaccine Safety, RFK Jr.’s Claims, and Florida’s Mandate Rollback

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is currently the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services and is responsible for shaping national health policy, managing public health programs, and guiding medical research and regulatory frameworks.

He has publicly challenged the safety of vaccines, including required childhood immunizations and COVID-19 vaccines. However, the evidence he cites is widely disputed by mainstream scientists, medical institutions, and public health experts.

Keep ReadingShow less
League of Women Voters of Arkansas President Bonnie Miller on a hike, standing in front of a landscape view.

Katie Fahey speaks with League of Women Voters of Arkansas President Bonnie Miller on democracy reform across the state and her work in civically educating and engaging residents.

The Fahey Q&A With Bonnie Miller of the League of Women Voters, Arkansas

Since organizing the Voters Not Politicians 2018 ballot initiative that put citizens in charge of drawing Michigan's legislative maps, Fahey has been the founding executive director of The People, which is forming statewide networks to promote government accountability. She regularly interviews colleagues in the world of democracy reform for our Opinion section.

Bonnie Miller is known for her activism in democracy reform in Arkansas and is the current president of the League of Women Voters of Arkansas and chair of Save AR Democracy, a campaign to protect ballot initiatives in Arkansas. In 2020, Miller led the Arkansas Voters First campaign, which garnered significant support but was eventually struck down by the Arkansas Supreme Court. She continues to lead the fight for a better democracy in her state while also working in higher education at the University of Arkansas School of Law.

Keep ReadingShow less