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I'd think that 'The deep state stole the 2020 election for Biden' is a good place to start the discussion.
Or “the deep state is the reason Trump didn’t accomplish _____.” I was at a gun show this weekend and heard that more or less verbatim from the next aisle over.
Depending on the part removed by the underscore that could actually be totally reasonable and plausible. There were multiple instances where Trump said he wanted to do something and then the machinery of government made sure that could not or did not happen.
Usually, though, this ends up being that he was talked out of it by his own advisors, not that some life-tenure civil servant had anything to do with it.
Trump wanted to normalise relations with Russia and dial down the American Empire - he was prevented from doing so by the Crossfire Hurricane investigation/Mueller probe, and by his own generals refusing to follow orders. You can just go look at all the people involved in the origination of Crossfire Hurricane and the FISA abuse - those people are absolutely members of the "deep state" that Trump supporters are talking about but "life-tenure civil servant" isn't a good description of them. If you want a specific example, look at Peter Strzok.
How exactly did the probe prevent him from doing something? I don't recall any actual effect on him outside of media coverage, since there wasn't enough substance to the claims. I can agree that people like Strzok are partisan hacks. I don't see how they materially kept him from taking an action.
What did you mean by the generals refusing orders? That sounds much more serious.
Okay, I have a very hard time believing Donald "MAGA" Trump ever said this. It feels so against his branding.
Trump was unable to really negotiate with Putin or Russia because the prevailing notion that he was compromised by Russian blackmail meant that any kind of act which involved lowering the temperature with regards to Russia would have been met with immediate impeachment by the republicans, who were staunchly anti Trump and would have kicked him out at the drop of a hat (his policies were better for getting republicans elected and more popular, but they were violently loathed by the people who actually purchased influence from the GOP). To the best of my knowledge, this is also why he refused to pardon the J6 protestors.
Trump's branding was AMERICA FIRST. His comments about forcing Europe to pay for the military protection being provided or pulling it away was absolutely a dialling down of the empire, and he also wanted to pull out of the graveyard of empires. If you go back and look at his earlier messaging, that's one hundred percent what he was selling.
EDIT: Someone recently posted a comment with a link to this story in it - https://www.timesofisrael.com/outgoing-us-envoy-to-syria-says-he-hid-true-number-of-troops-from-officials/
Trump wanted to get out of Syria, his own military lied to him in order to trick him into remaining.
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