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Notes -
A motte for the term: The deep state
Without endorsing any particular theories here, perhaps the best way to think about the deep state is that it is simply parts of the government that have developed their own distinct political goals and capabilities, and are involved in the political process in ways that may or may not be visible, legal or proper. In some vague sense, a "deep state" may simply be a function of a government. Any government that remains stable for long enough will develop capabilities that do not require a given person at the top, since the leaders change over time. Those abilities will then be put to use in service of whatever political goals unite that part of government.
This becomes more open and more contentious in a democracy when parts of the government revolt against elected leaders.
There's no point in ruminating on the Deep State or what it means because it means whatever the person deploying the term to make a political point wants it to mean. Christopher Wray has been accused of being "deep state" almost since he replaced Comey as FBI director, despite the fact that he's not only a political appointees but one whom Trump appointed himself. Deep state is nothing more than a smear against anyone in government who does something Trump disagrees with.
As for the actual civil service, part of the problem is that they're subject to laws passed by Congress and aren't just subordinates of the current administration. Part of the reason Trump is so often accused of being a wannabe dictator is that he expects the apparatus of government to do his bidding regardless of whether there's any legal basis for it. If Joe Biden told the Social Security Administration to stop sending checks to certain counties for whatever reason, the SSA would be correct to ignore him. Trump's concerns weren't as blatant, but he willfully ignored the normal avenues by which executive action is taking, and ended up confusing and pissing off the people he was relying upon.
You're saying it like it should prove something. Trump is notorious for bad appointments, he appointed many people who either stabbed him in the back, or made policies that were entirely contrary to what he declared he wanted to do, or completely ignored him and did their own thing. He appointed Fauci, for example. He appointed Sessions. He appointed/selected Pence. He is not great at selecting people who will - not even do what he wants, in any meaning of the expression - but at least not behave like they are his sworn enemies.
That is completely false, deep state exists and it is a vast federal bureaucracy which will defend its enormous and largely unchecked powers by any means necessary. Including, for example, impeaching the President. And being appointed by Trump does not contradict being a member of this bureaucracy - Trump can't just appoint a random person to be the head of a department, he'd usually be offered a choice of potential candidates. If every single one of them is the product of the same bureaucracy, or will be obstructed by it to the point they can't do anything at their position - what can he do? Fire the whole federal office to the last chair warmer? Even he is not that bold.
Technically yes. Factually, the opposite - the Congress routinely passes laws which leaves huge rulemaking powers in the hands of the federal bureaucracy and they only limit it in the most vague way. Even when the Congress does say something specifically, they would attempt to ignore it, and must be sued to actually follow the law. And even after an adverse court decision, they would just turn around and try again - because there's no personal responsibility for virtually anything (immunity!) and the most you get if you win a case against the bureaucracy is that they don't succeed this particular time and maybe pay you something from the taxpayer money. The system itself is immune to any damage and can not be hurt - so there's no incentive for them to not to try and violate the law if it serves them.
Just like literally every single other Republican candidate or President, to note
That's BS. He expects the apparatus - unreasonably, of course, because the apparatus reasonably considers him the mortal enemy and would sabotage his every move - to work with him, as the representative of the People, because they are supposed to be serving the People, and not instead to obstruct him on each turn. Of course, that could never happen, for the reasons I already stated.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-confirms-withholding-key-funds-schools-hunting-courses-shameful Random latest example. The federal government is using "stopping sending checks" as a tool to enforce compliance and force the dissenters to bend the knee ALL THE TIME. It's not some freak occurrence, it's literally their routine and favorite tool. Tons of regulations rest on it - if you don't comply with X, Y, Z, ..., you don't get federal money.
Wait, so you brought something Trump didn't do as an example of something for which he's a wannabe dictator? Of course. But the "normal avenues" is to work with the federal bureaucracy in ways that they built for working with them. Which would allow Trump to do exactly nothing because the federal bureaucracy has zero interest in helping Trump to do anything, and 100% interest in seeing him fail.
As I said, he is pretty lousy at choosing people to rely on. Not that it's an easy task - given that any person associated with Trump would be subjected to eternal hate of the most powerful bureaucracy in the world, and the tribe controlling virtually the whole academy, law, entertainment, high-tech and significant part of the major business - and they don't pull punches. But seeing it objectively - the results weren't that good. It is his personal fault - but it does not change the nature of the enemy he attempted to confront.
It is at the very least suggestive of Trump's difficulties stemming from both personal incompetence and poor judgment with respect to selecting subordinates (or alternatively, his appointees were fine but Trump himself was deficient in his conduct - if everyone you meet is an asshole, etc...), not a far-reaching scheme by career civil servants or even passive resistance from federal employees.
Congress impeached Trump. Both times.
Except in reality it's both. Moreover, the latter reinforces the former - if you know you'll have to walk through fire once you take the job, the candidate pool will be 10% heroes and 90% short-term grifters who don't mind the noise because they are shameless and their grift would work whether they are hated or not. If whoever doing the selection is bad at separating one from the other and very susceptible to flattery, then the chance the grifter gets the job are very high. These are not opposed, but reinforcing factors.
Yes, but the deep state prepared a basis for it. For the first one, mostly, the second one is such a clown show that it didn't even bother with preparing anything, it's purely "orange man hitler". But the first was the result of the alliance between the Dems in the Congress and the deep state, especially the security services and State Dept wings of it.
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I can't provide a source for this but iirc there was definitely talk behind closed doors of the kind of chilling effect that certain prosecutions had on team Trump. Shortly after someone signed up for the Trump government in a sincere attempt to help him achieve his goals, they would have been the subject of incredibly expensive to defend against prosecutions from a variety of different government sources.
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