I am trying to decide if the Administration understood the deep state problem before they got attacked by it. It was pretty obvious for all to see in hindsight.

So, if they had advance knowledge, what strategy might they undertake ?
Fire them all? Not possible and very very bad optics.
Arrest the perps? Needed the Justice Dept fully staffed with loyalists.
It is possible they might have embarked on a very deliberate anti media campaign to blunt the delivery tool of the deep state- the NYT, CNN and so forth. If you spent December positioning the media as untrustworthy, lying jerks and the Dems as lazy slimebags who will not cooperate at all, you might decide you can ride out the first wave of attacks, use it to shore up your base, get Congress moving on the big stuff while the deep state exposes itself.
As long as the silly accusations keep looking silly and Trump keeps moving forward, the voters will stay with him and his support will firm up.
OR
They did not see it coming at all and stepped right into it.
So fellow Pragmudgeons, what do you think?
Is the Deep State like this?
OR LIKE THIS? 



I got to me. I am a RiCon.
One has to be careful in handling garbage. Sometimes it is best to let the stink stay with the person making the stink than to try to explain it away. The way you answer it is to do good things that make the other side look petty.
The deep state has been in full-on scandal mode for days about how Trump people are criminals simply because they met with Russians at some point- and now Trump is tweeting pictures of Schumer and Pelosi meeting with Russians.
Schumer met with Putin- so obviously Schumer should be hauled away to prison immediately.
It’s as if these people are so used to dealing with opponents who can’t or won’t hit back that they have no real idea what to do when they run up against someone who can and will.
In any of the 17 dwarfs put up by the gop to run for preezy had managed to win election, I can guess what would happened- their target would have already been forced to resign. But they wouldn’t have been targeted in the fist place, because none of the other candidates would have dared choose an attorney general who threatened the left in the first place.
The real problem for the deep staters is their own bone-deep incompetence. Otherwise they wouldn’t have lost, because a candidate like Trump wouldn’t have had anything to run against- and a competent deep-state apparat surely wouldn’t have been reduced to third-rate scandal mongering, either.
The blazes with these idiots.
I underestimated the deep state problem.
I think the only way to eliminate it is to starve it of resources.
YESSSS!!!
Trump’s budget does just that.
So all this noise and smoke – and nothing. Nope. Not “nothing”. Trump has managed to do any number of things the DS SHOULD have opposed. Only they were too busy having a fried brain moment. ?Have you noticed there has been almost NO COMMENT about more money for the military and less for all the other bureaucracies.
[Switch to scene of Hannibal Lecter eating fried democrat brain.]
I vote for ignoring them, not analyzing them. Quit paying them and they’ll scuttle off. as Brent notes.