It Turns Out the ‘Deep State’ Is Actually Kind of Awesome
Meet the unsung heroes making our country great.
[APPLAUSE] “I will totally obliterate the deep state. I will fire —” Donald Trump is obsessed with the “deep state.” “The deep state — The deep state — The deep state is destroying our nation. Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.” And many Republicans are widening his paranoia. “These unelected bureaucrats ruining this country.” From a cabal of security agents to “The sick political class that hates our country.” If elected, Trump’s vowed to gut the federal government. “Reinstate the Schedule F executive order and, quote, ‘fire rogue bureaucrats.’” But who are these bureaucrats, and what makes them so dangerous? We needed answers, so we took a trip across America. “In 100 yards, take the exit.” In search of the people behind this threatening entity. [LAUGHS] [LAUGHS] First stop, Huntsville, Ala. Sure looks like some nefarious government activity happens around here. “You have reached your destination.” Meet Scott Bellamy. “I am a mission manager in the Planetary Missions Program Office.” He drives a Nissan Titan four by four. He’s loved “Star Trek” since he was a kid. “Of course I have a favorite character. It’s either Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock.” And he may have quite literally saved the planet from annihilation. “Potentially.” You see, Scott managed a mission called “The Double Asteroid Redirection Test.” And back in 2022, his team used your tax dollars to pull off something kind of incredible. “You have an asteroid, and you have a spacecraft, and you fly the spacecraft into the asteroid and try to change the trajectory of that asteroid. It’s like playing pool in space. Everybody was holding their breath. This is the moment of truth. Did we hit it?” [APPLAUSE] “We got it?” “And we have impact.” “We got it.” “A giant leap for [INAUDIBLE].” They knocked an asteroid off its course, proving something that had previously only been done in movies. “Saving the world from an ‘Armageddon’ scenario, potentially.” Next, we traveled deep into the swamp itself, Washington, D.C. “You have arrived.” This is Radhika Fox. “I am the assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency.” She loves Pilates, making salads and watching the Taylor Swift Eras Tour on TV with her family. “I think we’re all pretty 1989.” Oh, and she led an operation to make our drinking water lead-free in 10 years. “That’s the dream.” “Worried and angry about lead contamination, residents of Newark, N.J., are demanding bottled water and answers.” “Lead is a neurotoxin that can cause irreversible brain damage. Folks are drinking out of these pipes right now.” “Every single American child will soon be able to turn on that faucet, and their moms and dads know that the water they’re drinking is clean.” When President Biden announced a nationwide plan to remove lead water pipes, Radhika’s team made it happen. “Yep. That’s right.” Water utilities would be legally required to replace all remaining lead pipes. “Nine million in 10 years or less.” It’s an expensive bet. “$50 billion. But those benefits are truly priceless because it’s the well-being of this nation that’s at stake.” You want to replace your own water pipes? You got the skills to launch an asteroid-deflecting spacecraft? No. That’s why your tax dollars pay experts like Radhika and Scott. Important work like this is happening all over America, from helping two million victims of the opioid crisis to engineering major breakthroughs in nuclear fusion and helping make hearing aids affordable for 30 million people. Yup. The “deep state” is hard at work making America great. Just because we don’t know about it doesn’t make it suspicious. “You have arrived.” Our final stop, Chicago, Ill. [MUSIC PLAYING] Meet Nancy Alcantara. “I am the acting director of enforcement for the wage and hour division for the Midwest regional office for the U.S. Department of Labor. I had to take a breath, yes.” She still eats Lucky Charms for breakfast, trains for marathons and loves Latin dancing. “Cumbia, bachata, cha-cha-cha. You name it, I did it.” And she uses your tax dollars to get kids out of working in dangerous slaughterhouses. “13-, 14-, 15-year-olds working on the kill floor. Cleaning body parts, right? Animal carcasses. They’re working with machinery, such as skull splitters, bone splitters.” Nancy and her colleagues raided slaughterhouses in several states and found more than 100 children working illegally. Last year their employer, Packers Sanitation, was fined $1.5 million — one of the largest child labor cases in American history. “Kids would die. Kids would get limbs amputated. I don’t even want to imagine what would happen if no one did this job.” These guys work for you, but Trump wants them working for him. “Trump wants to fire at least thousands of these people that he calls pejoratively the deep state.” “Schedule F would allow Trump to fire up to 50,000 of them and replace them with like-minded people.” “Sometimes it’s really hard to read the newspaper, where you feel like we as public servants are being attacked.” Now, this doesn’t mean that Americans can’t have different ideas about how big the federal government should be. After all, there’s no shortage of examples of real government overreach and overspend. But Trump’s teaching us to expect the worst from people in government when the truth is, they’re actually some of our best. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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