I will throw this info about George W Bush/deep State into the mix.
It is from Economist Martin Armstrong.
“I have said before, up until 1999, I was actually asked to meet with people who wanted to run for president. They were told I was there to brief them on the real world economy but I was to also assess their mental capacity to handle the complexity. Then I was asked to go meet with George Bush Jr. and was told, “This is different, he is really stupid!” I was totally shocked. Everything up to that point in time was all about whether I thought they could handle a crisis. When I asked why they’d make someone stupid president, I was told he had the “name” and it suddenly shifted to just winning.”
“The deep state rose from 1999 onward. The bureaucracy could now be in charge with a president who is clueless. Obama followed Bush and he missed more than 50% of his daily security briefings. The bureaucracy gained substantial power under Bush and Obama. This is why they are so intent upon getting rid of Trump. They want their power back.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/conspiracy/who-realyl-is-the-deep-state/
I’ve always had issue with that assessment of Bush, he might not have been aggressive and domineering to most, but you don’t strap in to the cockpit of high performance aircraft and fly missions and be “stupid”. Merely being able to get into any aircraft and legally get it off the ground and back safely puts you well on the right side of the Bell curve...
Your posit there and that link are so much more plausible than W ever being at the front of anything so complicated and nefarious as international intrigue.
He was (like it or not) more of a truly citizen president with plenty of flaws, but most of his life he was deemed to be pretty much the all around “good old boy”, Texas style.
. Then I was asked to go meet with George Bush Jr. and was told, “This is different, he is really stupid!” I was totally shocked.
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Not buying it. They always call the Pubbies stupid - especially Reagan, and later Bush. Reagan was not stupid, and neither was Bush. W may not have been as interested in Policy as others, but he wasn’t stupid.
If someone doesn’t know all the buzz words of the chattering nabobs, they think he’s stupid-no just uninterested and not totally consumed over all the mundane crap the chattering class focus on.