You might be too young to remember “let Reagan be Reagan”. Deep state was a thing back then too.
Thanks! Reagan was the first President I voted for. But those were my college years, so I wasn’t reading the papers or watching the news.
From the interwebs:
In 1982 and ’83, in the Reagan White House, the more politically minded Manafort side was represented by Chief of Staff James Baker. Meanwhile, National Security Adviser William P. Clark was the Lewandowski of the situation, whose approach was at the time summed up with four simple words: “let Reagan be Reagan.” In general, “being Reagan” meant adherence to the President’s harder-line “raw, conservative instincts,” as TIME put it.