If you’ve been following along, Trump supporters are convinced there is a coordinated effort by holdover Obama bureaucrats to undermine the Trump administration. They call it the ‘deep state, ‘ and it’s conspiracy theory garbage. Naturally, Sean Hannity, never one to shy away from anything Dear Leader Trump or his followers believe, is actively promoting it. Not by declaratively stating it mind you, but merely “asking questions,” which happens to be the favored approach of conspiracy theorists.

This prompted Kevin Williamson of National Review to write a piece, debunking the idea and doing it in a way that only Williamson can. He writes:

Where the current critics on the right go wrong — where they veer from criticism into conspiracy theory — is in assuming that the aims and ambitions of the various power centers within the federal bureaucracy are identical or aligned, that they represent a monolithic interest group that is both capable of coordinating efforts across the vast federal apparatus and inclined to do so. That creates exactly what the kooks and quacks and demagogues of the world most need: a nice, vague enemy that can be blamed for practically anything.

Williamson then goes on to state the obvious. Trump’s problems thus far, are not the result of any shadowy conspiracy against him, but rank incompetence as he honestly believed he could run the United States in a manner befitting ‘The Apprentice.’ That’s not the case:

Neocons, globalists, the Deep State, the shadow government, the International Jew, the Illuminati — it is nice to have someone to blame, especially if that someone does not exactly exist.

This is sloppy and stupid, and it is counterproductive, too. Team Trump’s first-down fumble on immigration and congressional Republicans’ apparent surrender on the Affordable Care Act are not the result of arcane and shadowy forces acting against the American interest — they are the result of choices made by identifiable people, and those people have got to go. But that is not going to get done if you spend your days hunting the political equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. President Trump likes to read the tabloids, but presumably it was not Bat Boy advising him on that first executive order on refugees. The irony is that all this chasing after shadows instead of undertaking the hard and thankless business of governing is one of the things that empower those unaccountable bureaucrats and the time-servers in the alphabet-soup agencies. You think they’re sitting around having debates about how many neocons can dance on the head of a pin?

That was enough to set Hannity off.

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/841142358066548736

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/841142915015557120

https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/841143659416432641

One of the more favored ways by Trumpers to dismiss criticism is to say a publication in the question is, “irrelevant.” Naturally, this is comical in light of Hannity’s caterwauling about illegal leaks. Hannity, Trump and Sarah Palin all became fans of Wikileaks despite the fact that their actions may have been illegal on the DNC emails and Podesta emails. But since that served their political ends, the means are irrelevant.

You cannot have it both ways, Sean.