Who believes in the deep state?

The claim: A hidden network of unelected officials secretly controls US government policy. Counts as saying it's true: Says or endorses that a covert, coordinated group controls policy regardless of elections. Counts as saying it's false: Says no such controlling network exists.

Says it's true (13)

Ian Carroll: “the Deep state is the conglomerate of organized crime and intelligence agencies that work in the shadows as well as the halls of power but they're not supposed to exist and we're not supposed to know about them” (2025-03-05, source)
Elon Musk: “The deep state is everywhere” (2025-02-24, source)
Laura Loomer: “Deep State Caught Secretly Meeting at Spy Museum to Steal 2024 Election” (2023-05-10, source)
Marjorie Taylor Greene: “there are bureaucrats throughout our entire government that have abused their power for decades on end you know them as the Deep State presidents come and go but the Deep State remains in power they protect and Empower corrupt politicians like Joe Biden and Target any patriot wh…” (2023-09-28, source)
Candace Owens: “the military industrial complex is obviously real and it exists and we refer to this now as the Deep State” (2025-03-20, source)
Nick Fuentes: “It’s not even accurate to call this the “Biden Administration,” it’s the National Security Apparatus and deep state in full control. President NATO.” (2021-05-03, source)
Alex Jones: “KABOOM: Trump says he is set to release how NATO working with the deep state started the Ukraine-Russia proxy war.” (2026-10-19, source)
Jimmy Dore: “Trump & the Republicans are now complicit in Jan 6 PsyOp cuz they're framing Cole as the pipe bomber to cover for the cop who planted the bomb for the deep state , so it doesn't matter who you vote for.” (2026-09-22, source)
Joe Rogan: “look Trump’s not a perfect guy, but this thing he was saying about the deep state is 100% real!” (2021-11-26, source)
Michael Flynn: “I believe that there are numerous elements inside the federal government that are still in control of certain and vital aspects of our govt as well as influencing decisions all the way into the Oval Office.” (2026-01-12, source)
Jack Posobiec: “Bc he is still in charge of the deep state” (2026-10-18, source)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “Listen and learn how the deep state subverts American democracy.” (2024-10-25, source)
Tucker Carlson: “The biggest decisions in the US government are made by the Deep State – and they aren't even good at it.” (2026-08-12, source)

Hints it's true (8)

Donald Trump: “With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state” (2025-05-30, source)
Russell Brand: “My prayer is that ALL deep state violence, whether it's Israeli, British, French or Chinese, would STOP.” (2025-04-03, source)
Dan Bongino: “Yes, the deep state is real. And the pipeline bombing scandal proves it.” (2023-02-10, source)
JD Vance: “If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people, the same institutions tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration,” (2026-06-25, source)
Andrew Tate: “I guess some Americans call it the deep state, but I like to look at it in a more global way.” (2023-07-12, source)
Theo Von: “Imagine puppeteering a severely cognitively distressed senior citizen for your own selfish wants. To me, thats clearly whats been happening.” (2025-01-21, source)
Ben Shapiro: “FEMA targeted Trump supporters. The deep state is real, and must be cleaned out.” (2024-11-11, source)
Donald Trump Jr.: “If there was ever confirmation that the Deep State is real, illegal & endangers national security, it's this. Their interests above all else.” (2017-07-07, source)

Unclear (3)

Bill Maher: “How ironic, with all the talk about the urgency to switching to green energy, our deep state of petty tyrants wasted almost two decades over permitting and nitpicking over the environmental impacts and social effects of the very thing that would most positively impact the enviro…” (2023-10-27, source)
Mehdi Hasan: “So, they don’t actually care about reform or bureaucracy or deep state; they care about neutering all institutions that can stand up to Donald Trump and MAGA.” (2024-12-02, source)
Piers Morgan: “it could be argued that the relationship between the public and the scientists the public health authorities broke down so dramatically over the course of the pandemic where that was due to government Behavior or what some would call unelected bureaucrats overstepping the line d…” (2023-08-08, source)

Hints it's false (6)

Jon Stewart: “Trump "rode the power of, quote unquote, the secret knowledge, to light up his audiences, to drive them mad with injustice and how they were going to fight it. There was this deep state and they all knew about it.” (2025-07-10, source)
Michael Shermer: “I wrote about the Deep State and QAnon and the Pizzagate business—that ping pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C. Do Republicans really think Hillary Clinton and Tom Hanks and Beyoncé are running a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria?” (2026-04-18, source)
Adam Kinzinger: “We were briefed as to how Russia got DNC emails. If they bother to care.” (2023-12-23, source)
Anderson Cooper: “Again, the bottom line is this, saying you were spied on by the deep state, even saying it over and over does not make it so.” (2018-05-23, source)
Seth Meyers: “Republicans spent years lecturing the rest of us not to question the intelligence agencies, even when they violated civil liberties and abused their powers,” (2019-10-09, source)
Barack Obama: “Even in the toughest of circumstances, including a politics that does not always fully recognize the value of their work, our public servants -- often at great personal sacrifice -- continue striving to build a better country” (2016-05-02, source)

Says it's false (4)

Mick West: “I don't think there's a deep state conspiracy in the near the sense it's being made out to be” (2019-03-09, source)
Stephen Colbert: “One bit of good news coming out all this [is] it’s all pretty solid proof that there is no ‘deep state,’ because if there was, they would have stopped this.” (2025-04-03, source)
Bill Nye: “The trouble inherent in conspiracy theories, as the term is used nowadays, is the presumption that there is a "deep state," that there is a group of five dozen people, who are running the whole show. The world is far, far more complicated than that.” (2017-11-08, source)
John Oliver: “The conspiracy involves a range of batshit theories.” (2020-08-17, source)

No stance found (6)

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