But it might not be what you think
By Michael Crowley
POLITICO Magazine
September 6, 2017
At a conference in mid-July, Barack Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, remarked that executive branch officials have an “obligation … to refuse to carry out” outrageous or anti-democratic orders from President Donald Trump. The comment quickly caught the attention of Rush Limbaugh, who saw nothing short of a threat to the republic. “He practically called for a coup!” the radio host bellowed on the air a few days later, warning of a plot orchestrated by “embeds in the deep state at the Pentagon, State Department, various intelligence agencies.”
Embeds in the what? A year ago, the term “deep state” was the province of Edward Snowden acolytes and fans of paperback espionage thrillers. Today, Limbaugh takes it for granted that his millions of listeners know what it meant.