NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland – Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) about how to take on the administrative state, former Pentagon Chief of Staff Kash Patel said “There is no deep state without the fake news mafia.”
Lamenting the fact Americans even have to talk about the reality of a “deep state,” Patel called it something one would normally hear about in “tyrannical dictatorships.”
“This is your mission: the deep state and the media cannot exist if you don’t turn them on,” he continued. “If we don’t band together against the media that is the bigger component of the deep state, it doesn’t matter who the president is.”
Patel and other panelists like former State Department official Amanda Milius and American Greatness writer Julie Kelly agreed the key to reforming the deep state is personnel.
“Personnel is the most important thing,” Milius said. “What you have to do when you come in is you fire an entire room full of bureaucrats.”
Milius, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, said the next president – who she believes will be Donald Trump – or administrative heads need to go in on day one and indiscriminately fire bureaucrats.
Schedule F, she said, was “one way the administration the administration figured out to fire corrupt bureaucrats.”
“I was the only person willing to kill my own fiefdom,” she continued, saying she dissolved her office when she left the Trump administration.
Ultimately, however, “none of the would be possible if Congress did its job … what we have is law by administration.”
The deep state was “built on purpose and it can be unbuilt on purpose,” she concluded.
The process “starts with personnel, and ends with congressional oversight,” Patel outlined. “The bench exists, the people are there for every agency and department.”
File/Kash Patel greets the crowd during a campaign rally at Minden-Tahoe Airport on October 08, 2022 in Minden, Nevada. Former U.S. President Donald Trump held a campaign style rally for Nevada GOP candidates ahead of the state’s midterm election on November 8th. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)
Kelly, who had done a lot of work in defense of persons arrested in connection with January 6, spoke about how the deep state weaponized itself against the American people.
Citing examples like the Russia collusion hoax and the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, Kelly said, “They took that weaponization and aimed it at half the country.”
Kelly described how the Department of Justice will “bastardize” statutes in order to “make up any charge” to go after American citizens.
Speaking specifically about January 6 defendants, of whom there are about 1,000, Kelly said the prosecutors “want 2,000 total arrests. Since when do you put a number on an investigation?”
“The real villains are the judges on the D.C. district court,” she said.
On the weaponization of the federal government, Milius added that there was a change in mentality of the FBI and other organizations like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, that reoriented their aims against normal American citizens.
“Waco, Ruby Ridge – they decided to make Americans the terrorists,” she said.
Patel said the documents marked classified at Mar-a-Lago and seized by the National Archives in February were already declassified by Trump. https://t.co/EbWXxrCKOD
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) May 5, 2022
Channeling Andrew Breitbart, panel moderator Jack Posobiec said Americans must have the same “mindset, and Andrew had this: you have to go on offense.”
“Conservatives have to stop being scared of the Washington Post writing you up, Jake Tapper writing you up,” he continued. “This is what Breitbart said, ‘they’re going call you a NAZI.’”
Saying Americans need to defend those the deep state targets like Steve Bannon, Posobiec concluded, “If you see someone walking to the fire, go and support them.”
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.
