Liberals have long scoffed at President Trump’s claim there is a “deep state” undermining him, but this week, a New York Times editorial board member wrote in a piece Tuesday that not only is Trump right, but the “deep state is alive and well.”

In a piece titled, “They Are Not the Resistance. They Are Not a Cabal. They Are Public Servants. Let us now praise these not-silent heroes,” Michelle Cottle, a member of the editorial board, wrote:

President Trump is right: The deep state is alive and well. But it is not the sinister, antidemocratic cabal of his fever dreams. It is, rather, a collection of patriotic public servants — career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others — who, from within the bowels of this corrupt and corrupting administration, have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.

Praising the “whistleblower” who first went to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA)’s committee before filing any formal complaint, Cottle said the unelected public servants protesting the president from within “deserve our gratitude.”

“Throughout the Trump presidency, there has been a trickle of fed-up individuals willing to step up and protest the administration’s war on science, expertise and facts,” Cottle wrote.

Cottle, in her piece, pointed to three public servants who did not remain anonymous and actually quit their jobs, unlike the “whistleblower” — Rod Schoonover, an analyst for the State Department; Joel Clement, former director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the Interior Department; and Lewis Ziska, a veteran plant physiologist with the Agriculture Department.

Cottle compared them to public servants at the State Department who have chosen to testify after House Democrats subpoenaed them as part of their impeachment inquiry against Trump.

She noted that White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney called them, “mostly career bureaucrats who are saying, ‘You know what, I don’t like President Trump’s politics, so I’m going to participate in this witch hunt.’”

Cottle insisted that was not the case, and that instead, they are “veteran public servants appalled by an administration that continues to subvert the public interest to the whims of a president who has mistaken himself for a king.”

“This is Mr. Trump’s deep state. For the sake of the nation, the American public should be clamoring for more patriots to join the conspiracy,” she wrote.

On Tuesday, CNN reported that the anonymous senior Trump administration official who wrote the op-ed last year claiming to be part of the resistance is now planning to publish a book anonymously.

White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham told CNN, “Takes a lot of conviction and bravery to write a whole book anonymously.”

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