The establishment never rests, and neither does its obsession with tearing down President Donald Trump. This week, Trump took to Truth Social to thank television host and media personality Dr. Phil McGraw after a pointed op-ed published in The Epoch Times called out one of the Left’s oldest and most tiresome playbooks: dismissing Trump’s intelligence as a way to avoid engaging with his ideas, his record, and his results. Trump’s message was simple and direct — “The Deep State never sleeps.” And he’s absolutely right.
The op-ed in question, titled “Don’t Mistake the Messenger for the Message on the Question of Trump’s Intelligence,” makes an argument that millions of everyday Americans have understood for years but rarely hear voiced in polite media circles: that the relentless focus on mocking Trump personally is a deliberate strategy to distract from the substance of what he stands for and what he has actually accomplished. Dr. Phil, who has spent decades studying human behavior and cutting through noise to find truth, isn’t the kind of man who pulls punches — and he didn’t here.
The Left’s Oldest Weapon: Ridicule Instead of Debate
Let’s be honest about what’s really going on. When the corporate media, career bureaucrats, and Beltway insiders can’t win a policy argument, they go personal. They did it in 2016. They did it through four years of his first term. They tried it during the 2024 campaign. And they’re still doing it now, well into President Trump’s second term in office.
The strategy is as old as Washington itself — attack the man, not the message. If you can convince enough people that Trump is somehow unfit, unstable, or unintelligent, you never have to answer for the failures of the administrative state he’s been dismantling piece by piece. You never have to explain why the border was left wide open. You never have to justify the inflation that crushed American families. You never have to account for the foreign policy disasters that emboldened adversaries around the globe.
Instead, the Deep State’s media allies just keep churning out the same condescending narrative: Trump is a buffoon, his supporters are rubes, and anyone who defends him must be confused or compromised. Dr. Phil’s op-ed cuts right through that noise — and the President noticed.
Why This Moment Matters
President Trump’s decision to amplify this piece isn’t just about accepting a compliment. It reflects something deeper about the battle being waged right now for the soul of this country. The forces aligned against Trump — entrenched bureaucracies, globalist institutions, legacy media conglomerates, and political operatives who have never faced a real election — understand that their power depends on controlling the narrative.
For years, they controlled that narrative almost completely. They decided what was news and what wasn’t. They decided who was credible and who wasn’t. They decided which questions were legitimate and which were to be mocked out of the conversation. That era is over — and they know it.
Voices like Dr. Phil’s matter precisely because they come from outside the traditional political-media complex. When someone with his reach and his credibility stands up and says, in plain English, that the attacks on Trump’s intelligence are a distraction from legitimate debate, it reaches people who might not be reading conservative news sites every day. It plants a seed of doubt in minds that have been marinated in anti-Trump propaganda for nearly a decade.
The Deep State’s greatest fear isn’t a policy defeat. It’s losing control of the story.
Trump Has Earned the Right to Say ‘I Told You So’
Consider what President Trump has actually accomplished — both in his first term and continuing into his second. He rebuilt the military. He secured the southern border through sheer force of political will against institutional resistance. He brokered historic diplomatic agreements in the Middle East that experts said were impossible. He presided over one of the strongest pre-pandemic economies in modern American history. He cut taxes, rolled back regulations, and stood up to China when the entire Washington establishment was cashing Beijing’s checks.
None of that looks like the work of someone who doesn’t understand what he’s doing. In fact, it looks like the work of someone who understood exactly what was broken in Washington and had the courage — and yes, the intelligence — to fight the machine from the inside.
The people who spent years insisting Trump was in over his head are the same people who gave us open borders, runaway spending, foreign policy humiliations, and a weaponized federal bureaucracy. Maybe the question of intelligence is being directed at the wrong people.
- The same experts who mocked Trump’s trade instincts now acknowledge China was taking advantage of the U.S. for decades.
- The same officials who undermined his border policies watched illegal crossings surge the moment his policies were reversed.
- The same media figures who called his economic approach reckless watched American workers thrive under his tax and deregulation agenda.
Bottom Line
President Trump’s thank-you to Dr. Phil is more than a social media post — it’s a reminder of why this fight matters. The Deep State doesn’t sleep because it never stops trying to shape what Americans think, believe, and ultimately accept as true. Every time a credible voice steps forward to challenge the establishment’s preferred narrative about Trump, it chips away at the wall of propaganda that the ruling class has spent years constructing.
The American people are paying attention. They see through the smears. And they showed exactly what they think in November 2024. Dr. Phil was right to say it, and President Trump was right to amplify it. The messenger and the message are both worth defending — and the Deep State’s panic proves it.
