{"id":29916,"date":"2025-06-18T17:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/?p=29916"},"modified":"2025-06-18T12:45:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T16:45:13","slug":"kol-the-deep-state-is-a-deadly-virus-guest-debbie-lerman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/kol-the-deep-state-is-a-deadly-virus-guest-debbie-lerman\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deep State Is a Deadly Virus | Guest: Debbie Lerman | Ep 337"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The government\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was such a naked power grab on such an unprecedented scale that, even five years later, we are still struggling to hold the responsible parties accountable and to even fully process what happened. One unintended consequence of lockdowns, however, was exposing some ugly truths about who is really in charge in America. Matt Kibbe sits down with Debbie Lerman, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/a.co\/d\/eS8bYsJ\" target=\"_blank\">The Deep State Goes Viral<\/a>,\u201d to talk about whether our elected officials actually have the power to change things or whether someone else is pulling the strings. The word democracy means rule by the people, and we like to tell ourselves that our politicians are bound by the consent of the governed. In a post-COVID world, however, it\u2019s becoming less and less apparent whether that remains the case in America.<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to Kibbe on Liberty on <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/kibbe-on-liberty\/id1452905037\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/5qdAKla1GhQVYTi7O7gHiz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Spotify<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PL36_JCmmBwZrrsXd0VIMJXHBSuWfUm57k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/freethepeoplefoundation.substack.com\/s\/kibbe-on-liberty\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Substack<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/get.blazetv.com\/kibbe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BlazeTV<\/a>, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matt Kibbe sits down with Debbie Lerman to talk about whether our elected officials actually have the power to change things or whether someone else is pulling the strings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":29917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3234,774],"tags":[1038,10318,1010,726,511,1042,1114],"content-type":[3489,3488],"coauthors":[157],"class_list":["post-29916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kibbe-on-liberty","category-podcast","tag-covid-19","tag-debbie-lerman","tag-deep-state","tag-kibbe-on-liberty","tag-matt-kibbe","tag-pandemic","tag-role-of-government","post_format-post-format-video","content-type-podcast","content-type-video"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.1 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Deep State Is a Deadly Virus | Guest: Debbie Lerman | Ep 337<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Matt Kibbe sits down with Debbie Lerman to talk about whether our elected officials actually have the power to change things or whether someone else is pulling the strings.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/kol-the-deep-state-is-a-deadly-virus-guest-debbie-lerman\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Deep State Is a Deadly Virus | Guest: Debbie Lerman | Ep 337\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Matt Kibbe sits down with Debbie Lerman to talk about whether our elected officials actually have the power to change things or whether someone else is pulling the strings.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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MSNBC\u2019s Keith Olbermann called Kibbe \u201cThe second worst person in the world.\u201d \u00a0 Dubbed \u201cthe scribe\u201d by the New York Daily News, Kibbe is the author of the #2 New York Times bestseller Don\u2019t Hurt People and Don\u2019t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto (HarperCollins 2014), and Hostile Takeover: Resisting Centralized Government's Stranglehold on America (HarperCollins 2012). He coauthored Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto (HarperCollins 2010). Kibbe has appeared frequently on national television, including FOX News, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. Before launching FreedomWorks, Kibbe served as a congressional Chief of Staff and House Budget Committee Associate. He was also Budget Director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Senior Economist for the RNC under Lee Atwater. Kibbe did graduate work in economics at George Mason University and received his B.A. in economics from Grove City College. He lives in Washington, DC with his awesome wife Terry, and their objectivist cats, Ragnar and Rearden. Kibbe is also a fanatical DeadHead, drinker of craft beer and whisky, and collector of obscure books on Austrian economics.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/mattkibbe","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/mattkibbe","https:\/\/x.com\/https:\/\/x.com\/mattkibbe","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/kibbeonliberty"],"url":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/author\/mkibbe\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29916"},{"taxonomy":"content-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-type?post=29916"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=29916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}