Twitter Drags Eric Trump for Calling Ellen DeGeneres 'Deep State'

While Donald Trump taunts North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un over nukes with penis size comparisons, one of the first sons, Eric Trump, went after the usual targets on Twitter -- Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton ... and Ellen DeGeneres? In a tweet about who Twitter recommends he follow, he referred to all three of them as "deep state" and Twitter users had a field day with it.

Eric Trump, the son who Saturday Night Liveportrays as more childlike and inept than the rest of the men in his family, tweeted that he was shocked by who Twitter suggests he follow on the social media platform. Although, if he thought about it, he would likely conclude that Twitter suggests he follow Obama and Clinton because of his retweets of his father's rants about them. Twitter's algorithm suggesting Eric Trump follow The Ellen DeGeneres Show'sofficial account does appear more off, but it's not nearly as strange as calling the out funny woman "deep state" (the conspiracy theory that there is an underground network of people working to take down the Trump administration).

The term "deep state" isn't new. The Nation traced it as far back as Francis Bacon in 1605, although he put it in different terms.

"We see the government of God over the world is hidden," Bacon wrote, as quoted in The Nation last February when Trump used the term to describe anyone who opposed his agenda.

But like "fake news," "Crooked Hillary," "lock her up," and a few other Trumpisms used purely to denigrate Trump's detractors, "deep state" refers to nothing more than a state of paranoia, as exemplified by Eric Trump's irrational fear that a talk show host who happens to be a lesbian and activist for LGBT and animal rights is part of a shadowy conspiracy to take down his father's regime.

The outrageousness of his Eric Trump's assertion was not lost on Twitter.