Well, considering the author is Nancy Pelosi's biographer, and nobody involved disavowed the story in 3 years despite its very widespread circulation, and how much the American MAGA right has dissected it since, I'm not quite sure why it would be that hard to believe.
Thanks for the context!
Oh yes the infamous brag of the deep state
When I was younger, around when Unqualified Reservations was being written and coining the term, I was pretty incensed at the Deep State. Around 2020, I became quite thankful for it. Some of it is certainly due to getting older and more conservative. But also as frustrating as bureaucracy is, it's still drastically better than autocracy. We take that for granted at our peril.