Oddbean

It’s not happening. Trump has no plan to deal with 1M+ unemployed bureaucrats. They’ll sell people on cuts, make some obvious ones and proclaim them loudly, and then end up growing government over 4 years. If you’re going to cut government you need a plan to deal with those affected. Like my plan to deport every fucking leftist/bureaucrat to Australia, relocate Israel to Tasmania, send the climate cult to Antarctica, and THEN move on. They won’t have time to organise and agitate under my plan. They will fester and destroy Trump.

I pretty much agree. Even if he believed in it, he wouldn't be able to do it. On one hand, he doesn't have a plan, as you say, to neutralize the more than predictable inner opposition from the bureaucracy. Which is the most surprising part of this whole second presidency run thing, in my opinion. One would have thought that he had learnt the lesson. Even if he doesn't intend to reduce the size of the State, Trump should have a plan ready to be deployed on Day 1, to expel ipso facto not just the top brass of the "Deep State", but four or five layers deep of bureaucracy. Then again, in a country as pathologically litigious as the US, we all now that the Neocon Machine, and more broadly the Dems, have a whole battery of law suits ready to be launched the very minute Trump takes possession of the chair, to impede and derail any and all movements to clean house. We saw that in 2016, how they consumed easily more than half of Trump's presidency with law suits and law fare. They'll do it again, times ten. And finally, even if he really wants to do it AND pours his whole willpower onto it, AND overcomes the barrage of lawsuits, the activist judges, the traitorous bureaucrats... he still needs to deal with Congress. Because I'm not an expert, but I think a lot of ALL THAT, like the federal income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, and the size of the State has to do with Congress, not with the Executive.

His supporters are caught up in the headlines of having support from RFK Jr, Tulsi, Muskrat, Thiel etc. It’s one thing for Elon to fire 5,000 Xitter employees - firing 500,000 public servants is a very different story. It doesn’t matter what they do, how effectively, nor how ineffectively. The market can’t absorb 500,000 bureaucrats let alone 2,000,000 as it would probably need to. So if you can’t occupy those who you’re going to displace you’d better have a plan to get them out of your country and Trump simply doesn’t. Without a plan they’re going to undermine your every move which is an impossible counterforce to deal with for what he wants to achieve. Unless the firings come with a one-way ticket to Aus/Antarctica/Tasmania then you’re just inviting the same people back into the system. He doesn’t have the guts to do what is needed. Trump will be at best, a false dawn.