When Donald Trump first got into office, it became apparent that his political instincts were good.
He certainly proved that by beating 16 other seasoned Republican politicians by knowing exactly how to appeal to ordinary Americans who had long been ignored by the Washington elite in both parties.
But what Trump could never overcome was the massive Deep State “swamp” — careerist federal bureaucrats who are little more than left-wing Democratic operatives and who worked in the shadows to either slow-walk his policies or ignore them altogether. The same was true for ranking senior managers and staffers burrowed into the massive federal bureaucracy.
Well, Trump is very probably going to run again for president in 2024, and if he does, he will win the GOP nomination easily. And if he does that, he very well could win the presidency again after four disastrous years of Joe Biden.
Should Trump get his well-deserved second term, he will arrive in Washington, D.C. with a new battle plan for taking on — and actually draining — the swamp. And there is virtually nothing the Washington careerists can do about it.
Trump and his allies have spent the last several months meticulously planning not only his return to the White House but also a massive overhaul of the federal bureaucracy down to the mid-staff level that could lead to tens of thousands of firings.
According to Axios, whose correspondents spent three months interviewing some two dozen Trump insiders and others familiar with the planning, Trump will reimplement “Schedule F,” an executive order he issued just days before the 2020 election and which was quickly rescinded by President Joe Biden that calls for completely reshaping hundreds of federal agencies.
The plan calls for replacing current bureaucrats with young professionals who are all-in with his “MAGA” agenda. Schedule F formed a new category of federal employees who are in “positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character,” and allows for those employees to be replaced following a presidential transition.
“The Federal Government benefits from career professionals in positions that are not normally subject to change as a result of a Presidential transition,” the order stated.
Axios added: “Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected, purging potentially thousands of civil servants and filling career posts with loyalists to him and his “America First” ideology, people involved in the discussions tell Axios.
“The impact could go well beyond typical conservative targets such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service. Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.”
As many as 50,000 employees could immediately be fired, including many at the Justice Department, Pentagon and the FBI.
Axios explained further that Trump’s massive effort to literally reform federal institutions and agencies and change their political culture is an ongoing effort, likely to undergo several tweets before Inauguration Day 2025.
“Well-funded groups are already developing lists of candidates selected often for their animus against the system — in line with Trump’s long-running obsession with draining ‘the swamp,’” the outlet reported. “This includes building extensive databases of people vetted as being committed to Trump and his agenda.”
“The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported. What is happening now is an inversion of the slapdash and virtually non-existent infrastructure surrounding Trump ahead of his 2017 presidential transition,” the report continued.
“These groups are operating on multiple fronts: shaping policies, identifying top lieutenants, curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale, and preparing for legal challenges and defenses that might go before Trump-friendly judges, all the way to a 6-3 Supreme Court,” Axios added.
Trump learned a lot of lessons during his first term, namely, the federal bureaucracy is a creature unto itself, shielded from the public whose employees and managers know full well no matter what they do, Congress will continue to fund them.
As such, he won’t rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, he’ll simply replace them with a whole new ship.
Sources include: