What would president Josh Shapiro do?

Or AOC? 

Or Gavin Newsom? 

Or Pete Buttigieg?

Or any competent Democrat who becomes president?

He or she would clean house of dangerous enemies of democracy hiding within the government.

That is what Trump believes he is doing.

Tool for cutting the federal workforce

We need to start with a premise of how Trump sees the federal workforce.  He thinks they are enemies. 

Elon Musk, interviewed alongside Trump on February 18, said:

All we’re really trying to do here is restore the will of the people through the president. And — and what we’re finding is there’s an unelected bureaucracy. Speaking of unelected, there’s a — there’s a vast federal bureaucracy that is implacably opposed to the — the president and the Cabinet.

And you look at, say, D.C. voting. It’s 92 percent Kamala. Okay, so we’re in 92 percent Kamala. That’s a lot. -- They don’t like me here either. -- I think about that number a lot. I’m like, 92 percent. That’s, basically, almost everyone.

Elon Musk is not totally wrong. Federal employees are hired on the basis of merit. They skew toward the demographic that supported Trump the least: the college-educated person who would chose public service work instead of private enterprise. The culture of the federal system is to be loyal to the mission and the department, not to the president.

From Trump's point of view, he was completely surrounded by enemies and turncoats in his first term. Federal employees slow-walked his ideas. Nearly everyone turned out to be unreliable: Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr, John Bolton, Mark Milley, James Mattis, and dozens of others including, in the end, even his vice president. Resistance goes deep. The vote in D.C. shows how deep. 

Let's say that a Democrat wins in 2028. Let's presume something plausible, that Trump fires hundreds of career lawyers in the Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Defense and everywhere else, and replaces them with eager, ambitious young lawyers happy to be on the Trump team. Let's presume they write op-eds, make speeches, and post in social media that the Democrat candidate was a sexual predator communist wanna-be Hitler. 

Presume something else plausible, that Trump's administration fills hundreds of positions at the IRS with people who understood that their supervisors put a favorable eye on how many prominent Democrats -- journalists, Hollywood stars, leaders of advocacy groups, members of congress, state legislators -- an employee audited and found tax issues that required penalties and publicity. 

Presume, too, that replacement hires at the EPA were people who "got it," and opposed the "over-regulation" of methane gas emissions at fracking sites. After all, they understand that the country's goal is to increase production.

Trump believes he faces a workforce that is out of touch with him and therefore the public.  After all, he faced a 92 percent wipe-out in D.C. 

What should the Democrat do? He or she should clean house. Fire the MAGA employees. It sounds brutal, but it would be necessary. MAGA employees would undermine the work of the Democrat at every turn. Find the bad apples and root them out. Their social media and public comments are free speech. Good. They freely revealed themselves. The new president is free to fire them. 

Sloppy chainsaw cuts to the federal workforce will backfire on Trump -- it will damage work voters value. Moreover, Musk looks manic and unserious. People admire him, but he looks like a crazy teenager. People will come to think Trump mismanaged this. Still, chainsaw cuts are not illogical if one starts with the Trump/Musk premise that nearly the entire federal government is hostile.

A new Democratic president would have the opposite premise. I expect the Democrat would presume that he or she is welcomed back. 

The Democrat will do a version of what Trump is doing, eliminating the bad apples. Understanding that likely future gives Democrats a better perspective on the legitimacy -- if not the wisdom -- of Trump's chainsaw cuts. It is democracy in action. Democrats say they like democracy. Trump got elected.

Trump probably won't be successful in filling the ranks with 92 percent MAGA zealots. There is enormous inertia in huge institutions, and people will want to hang onto their jobs if they can. The Democrat will be able to work with a knife, not a chainsaw. But they will indeed use it.

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