When asked by a reporter in a Tuesday news conference why a shutdown would necessitate laying off federal workers if the Department of Government Efficiency had been as effective as he claimed, President Donald Trump began with a lie: “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs.” He followed that lie with a threat: “So, we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected.” And he followed that threat with a claim that revealed an absurd belief in a politically monolithic federal workforce: “And they’re gonna be Democrats.”
When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs. So we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected … And they’re gonna be Democrats.
president trump on tuesday
In one way or another, a U.S. government shutdown impacts, if not outright hurts, all Americans. But Trump repeatedly, and falsely, suggested Tuesday that no Republicans would be harmed in the GOP’s standoff with Democrats. Only Democrats would suffer, he claimed. And in Trump’s own words, Democrats are “evil” people whom he says he “hates” — and therefore apparently believes should suffer.
Two GOP sources who were on a call Wednesday with Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and House Republicans told NBC News that Vought told the GOP lawmakers that the Trump administration will begin firing federal employees in “one to two days.”
In a piece that published earlier Wednesday at this website, Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., wrote, “There is no statute, appropriation or constitutional clause that gives an administration license to fire federal civilian employees simply because funding has lapsed.” He called a September memo from Vought threatening such firings “political intimidation, not valid administrative guidance.”
That doesn’t mean, of course, that the Trump administration won’t announce such firings. But if there is such an announcement, it will be important to remember that, as has been the case since January, firing (or trying to fire) people is what the administration wants to do, not what it has to do. That’s why Vice President JD Vance’s argument Wednesday was bogus on its face, when he said the administration doesn’t “necessarily want to do it” — that is, lay people off. The administration will do what it must, he claimed, so that “the American people’s essential services continue to run.”
But if all the previous government shutdowns didn’t result in massive layoffs, then there’s no reason this one should.
America was warned by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton not to elect a man who takes such glee in saying, “You’re fired!” But that’s who’ve we got as a president: not just a person who seems to take a perverse pleasure in snatching away people’s paychecks but who also pairs such meanspiritedness with a misunderstanding of the federal workforce his administration oversees. Federal workers span the political spectrum. There’s no way — legally or practically — to rid the federal workforce of just the Democrats.
The president’s expressed desire to inflict pain isn’t the only problem; equally problematic is his belief that he can single out Democrats for that pain. Trump’s remarks are more proof that, as I wrote last week, he believes himself to only be the president of Republicans. To hell with everybody else.
If Trump believes the federal workforce is made up only of Democrats, then it’s not at all surprising that he appears to believe that only Democrats benefit from a fully operational federal government.
“We can do things during a shutdown that are irreversible,” the president said Tuesday. “That are bad for them and are irreversible by them: like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.” To reduce government programs, as Trump did, to ‘things Democrats like’ is to disregard the real needs such programs address. To reduce government programs, as Trump did, to things Democrats like is to disregard the real needs such programs address. The social-net programs that Democrats so often find themselves trying to protect don’t just benefit their voters. They also benefit Republicans, independents and people who have no interest in politics. While every shutdown pits Democrats against Republicans, it’s telling that Trump talks about this standoff as if it only involves Democrats and Republicans. Once again, he doesn’t seem to understand — or at least doesn’t appear to care — that the stakes are much higher than which party gets to say that it won this game of chicken. Trump is promising to fire innocent, hardworking federal workers to “own the libs.” And threatening to slash programs that even some of his supporters rely on for the same vindictive reason. But so long as the strategy leads to a loss for Democrats, it’s likely he’ll just write off the harm inflicted on everybody else as collateral damage — assuming, of course, that he notices it. When asked by a reporter in a Tuesday news conference why a shutdown would necessitate laying off federal workers if the Department of Government Efficiency had been as effective as he claimed, President Donald Trump began with a lie: “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs.” He followed that lie with a threat: “So, we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected.” And he followed that threat with a claim that revealed an absurd belief in a politically monolithic federal workforce: “And they’re gonna be Democrats.”
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune. 
