Let’s talk about political irony. Senator Chuck Schumer is currently experiencing what happens when your dire warnings about your opponent’s power become a self-fulfilling prophecy of your own making.

With each passing day of the federal government shutdown, Schumer appears increasingly desperate, positioning himself as some sort of revolutionary fighting against executive overreach while simultaneously handing President Trump the exact tools necessary to accomplish his core campaign promise: draining the Washington swamp.

The facts here are straightforward. Back in March, Schumer explicitly stated that “a shutdown gives Trump and his minions keys to the city and the country, complete freedom as to what parts of the government to fund and what parts not.” He was absolutely correct in his assessment. The problem for Schumer is that he apparently forgot his own warning when it mattered most.

Now Trump is systematically using those keys to dismantle the bloated federal bureaucracy that conservatives have targeted for decades. Thanks to Schumer’s tactical miscalculation, it is finally happening.

Consider the scope of what we are discussing. The federal government employs more than 2.4 million workers, making it the largest employer in the United States. These employees are concentrated primarily in the Washington area, receive nearly double the compensation of private sector workers on average, and skew overwhelmingly Democratic. The result is that the nation’s capital has become bluer than any state in the union.

The numbers tell a disturbing story. Federal jobs cost American taxpayers $384 billion annually. Four of the ten wealthiest counties in America are in the Washington area. Over the past five years alone, the federal government added more than 200,000 jobs and nearly doubled the cost of the federal workforce. Meanwhile, public trust in the federal government remains near historic lows.

This is the definition of a broken system. We have an ever-expanding bureaucracy that costs more, employs more, yet delivers less public confidence in its performance.

Trump campaigned as the ultimate political outsider, the only president never to have served in government or the military before taking office. He promised to return power from unelected bureaucrats to the American people. Since returning to office in January, he has deployed both innovative strategies from his first term and new tactics to accomplish this goal.

The president has converted career bureaucrat positions, protected by unions and essentially unaccountable, into at-will political appointee jobs like those in the private sector. He initiated the elimination of the Department of Education and the foreign aid bureaucracy, cutting 3,000 federal jobs immediately. The Department of Government Efficiency offered an unprecedented buyout to nearly all federal employees, receiving more than 100,000 acceptances now being processed.

These actions represent historic reductions in the size and scope of the federal government. But they were merely the opening moves. The shutdown has accelerated these efforts exponentially, providing Trump with expanded authority to determine which government functions receive funding and which do not.

Schumer’s strategy has collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. He warned about giving Trump these powers, then proceeded to create the exact conditions that would grant them. He positions himself as defending democracy while enabling the expansion of executive authority he claims to oppose.

The American people elected Trump precisely to challenge the permanent bureaucratic class that has insulated itself from accountability. Schumer’s miscalculation has made that mission significantly easier to accomplish. That is not revolutionary leadership. That is political malpractice.

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