MAGA set the seed of its own destruction
Their DOGE job cutting spree has ensured that they will fail
The majority of Americans have had the fortune of not living in or near a dictatorship, thus we’re ignorant of how they work. For most of us, our best understanding of dictatorships is from Hollywood, which is obviously distorted. I think a lot of Americans believe that once a wannabe dictator takes power, he can automatically assert his will, and the country will just bend. I certainly believed it. But the smarter/saner Americans have repeated this statement, “policy doesn’t matter without the manpower”. So far, 2025 has been proving them right as the Trump administration’s continued failures are due to a critical lack of manpower.
Gutting the government sealed their fates
While Republicans have always favored a smaller Federal Government, the Trump administration took that to such an extreme that it ended up harming them. Either from DOGE or internal in-fighting, the Federal Government has been shedding jobs with a reported nearly 60,000 jobs lost1. Despite the lost jobs being Trump and Vought’s goal, the resulting incompetence proved otherwise.
This was made painfully clear by the FBI’s inability to catch Charlie Kirk’s murderer after Patel cut 1,500 positions in the organization2. What seemed to be a run-of-the-mill manhunt quickly embarrassed both the FBI and the Trump administration when the killer was able to escape custody for 33 hours, not helping was the FBI mistakenly arresting two innocent men. By the night of the murder, Utah police even admitted they had no idea where the killer was3! This especially tarnished the administration’s reputation since Kirk was the administration’s ally, showing that not only was one in the administration safe, but their killers could easily get away with it. To compound the humiliation, the killer wasn’t even caught, but he turned himself in after his father convinced him to4. When the administration needed to prove their legitimacy by catching someone who dared to kill one of them, they failed and let him slip through their fingers because they lacked competence and manpower.
Besides just embarrassing the administration, the lack of manpower has caused actual policy losses for them as well. The Trump administration rules via executive order because Congressional Republicans are utterly incompetent, but because EOs have little power, they are constantly challenged in court when they overreach, which is often. Because Trump’s DoJ is either incredibly corrupt or incompetent, or both, Department of Justice lawyers are quitting in response. NPR reports that 70% of the DOJ’s civil rights division lawyers are quitting5, and two-thirds of the DOJ lawyers defending Trump’s policies have already quit6. Due to the DoJ being understaffed, the administration’s attempts to defend its policies have resulted in even Republican-appointed judges constantly ruling against them. These losses have resulted in many of Trump’s policies either being frozen or dying, as seen by minuscule 7 victories in the 404 legal cases caused by Trump’s executive orders7, stopping a good portion of Trump’s agenda.
Trump does not have the numbers to enforce his will upon the country
Despite the constant fear that Trump will use the Insurrection Act to usher in a dictatorship, it’s clear that Trump just does not have anywhere near the numbers to do that. The entirety of the US military is 2.07 million, which is huge, BUT the US population is 340.1 million; we outnumber the military by nearly 170 times! Besides the difference in population, America is MASSIVE, with the mainland being 2.96 million square miles! The military just does not have the manpower to occupy every major city in the country, let alone the rural and suburban communities. This was demonstrated when Trump only occupied DC after he pulled out of LA8 despite failing to make LA stop resisting the ICE. Trump only further proved it when he said that Chicago was next after sending to Memphis9, showing that Trump only has enough forces to assault a single city at a time.
So Trump can’t abuse the military to suppress the country, what about ICE? No, the ICE only has 20K agents, and despite the administration’s attempts to massively expand the organization, they’re hitting a roadblock due to the ICE's massive unpopularity with the majority believing the organization has gone too far10. It’s such a problem that despite a 50K bonus and even removing age requirements11, they’re having trouble hiring anyone, as seen by the Pentagon asking Department of Defense employees to join the ICE12.
Republicans have ensured that they will fail
Republicans had a once-in-a-generation opportunity: they could have easily turned our country into a dictatorship, but instead, they decided to strip the Federal Government of its capabilities, ensuring that they would fail. It’s amazing that Republicans did actually understand they needed a bigger Federal government, with a core tenet of Project 2025 being to replace the Federal bureaucracy with their supporters. Either due to stupidity, incompetence, or a lack of competent cultists, all they did was weaken their capabilities. They had left the Federal Government so underequipped that they were even forced to rehire the federal workers that DOGE had fired13, leaving a weakened bureaucracy that was hostile to them. Instead of a MAGA bureaucracy that is happy to perform the will of their child-loving cult leader, they were left with a hollowed-out husk unable to enforce their policies or even suppress the citizens. Trump ensured their failure because their very first action upon coming back into power was self-sabotage. The beautiful karma is that MAGA will fail, and it’s all their fault.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/04/nx-s1-5421277/trump-federal-workers-layoffs-doge
https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/doj-plans-to-cut-additional-1500-jobs-on-top-of-4500-cut-under-trump
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5500286-top-utah-cop-charlie-kirk-assassin/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly7417ge50o
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/19/g-s1-66906/trump-civil-rights-justice-exodus#:~:text=Hourly%20News-,70%25%20of%20the%20DOJ's%20Civil%20Rights%20Division%20lawyers%20are%20leaving,division%20and%20its%20traditional%20mission.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/15/trump-doj-unit-staff-exodus#:~:text=2%20months%20old-,Two%2Dthirds%20of%20DoJ%20unit%20defending%20Trump%20policies%20in%20court,of%20lawsuits%20against%20Trump's%20administration.
https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/07/31/nearly-all-national-guard-soldiers-in-los-angeles-are-demobilizing-governor-newsom-demands-those-remaining-be-released/#:~:text=Los%20Angeles%2C%20California%20%E2%80%93%20Nearly%20two,doctors%2C%20law%20enforcement%20and%20teachers.
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/15/trump-national-guard-memphis-chicago-dc-crime
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-americans-think-about-trumps-deportations-right-now
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/20/ice-recruitment-military-bonuses-00516709
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/21/trump-hegseth-pentagon-ice#:~:text=Trump%20administration-,Pentagon%20asks%20civilian%20employees%20to%20join%20'volunteer%20force'%20to%20aid,employees%20work%20for%20the%20Pentagon.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/24/politics/doge-fired-workers-rehired
I think what got them, FH, was their core ideology: government should be run like a business. Specifically, one of THEIR businesses, where they can do whatever with impunity from consequences. To them, the mass firings of the federal bureaucracy was no different than mass layoffs. Less pay for them = more money to steal.
But, as you said, it all but guaranteed that any efforts to look powerful would go pear-shaped. Now, after a mere seven months, they've never been weaker. Gods help us if a foreign enemy should attack NOW...
The other obvious problem is that they can't find enough true believer loyalists to replace all the people they axed