The Atlantic

Define "backfire" cause what I'm seeing happening, while extraordinarily bad, is exactly what the Admin wants to occur.

For all of Trump’s and Musk’s talk of efficiency, their policies will likely slow down the government.

That helps the billionaire class

The state needs capacity to perform core tasks, such as collecting revenue, taking care of veterans, tracking weather, and ensuring that travel, medicine, food, and workplaces are safe.

• collecting revenue
  • Less government investment in the IRS means agents focus their attention on the lower and middle classes since they are unlikely to have the means of shutting down an audit
• taking care of veterans
  • Trump hates veterans and has no desire for the government to spend money on them:
    • He tried to embezzle $5,000,000 in donations to a veterans charity
    • Described perished soldiers as "losers"
    • Mocked John McCain as a "loser"
    • Resists being seen with amputees or including them in parades cause "it doesn't look good for [him]" and "nobody wants to see that"
• tracking weather
  • If the gov doesn't do it they can contract out to private companies so his billionaire pals can make more money
• ensuring the safety of
  • travel
    • he's removed oversights on Spacex and Tesla making his billionaire pals more money
  • medicine
    • lowering quality expectations and allowing higher pricing can make his billionaire pals more money
  • food
    • lowering quality and investigations can make his billionaire pals more money
  • workplaces
    • suppressing investigations and oversight allows the owner class to skirt around safety obligations leading to perceived "faster" results and making his billionaire pals more money
    • breaking up labor movements isolates workers making them easier to manipulate, abuse, and fire making his billionaire pals more money

“No one can openly discuss anything.” Another civil servant said that people who’ve worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for decades are afraid and “can’t believe what’s happening.”

He wants that. He craves a unilateral body filled solely with sycophants or people too broken to oppose him so that his will is imposed without question or pushback.

The costs of dismantling agencies, dramatically politicizing state capacity, and demeaning the idea of public service will still be counted long after Trump has departed the scene.

This is the ultimate goal of all his efforts. That's precisely why he's doing this.

Trump wants money, power, respect, and legacy. By crippling government functions he opens the door for the private sector to assume responsibility of some tasks and make a killing off of what should really just be free; he establishes a system wherein the only way for something to happen is if he directly calls for it to happen and where dissent is futile and harshly punished; and he produces effects that will long out last him.

Trump's efforts aren't backfiring, they are doing exactly what he wants of them, and in the process he is making life harder and more dangerous for everyone.