This Government Shutdown Is Exactly What Trump and His Team Want

by | Oct 8, 2025 | Opinions & Commentary

Photo by Rob Martin, Unsplash

This Government Shutdown Is Exactly What Trump and His Team Want

by | Oct 8, 2025 | Opinions & Commentary

Photo by Rob Martin, Unsplash

The only reason we are in a shutdown at all is because it is in the Republican Party's and Donald Trump's interest that our government be shut down.

We’re just ending the first week of Trump’s latest government shutdown. Compared to the last one in 2018/2019, this is early days yet. But the rhetoric storm is already in high gear. And rest assured, it is as replete with bovine excrement as one would expect.

Basic Facts

Let’s start with the elephant in the room. And that elephant is not the symbol of the GOP in this case but rather Project 2025. This, as has been extensively discussed, is the blueprint for the complete destruction of our representative Democracy, replacing it with an illiberal Christian Nationalist dictatorship. One of the key authors of Project 2025, Russell Vought, is now the head of the Office of Management and Budget under the Trump regime—it almost causes one to choke to call it an “administration.”

Before the shutdown went into effect, it was pretty easy to imagine Vought rubbing his hands together, like Gollum thinking about a certain ring, as he issued warnings about turning the shutdown into massive layoffs and firings of hundreds more thousands of federal employees. Let’s just be blunt here. A shutdown US Government is right next door to a fully destroyed US Government. There. Done and dusted, Project 2025 complete.

Here’s the next observable factor: Trump wants to be president for life, just like his buddies Putin and Viktor Orbán. That 22nd Amendment thing is for the birds as far as he is concerned—you know, the one that says two terms only and you’re out. Apparently he thinks that means two consecutive terms or some such foggy notion. What’s preventing him from doing that—besides us—is the government, its strictures and rules set down for nearly 250 years. These rules, as he sees them, are unfair limitations on being able to make as much money as possible grifting behind the Resolute Desk.

So for Russell and Donnie and a lot of others riding their corrupt coattails, the shutdown of our government and the curtailing of its activities and services—that we paid for as taxpayers—is a net positive. Noisy and blamey press statements to the contrary, this shutdown is a big win for the far-right “Trump is our king,” crowd.

Cutting Through the BS Layer

Here’s an unassailable fact: Republicans are in full control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Yet, every breath coming from Republicans about the shutdown blames it on the intractability of Congressional Democrats. Say what? The idea that Democrats correctly wanting to make sure that millions of people are not priced out of health care as the reason for the holdup for ending the shutdown is the most bald-faced of lies.

Here’s the real deal. When Republicans have an “absolutely-must-pass-no-matter-what” issue before the Senate, they change the rules to allow passage on a simple majority vote of rather than a 2/3 vote which requires 60. Senate Republicans have done this repeatedly, especially in the first Trump tenure. This is how we got the three far-right “justices,” Gorsuch, Kavenaugh and Barrett, onto the Supreme Court.

The option utilized by the Senate majority to accomplish these moves is called the Nuclear Option. Since Republicans can invoke this with a simple majority vote—which they have—there is no reason under the sun that this government shutdown had to happen. Except for one thing. Interest.

It was in the Republican Party’s interest to shove through Trump’s SCOTUS picks as fast as possible. So the rules were changed to allow it despite the fact that each one of these appointees had serious qualification and ethical issues that were making their full Senate approval dicey at best.

So in a nutshell, the only reason we are in a shutdown at all is because it is in the Republican Party’s and Donald Trump’s interest that our government be shut down. There is no other reason for it.

The threats leveled by Russell Vought to lay off or fire hundreds of thousands of federal employees if Democrats did not vote for the continuing resolution to fund the government was nothing more than a misdirection window dressing. He wants those firings.

Republicans have everything they need to end the shutdown anytime they please. They quite literally have no desire or intention to do so. The plan, one can assume, is just to continue along with the elementary school playground act of pointing at the Democrats, saying, “They did it!” while tightly gripping the smoking gun.

The End Game

The last time we had a Trump shutdown it finally ended when one particular group of federal employees decided that one month of working for no pay was well past enough and began calling in sick. These were the Air Traffic Controllers. That shutdown ended up lasting 35 days, the longest in history.

Now that we are just one week in on this one, Air Traffic Controllers are already remembering their power the last time around and making the beginnings of walkout threats. Good. Meanwhile Trump and his congressional cheerleader Mike Johnson are threatening to withhold back pay for workers being required to work for free, and trying to blame the Democrats for it.

Somethings never change with these guys.

Marty Kassowitz

Marty Kassowitz

Marty Kassowitz is co-founder of Factkeepers. As founder of Interest Factory and View360, he brings more than 30 years experience in effective online communications, social media management, and platform development to the site. He is a writer, designer, editor and long time observer of the ill-logic demonstrated by too many members of the species known as Mankind. After a long history of somewhat private commentary on a subject he totally hates: politics, Marty was encouraged to build this site and put up his own analyses as well as curate relevant content from other sources.

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