Trump is running America the way America ran Iraq

We have no precedent for an administration treating its own government like a hostile territory to be conquered and exploited.

Many are describing Musk’s assault on the federal bureaucracy as a coup, which isn’t quite right. Trump was, alas, elected, and delegated outsize power to Musk voluntarily. Graphic illustration: Monique Westermann

Michelle Goldberg

Feb 4, 2025 – 4.00pm

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Appearing on an anti-feminist podcast in 2021, JD Vance compared his ambitions for a conservative takeover of America to US policy in postwar Iraq. “We need like a de-Baathification program, but a de-wokeification program in the United States,” he said, referring to the campaign to root out members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

If and when Donald Trump returned to the White House, Vance argued, he should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”