Former Trump aide Steve Bannon is celebrating new reporting from Axios’ Jonathan Swan outlining Donald Trump’s plan to “radically reshape the federal government” if he is reelected in 2024. The report describes Trump’s blueprint to remove thousands of nonpartisan civil servant positions and replace them with far-right Trump devotees – an effort Bannon cheered for targeting “the heart of the beast” and going to “war with the administrative state.” 

As detailed in the Axios story, the center of Trump’s plan is to immediately reimpose his “Schedule F” executive order if reelected. The order would place thousands of civil servant workers into a new employment category, allowing these positions to be fireable by the executive branch and stripping these workers of full employee protections. Trump plans to replace employees in the State Department and the intelligence community “as a matter of top priority.”

Excerpts from Trump’s speech released before his appearance at this weekend’s Turning Point USA Student Action summit included remarks touting Schedule F. And Trump stated during a South Carolina rally in March that he hopes to “pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States.” The Schedule F executive order would do just that. 

In a tweet, Swan said that Trump supporters are ecstatic about plans to implement Schedule F based on feedback from his story.

Bannon, for one, is clearly elated by Trump’s undemocratic plans. It comports with a governance plan he's long championed. Shortly after Trump was inaugurated in 2017, Bannon, then a White House advisor, said the new administration would fight every day for the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”

During the July 22 edition of his War Room: Pandemic podcast, Bannon celebrated the reporting, claiming, “There is a deep plan right now for Trump’s second term,” and, “This is how we take apart leviathan.” 

He later added, “Draining the swamp is a cute term. … This is so much more sophisticated, so much more detailed, about deconstruction of the leviathan.”

During the July 25 edition of War Room, Bannon described Trump’s radical reshaping of the federal government as “going to the heart of the beast.” Bannon added that “some of the smartest people in the Trump administration” worked on the executive order. 

Bannon also complained that the intelligence community is “out of control, particularly in domestic politics.” This aligns with Trump’s top priority of restaffing intelligence positions.

Later in the episode, speaking to former Trump adviser Steve Cortes, Bannon said of the report, “We finally have a plan. … We’re at war with the administrative state.”

Last week, Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress. He faces up to 2 year in prison.