White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt found herself on defense Monday when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed her about President Donald Trump’s plan to fire thousands of federal workers during the government shutdown.
At the daily press briefing, Collins asked what seemed obvious.
“The president said yesterday that Democrats will be to blame if federal workers lose their jobs,” Collins began. “Historically, though, in past shutdowns workers have been furloughed, not laid off en masse. So, wouldn’t that be the president’s call to lay people off?”
Leavitt tried to shift the blame. “As I’ve said repeatedly, Kaitlan, this conversation about layoffs would not be happening right now if the Democrats did not vote to shut the government down,” she said.
Karoline Leavitt becomes visibly annoyed as CNN’s Kaitlan Collins tries to spin government layoffs as Trump’s “choice.”
Karoline wasn’t having it. She fired back with a blunt dose of reality right in Kaitlan’s face.
COLLINS: “The president said yesterday that Democrats will be… pic.twitter.com/dPLMpzcajV
— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) October 6, 2025
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But that argument doesn’t quite add up. No law forces the president to fire workers during a shutdown. He is choosing to. And in this case, Trump is using that choice as leverage, a way to pressure Democrats into giving him what he wants.
Last month, the White House Office of Management and Budget sent Congress a warning: if lawmakers did not pass a short term funding measure, agencies would start preparing for mass firings. The notice said the cuts would focus on positions “no longer aligned with the president’s agenda.”
Trump has been open about what that means. He has long wanted to reshape the federal government by cutting what he calls “Democrat Agencies.” The shutdown gave him the perfect excuse.
By his own words, Trump views it as a “historic opportunity.” On Truth Social, he wrote that he was meeting with OMB Director Russell Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, to decide which departments to eliminate.
“I have a meeting… with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut,” Trump wrote. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
In other words, the layoffs are a feature, not a bug.
Leavitt, meanwhile, stuck to her talking points. “We are $37 trillion in debt and the government is not receiving any cash,” she told reporters. “Someone has to look at the balance sheet and be good stewards of the American taxpayer dollar. And layoffs are an unfortunate consequence of that.”
But critics note that debt concerns did not stop Trump from approving expensive defense increases and tax cuts for the wealthy earlier this year.
Even some conservatives privately admit the layoffs are about politics, not policy. Trump has made no secret of his desire to purge career civil servants, people he sees as part of the “deep state.”
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
