I'm afraid you're right. That needs to become a primary goal of the right and MAGA movements. On the federal level, Trump, DeSantis, or whoever we can get in as president needs to push from their side and start eliminating the federal government as much as possible because it's going to bloat back up when another Dem or neocon is in office. The foundations of the house are rotten and it can no longer be renovated. The only way to fix things is to give EVERYTHING back to the states, brick by brick. That's going to be hard for a big government guy like Trump but maybe we can put political pressure on him to do so.

From a PR and historical standpoint, it might actually look better for him. The media will attack him for anything "positive" he does in government, so don't bother. He should make it clear from the outset that his goal is to destroy and dismantle. He's coming in like a wrecking ball and bringing down the house. State why this is necessary. He'll be lambasted as usual but if he succeeds, the common man will respect him for it. From the media's "more government is always good" perspective, it will be harder for them to spin his accomplishments as failures if his answer to all their criticisms is a Chad Yes.

The Republicans never actually did that by the way. Conservative mantras of "shrink the government", "cut taxes", "end funding of xyz" don't ever lead to the functional elimination of federal government. At best it's always a temporary funding stop.