> Those days are long gone. > Not that surprising coming from a long-time Democrat.

So repubblicans have not been about small government for a long time and Trump is not even a pure-blood repubblican so it was to be expected that he would do the thing that repubblicans have not been about for a long time...what in the circular reasoning? Oh and please name one repubblican president who successfully reduced spending or "made government smaller"

I know it's not what you mean, but Lincoln dramatically shrank the size of the Confederate government.

Trump is much more of a statist than previous Republican presidents (and arguably Democratic ones as well).