“Draining the swamp” in the political context is referring to gutting public safety nets like SNAP benefits, affordable healthcare, and government safety oversight so they can give the wealthy tax breaks. The swamp is the working parts of government being demonized as if supporting the general public is not a useful ecosystem.

That description is what Repiblicans said it meant, but what I wrote is what they actually meant based on every single thing they have done while using the phrase. Like how they say they want to enforce fair elections while suppressing the vote and claiming there is widespread voter fraud despite decades of evidence that it barely ever happens.

That’s basically the AI definition given by DDG.

But nobody uses the phrase like that. When Reagan said he was draining the swamp, and his followers repeated the line, what do you think they said? Probably some shit like, “let’s make the government more efficient.”

Ok. Fine. That actually fits the phrase, even if Reagan was lying and giving corpos more control.

But 40 years later when you ask someone what they mean by “drain the swamp” and they express ideas of… imprisoning Democrats, getting rid of the big Jews, dismantling the liberal deep state.

People used “literally” sarcastically / for effect, and dictionaries added a new definition. So I think it’s fair to add a new definition for “drain the swamp” when people use it to mean “get rid of liberals.”