Imagine a film where the bad guy is a foreigner, a billionaire, who wants to be the most powerful man in the universe. He uses his billions to get the president of the United States elected, and the president sets him loose to do his dirty work- trashing the government and creating chaos, accessing secret information and personal data of every American that gives them the power to blackmail and threaten anyone they want to intimidate or control. Their goal is to get even richer and more powerful.
That’s not fiction. That’s what’s happening in our country right now.
Where in the constitution does it say that the unelected richest man in America gets to decide which programs live or die, who to hire and fire, and what contracts to revoke? “Who elected Elon Musk?” When life gives you a Bond villain, make Bond-villain lemonade. [Ed Luce at The Financial Times eviscerates Schumer in his column.]
Goldfinger comes to mind. Remember him?
Goldfinger isn’t physically imposing, but he is rich. And smart. Recall how he wipes out some of the head honchos in the US mob through a tricky gas attack? He’s also ruthless, and would step over an ally’s body to make his escape in an instant.
Hmm. Sounds familiar.
CRASH AND BURN
Trump and Musk are in a race to break as much china in the china shop as they can get away with before the courts stop them and if they get stopped by the courts they hope the Supremes will be on their side. Since Republicans in Congress are a bunch of frightened bunnies, and the Democrats are out of power, Congress is not acting as a check on Trump or Musk as Musk and his crew of hackers blow up the federal government with Trump’s blessing. Musk and his crew are like drunken dudes on spring break- crashing and trashing every government agency, disregarding the rule of law, established norms and throwing out the highly trained people who understand how systems work in our government and across the globe.
The goal (at least one of them) is to shrink government so that Trump can justify tax cuts for the rich that will hugely increase our debt.
Trump also seems to be trying to quiet future critics by getting offsets for some of the plunder that’s coming by limiting a tax loophole here and there and pleasing the working class peons who love him by ending taxes on tips, overtime, social security payouts, and expanding deductions for state and local taxes.
President Trump has outlined his tax priorities to Republican lawmakers. Among them was a surprise: the so-called carried interest “loophole.”
That could mean Wall Street will have to brace for a big fight to keep one of its most cherished tax breaks.
Carried interest was one of several items Trump mentioned yesterday, according to Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. He reiterated ideas he promoted on the campaign trail, including ending taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security payouts, as well as expanding deductions for state and local taxes.
TRUMP VOTERS ARE HAPPY SO FAR
Many Trump voters are telling reporters that they are happy about what Trump is doing. “Great! I didn’t like big government. Burn it all down!” But you might think again when the roles of unemployed Americans surge because of the thousands of people expelled from government; when information about growing global pandemics is no longer available on the CDC website; when Russia and China have rushed into countries where we had growing strategic global influence to exert their influence instead because we abandoned them by removing USAID.
Trump voters might not like it that Musk and his pee wee gang of hackers are also sticking their noses into their private business.
In recent days, officials affiliated with DOGE have visited the offices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), according to five people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interactions. DOGE officials have also sought access to payment and contracting systems across the Department of Health and Human Services that control hundreds of billions of dollars in annual payments to health-care providers, and they appear to have gained access to at least some of those systems, the people said.
When Elon Musk decides you don’t get Medicare or limits your payments maybe you won’t be so happy that Trump got rid of the federal government. When you don’t have funding for public schools and your rural hospital closes you might not like that so much either.
WHAT IS THE EXTENT OF TRUMP’S MANDATE?
Trump was elected by a margin of only 1.5 % of the voters. That’s not a mandate for this level of lawless crazy.
The American people who elected Trump expected him to fix two big things: the economic pain they felt from inflation after the pandemic and the lawlessness at the border. What Trump is doing doesn’t fix either one of these pain points for Americans. Putting immigrants in shackles and taking them to Guantanamo doesn’t cure the problem that too many Americans cannot buy a house these days or get ahead in life. Demonizing DEI might make white dudes feel better but it doesn’t actually make their lives any better. Tariffs on China won’t bring egg prices down or any prices down for that matter.
Americans did not elect Elon Musk to do anything and they did not elect Trump to create wall-to-wall chaos in this country and the world.
ONE NATION UNDER TRUMP
This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” (U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863)
We used to live in a country that was an imperfect democracy: “of the people, by the people, and for the people”. But now that Trump’s back for the another even more unleashed, bare knuckled Trump show and thanks to the Supreme Court immunity decision that blew up the fundamental constitutional rule that no man is above the law, Trump is unafraid of consequences for his current criminal acts, and we are suddenly living in a country that is of Trump, by Trump and for Trump that might actually perish from this earth.
King Trump is also getting all up in other countries’ business and telling them what to do. The king has decided he wants to take over Greenland, the Panama Canal, make Canada the 51st state, rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and turn Gaza into the new Riviera of the Middle East and we are only on Day 18.
A lot of Americans are angry and upset about the amount of chaos Trump has already caused. They want their elected representatives to speak up for them.
THE DEMS SHOULD REACT FASTER AND LOUDER
There’s a name for what Trump and Musk are doing. It’s called a COUP.
Or a “state capture” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/opinion/elon-musk-donald-trump-government.html
As Jamie Raskin said: “What I see are all the telltale signs of a coup…Elon Musk has basically tried to take control of the country’s communications infrastructure. The governmental financial payments infrastructure. The data infrastructure. And he’s got important nodes of the military infrastructure….At this point I’m with Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer and the people on the Right who have said hey, watch Elon Musk, because he’s the guy trying to centralize all power behind him.”
THE COURTS ARE HOLDING SO FAR
What should the Democrats do? Maybe they cannot stop Trump from his “creative” excited utterances about turning Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East
and engaging in war crimes to do it, or keep him from stocking his cabinet with yes men, incompetents and crazies. But they better take action by going to our courts to put on the brakes and stop the steal. And people are turning to the courts. So far they are holding.
Here is a partial run down from Marc Elias, Democracy Docket:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
MUSK IS NOT LIKED
The most recent polling shows that Musk is not liked by the majority of Americans and his approvals are going down fast.
In the survey from Quinnipiac University, 53 percent of respondents said they are not in favor “of Elon Musk playing a prominent role in the Trump administration,” while 39 percent said they are in favor of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO playing a prominent role in the Trump administration.
CLASH OF THE TITANS IS COMING
Musk is acting like he’s the president. Trump is the president. Steve Bannon hates Musk. Is it likely that Trump will share the presidency with Musk and function as de facto co-presidents? Doubtful. Once Musk has clobbered the government and freed up more money for tax cuts for the rich, I don’t think Trump will like having a rival on the big stage. A show down is coming once Musk has done Trump’s dirty work of slashing and burning down our government.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
- Support Democratic candidates running for the House of Representatives especially in tight races to get at least one part of Congress to function again as a check on Trump.
- Keep blue states blue by supporting state legislative races that could help maintain on flip state houses red to blue. That means supporting the States Project and the DLCC.
- Support key governors races like Virginia where Youngkin is term limited and Abigail Spanberger is running and New Jersey. The Democratic Governors Association is a well run organization that does a great job of that.
- Help Marc Elias keep his head above water by supporting Democracy Docket.
- Keep pressure on your electeds in Congress with calls to their offices protesting the damage Trump is doing. They keep track of the numbers and use that to apply pressure.
- Take part in the peaceful protests going on around the country that are not getting enough coverage in the media.
- Share this post in your social media and email it to friends to spread the word.
- Above all don’t lose hope. Don’t turn off your news feed. Trump is trying to make our country into a dictatorship. This has happened in other countries and some other countries have pushed back and regained their democracies. We can do it too. All this shock and awe is an attempt to make half of the country that didn’t choose Trump give up. If you stop caring, they win by forfeit. Don’t let them win.
