Garret Graff continues his series on how a foreign correspondent would cover what’s happening in America. It’s right on and it’s devastating.
NEWS ANALYSIS: Musk, Trump Establish New Era of Kleptocracy in America
By William Boot
After seizing the capital in a fast-moving late January coup and with universal control of government ministries now seemingly assured by a quiescent parliament, South African oligarch Elon Musk spent his third week in power dismantling the legal constraints that would stop him — already the world’s wealthiest man — from turning the US government into his personal piggy bank.
Day after passing day, it was clear that even if the United States and its $27 trillion envy-of-the-world economy was not exactly tipping post-coup into a full authoritarian state, then it had at least firmly slipped into banana republic territory.
Across one governmental office after another, Musk, elements of his technical junta, and loyalist ministers handpicked by the figurehead president Donald Trump made clear that they would fire or remove any official who attempted to enforce the rule of law — a two-century-long strong tradition here in this advanced western nation that has allowed it to become an economic powerhouse and cornerstone of global stability. In one of the most far-reaching moves to ensure unified control, Trump ordered that representatives of Musk’s irregular technical force — unofficial mercenaries pulled from Musk’s private business empire, known as DOGE, who are now operating in the capital with seemingly official backing — be installed across the government as political commissars, adopting an organizational structure that mimics the height of Stalin’s Soviet Russia.
Click over for the full story. It’s chilling.
Graff says that he’s spoken to foreign journalists who say they see it exactly the same way. It’s not something I would ever have expected to see in the United States.