Once again, thank you everybody for your kind generosity. I am so incredibly grateful and feel more motivated than ever to keep forging ahead. We’re facing some stiff political headwinds but I believe that with all of you at our backs we’ll be able to come through even stronger on the other side.
The MAGA cult is feeling its oats right now but reality is going to bite very soon. We’ll be here to document the victories and the atrocities and I hope you’ll all stop by frequently to see what we’ve dug up, analyzed or otherwise just observed with dismay or delight. Barring a round-up to the camps we’ll be here 7 days a week doing that thing we do.
I’m going to leave this up until New Year’s just in case there are any stragglers. And thank you again, from the bottom of my heart.
Sununu: [Musk is] so rich he’s so removed from the potential financial influence
Donald Trump sold himself as so rich that he couldn’t be bought. He would spend $600 million of his own money to win the presidency. “I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich,” he told ABC in 2011. And in the fullness of time, the man sold NFTs of himself and Trump sneakers and Trump Bibles and Trump scents.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) reassures CNN’s Dana Bash that Elon Musk is incorruptible like that. He’s got both hands in the Trump 2.0 administration, sure. But he’s not “doing it for the money.” He’s not into making money for the money but for the betterment of all mankind. Musk loves mankind from which “he’s so removed.” It’s people he can’t stand. How dare we ask him to pay more in taxes to benefit them?
BASH: One of the concerns is that Elon Musk has billions tied up in govt contracts. You don't see a conflict of interest?CHRIS SUNUNU: Everyone has a conflict of interestBASH: But that's a pretty big oneSUNUNU: He's so rich he's removed from the potential financial influence
Elon Musk doesn’t think visionaries like him should pay taxes the way little people do. After all, why hand over his money to dull bureaucrats? They’ll just squander it on pedestrian schemes like … bailing out Tesla at a crucial point in its development. Musk has his sights set on more important things, like getting humanity to Mars to “preserve the light of consciousness.”
Billionaires, you see, tend to be surrounded by people who tell them how wonderful they are and would never, ever suggest that they’re making fools of themselves.
But don’t you dare make fun of Musk. Billionaires’ money gives them a lot of political clout — enough to block Democratic plans to pay for much-needed social spending with a tax that would have affected only a few hundred people in a nation of more than 300 million. Who knows what they might do if they think people are snickering at them?
[…]
What I suspect, although I can’t prove it, is that what really drives someone like Musk is an insecure ego. He wants the world to acknowledge his unequaled greatness; taxing him like a “$400,000-a-year working Wall Street stiff” (my favorite line from the movie “Wall Street”) would suggest that he isn’t a unique treasure, that maybe he indeed doesn’t deserve everything he has.
Sununu should be embarrassed to make this argument in public. Should be.
Before we issue a sure-to-be-ignored word of caution to MAGA, let’s set the scene. I get that, with the reelection of King D, MAGA types just might be feeling their oats about taking back America from, you know, THOSE PEOPLE.
The Daily Show‘s Ronny Chieng discourses on patriotism and education. He was born in Malaysia (like you’d care), but how would you know?
A Colorado man is facing possible bias-motivated charges for allegedly attacking a television news reporter after demanding to know whether he was a citizen, saying “This is Trump’s America now,” according to court documents.
Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, was arrested Dec. 18 in Grand Junction, Colorado, after police say he followed KKCO/KJCT reporter Ja’Ronn Alex’s vehicle for around 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the Delta area. Alex told police that he believed he had been followed and attacked because he is Pacific Islander.
Forty miles.
Egan, a taxi driver, pulled up beside Alex at a Grand Junction traffic light and allegedly shouted, “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”
Egan followed the reporter to the station and chased Alex to the door, demanding to see his identification.
Egan then tackled Alex, put him in a headlock and “began to strangle him,” the affidavit said. Coworkers who ran out to help and witnesses told police that Alex appeared to be losing his ability to breathe during the attack, which was partially captured on surveillance video, according to the document.
According to the station’s website, Alex is a native of Detroit. KKCO/KJCT reported that he was driving a news vehicle at the time.
Let’s hope that in 2025 few MAGA zealots behave like that jerk in Colorado.
Maybe do something more patriotic. Do your homework for your country. Learn math.
A friend with an Arabic name and look lives in Vermont. Someone asked him once if he ever felt threatened there. Not really, he said. Okay, now and then some a-hole will shout “Go back to where you came from!” His shrugging response is, “You want me to go back to North Dakota?”
An old friend here looks Korean. Naturally. His parents are from South Korea. My friend was born and raised here.
One would think Mr. “I’m a Marine” might have figure out during his service that not all Americans look like their parents hail from Jolly Olde England. One would think that, with all that manly Marine training, Colorado Man might not be so easily threatened by the mere presence of an AAPI-looking guy from Detroit driving alone in a marked news vehicle.
Forty miles?
There’s no indication that Mr. Egan asked to see Mr. Alex’s H1B visa.
All is quiet, on New Year’s Day. Except for this mixtape (you may adjust your volume per hangover conditions New Year’s morning). Cheers!
“This Will Be Our Year” – The Zombies – Starting on a positive note. Lovely Beatle-esque number from the Odyssey and Oracle album.
You don’t have to worry All your worried days are gone This will be our year Took a long time to come
At least…we can always hope, right?
“Time” – David Bowie – A song as timeless as Bowie himself. Time, he’s waiting in the wings/He speaks of senseless things…
“1999″ – Prince – Sadly, it’s a perennial question: “Mommy…why does everybody have a bomb?”
“1921” – The Who – Got a feeling ’21 is gonna be a good year. OK, back to the drawing board …let’s make ’25 a better one.
“Time” – Oscar Brown, Jr. – A wise and soulful gem…tick, tock.
“New Year’s Day” – U2 – I know… “Edgy pick, Captain Obvious!” But it’s still a great song.
“Year of the Cat” – Al Stewart – Old Grey Whistle Test clip. Strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime…
“Reeling in the Years” – Steely Dan – A pop-rock classic with a killer solo by Elliot Randall.
Encore! Fantastic live version from 2002. Randall and the backup band are on fire.
“New Year’s Resolution” – Otis Redding & Carla Thomas – Ace Stax B-side from 1968, with that unmistakable “Memphis sound”. Speaking of which… check out my review of the Stax music doc, Take Me to the River.
“Same Old Lang Syne” – Dan Fogelberg – OK, a nod to those who insist on waxing sentimental. A beautiful tune from the late singer-songwriter.
Bonus track!
Not a “New Year’s song” per se, but an evergreen new year’s wish (now more than ever).
This is from Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former National Security adviser:
There’s a little mutual defense alliance in Europe called NATO. Denmark was one of the founding members in 1949. In the modern world that’s how we are supposed to defend ourselves against threats. We aren’t supposed to just seize territory for our own purposes. But it sounds like those are now quaint ideas and we are now in the business of territorial expansion again, to hell with our allies.
Is that what people voted for? I don’t remember it coming up during the presidential campaign and I was paying pretty close attention.
By the way, I’m sure you’ll recall that Trump always says that we should have just taken the oil in the middle east. Well:
MineralsGreenland has large reserves of minerals such as copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, rare-earth elements, titanium, zinc, iron ore, coal, and graphite.
Oil and gasThe Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland estimates that Greenland’s west coast contains about 18 billion barrels of oil. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there may be double that volume in crude and natural gas in the east.
Rare earth elementsGreenland has one of the world’s largest undeveloped deposits of rare-earth elements outside of China. These elements are used in many products, including cell phones, wind turbines, and electric car
But I’m sure that has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.
The Wall St Journal went to Seymour, Indiana (the “small town” John Mellencamp is from) where they can’t wait to get rid of all the immigrants they believe are polluting their lives:
[R]esidents have complained for years that a flood of unauthorized migrants under the Biden administration strained schools, hospitals and housing. Now, with President-elect Donald Trump promising to conduct mass deportations and shut down illegal border crossings, the pro-crackdown forces are feeling emboldened. They are organizing opposition to illegal immigration online and in local government meetings and pushing for new legislation and action at the state level.
“Trump brought hope,” said Dana Clark, 66, who also spoke at the city council meeting. “Day one is going to see the biggest deportation ever.”
Incorporated in the 1860s, Seymour sits at the intersection of two major railroads. Jobs are plentiful at large manufacturers such as auto-parts suppliers and agricultural businesses, including the country’s second-largest egg producer.
The hunger for labor has long drawn immigrants, who began arriving in significant numbers in the 1990s, mainly from Mexico, Guatemala and other Central American countries. For most of the period since, the flow of arrivals was manageable and generated few flashpoints, residents say.
sabel Ponce, a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant and legal permanent resident, arrived in Seymour 26 years ago and began working at a printing facility. She later started a beauty salon that steadily expanded over the years, and more recently opened a cafe. She said she sympathizes with longtime residents concerned about the burdens of new arrivals, but added that migrants play an essential economic role.
“Latino labor is very important here,” Ponce said. “You tell a Latino to work from 8:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night, they will work it.”
The state had initiated a study in Seymour that led to a proposal to open an immigrant welcome center. The town’s white residents went crazy and voted it down.
At the meeting, speakers fumed about migrants allegedly failing to assimilate, committing crimes and crowding multiple families into small homes. Republican state Rep. Jim Lucas, who is from Seymour, said a downtown health clinic was overwhelmingly used by immigrants. He said data showed the school system’s English-learner population had soared in recent years—a complaint echoed by some residents who said the newcomers were absorbing teachers’ attention and slowing classroom learning.
Nicholson said later that of 21 metrics tracked by the police department, such as disorderly conduct and sex offenses, 17 were down over the past year. Seymour Police Chief Greg O’Brien said the overall crime rate is flat or down, but traffic-related cases, like driving without a license, are up. The schools superintendent didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Just like in Springfield Ohio the residents got incensed by an immigrant who was involved in a fatal car accident and they have organized to ensure their representatives know they don’t want any immigrants left in their town.
One recent day at Larrison’s Diner, a popular restaurant downtown, Tim Smallwood, 63, said he was all for mass deportations. He thinks the Trump administration should first target unauthorized migrants with criminal records and then pressure other migrants to “self-deport.”
“It’s the only way they’ll solve this problem,” Smallwood said. “You’ve got to make it hard enough on them that they don’t want to come here in the first place.”
Do you ever notice how they say this stuff like it’s totally normal — as if they’re talking about getting rid of animals, not human beings? It’s stomach churning to hear it discussed in those terms especially when they seem to think they’re being “humane.”
The unemployment rate is only 3.3% in that area, quite a bit lower than the national average. And wages are lower too. Who’s going to do all those jobs?
JV Last made an excellent observation about this Musk vs MAGA flap. This is from his Bluesky account.
These guys are super into H1B precisely because they’re also into corporate tax cuts. They want to offload the expense of creating an educated workforce and just conjure labor out of thin air.
This worldview makes sense if “efficiency” is your highest goal. You can outsource expenditures for human infrastructure to other countries and then import that fully formed human capital.
It’s also a worldview in which the government’s primary function is to support corporations and all policies are downstream from that goal.
Anyway, it’s absolutely impossible to reconcile “forgotten man” MAGA with the Elon/Vivek corporate ubermensch MAGA. The only thing that united them was that they hate trans people and NYT columnists.
That works if you’re in the outside. But once you have power you have to make choices on how to apply it. And the zero-sum game pits the two factions against one another.
Corporate MAGA is betting that the rubes won’t really know what’s going on. That’s probably right. If Trump can make enough noise and trigger the libs hard enough, the avg forgotten man voter will be happy. But at the MAGA elite level there’s going to be a death struggle for dominance.
Here’s a little taste of the incoherent rage on Twitter over the last couple of days. it’s really something:
Charlie Kirk fires back at Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
"It's what the American people want. The American people overwhelmingly voted for less immigration and the prioritization of the American children and the American worker— not the American oligarch."
Basically, the MAGA folks are saying that they don’t like any dark skinned foreigners while the Tech bros insist they need to import skilled dark skinned foreigners they can exploit for low wages as indentured servants. (They all seem to agree that white immigrants like Musk and Melania are a-ok, of course.)
The bigger picture is that this argument has exposed the essential incoherence of the MAGA coalition between the billionaires, the CEOs and the professional Trump cultists. As Last argues, this battle for dominance is very real. The corporate people control the money and the professional Trump cultists control the rubes. Trump has come down on the side of the money on this one. It will be very interesting to see where this goes.
🚨DONIE O'SULLIVAN: "You can just go on to X and see the vitriol around this conversation. They try to say it's about visas and everything else but you don't need to scratch the surface too far to see the levels or racism and hate and ugly stuff that are happening on the… pic.twitter.com/9T79cP0QVs
Who among us hasn’t accidentally texted the wrong person? But I don’t think any of us have accidentally posted on social media instead of texting. Then there’s Donald Trump… Trump posted a private message meant for Elon Musk on Truth Social by mistake.
Trump-Musk Bromance Alive and Well?
Who among us hasn’t accidentally texted the wrong person? But I don’t think any of us have accidentally posted on social media instead of texting. Then there’s Donald Trump…
Haha. Was he trying to make him jealous with Bill Gates? Too funny.
The CNN reporter says that this suggests that Trump isn’t unhappy with Musk but who knows? If he isn’t I’d guess it’s because Trump is hoping for that rumored merger of Truth Social and X which will bring him a huge payday. But there is serious trouble in MAGA land with Elon and Vivek threatening his loyal followers like this:
I doubt Trump cares at all about this visa issue. He’s happy to give Elon what he wants. But it will be interesting to see how he deals with the conflict which is getting very hot among the MAGA activists. So far, he hasn’t said a word.
Update —
He’s with Elon and Vivek:
President-elect Trump told The Post Saturday he supports immigration visas for highly skilled workers, appearing to side with Elon Musk in the roiling intra-MAGA debate on the issue.
“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said by phone, referring to the H-1B program, which permits companies to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations.
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” added Trump, who restricted access to foreign worker visas in his first administration and has been critical of the program in the past.
Musk and other tech barons argued this week that the H-1B visa program is critical to ensuring American companies can find highly skilled labor which may not be easily available in the U.S. labor force and must be expanded.
MAGA hardliners want Trump to follow through with his promise to promote US workers and impose tougher restrictions on immigration.
Hmm. That’s not what he said before. I guess the puppet master pulled his strings:
I had heard that this hustle was making headway in the Latino community and it explains a lot:
The Lehigh Valley Barbershop was bustling with the next generation of American strivers. The mood among the young men, mostly first- or second-generation migrants from the Caribbean, was hopeful. Their candidate, Donald Trump, had just won the presidential election.
Sitting in high-end silver chairs, the young men talked about the businesses they had built, or would build. That would be more possible, they hoped, with the return of Trump, someone to whom they could relate — a businessman who has made mistakes, they said, but still keeps striving.
“Kamala said, ‘Trump is for the rich, I fight for the poor.’ But I don’t want to be low-class — I hope that’s not a bad way to say it. But I don’t want to be there,” said Christian Pion, 31, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. He became a U.S. citizen last year, a decade after coming to the United States from the Dominican Republic,and cast his first presidential ballot for Trump. “God doesn’t want you to be poor.”
Next to him, his best friend, Willy J. Castillo, 39, who owns the shop and others, worked the register as he talked about Trump’s drive to succeed, overcome and survive. Castillo, who also voted for Trump, identifies with that: “The Bible says ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ right?”
The mix of hope, drive for success and belief in a God who rewards faith, sometimes with financial accomplishments,has become dominant across the United States and Latin America, experts on Latino religion say. The belief system is sometimes called “seed faith,” “health and wealth gospel,” or “prosperity gospel.”
What a con game. Trump and Musk were both born into wealthy families and yet they are used as examples of being rewarded for their faith In God which neither of them have. What a crock.
Elon Musk pledged Friday night to go to “war” to defend the H-1B visa program for foreign tech workers, branding some Republican opponents as “hateful, unrepentant racists.”
Why it matters: The MAGA-DOGE civil war that erupted over the last 48 hours has now come to a tipping point, with President-elect Trump’s new techno-libertarian coalition of billionaires taking full aim at his traditional base.
Trump, who has remained silent thus far on the schism, faces a quickly deepening conflict between his richest and most powerful advisors on one hand, and the people who swept him to office on the other.
Someone should turn this into one of those satirical Demotivational posters.
This will not end well:
Zoom in: Just before midnight Friday, Musk once again defended the H-1B program in vulgar, all-caps terms, saying the program was the key to the success of his (and other big American) companies.
“Take a big step back and F–K YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend,” Musk wrote.
In a separate post, he pledged to “fight to my last drop of blood” to keep America a meritocracy.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters are engaged in as much wishcasting about whose benefits Trump sill slash (not theirs, just those low-caste Irresponsibles) as lefties who believed after the Berlin Wall fell that the “peace dividend” would be a boone for social safety net programs.
Anticipating Donald Trump’s “promised revenge tour,” Josh Marshall floated the idea of about ten days ago that anti-Trumpers with deep pockets assemble a big pile of money for the legal defense of women and men on his enemies list.
Marshall is back to report there is movement on this effort in a good-news, bad-news sort of way. Since then, he’s become aware of “groups or consortia that are organizing to be the place that Trump targets can go when they get their subpoena or their lawsuit,” but for now they are keeping their identities below the radar:
For very real reasons these groups don’t want to draw a lot of attention to themselves. They don’t want themselves to become the targets of harassment and lawfare when they’re trying to defend others from it. If they themselves get run out of business who’s going to be around to help everyone else? So I can’t give websites for these operations that you’d want to look up if you’re a target or show you how to contribute money. They’re not set up that way and they don’t want the attention.
Marshall wonders how this might work and was initially dubious of the approach. But his thinking has shifted:
It’s not just Trump and official MAGA we have to worry about. We’re really facing an era of broader civic disinhibition, in which public and private actors will be declaring war on civil society, government employees and more in ways that simply haven’t happened in the past. There’s no one group that can combat that. And these nascent efforts are going to be a critical part of the equation — for the civil servant who gets harassed, for the nonprofit which needs legal assistance fending off financially ruinous subpoenas. And by this I don’t mean just to say … well, the small stuff. What I mean is that there’s going to be a lot of stuff, across society, across multiple layers of government. There’s a lot to go around. And not every individual or entity wants to become a poster child for MAGA abuses of power. Often they just need someone to pick up the legal work that would have bankrupted the organization or made an individual lose their home.
And defenders of civic society may not care for Trump sending his flying monkeys their way. (“I understood that reference.“)
Marshall floats how his Big Pile of Money (BPM) group might operate. As lawyerly Equalizers, in my view:
One of the best ways I can think of to describe what I’m looking for is by an illusory hypothetical. Let’s imagine there was another billionaire out there — a non-decadent, non-degenerate version of Musk — who said: I believe in America. Every person Trump targets, I’m going to send them a contact number at mega law firm X, which I’ve retained, and it’s an open tab for as long as they need. And if you’re out there wondering if you’re willing to take the risks of doing the right thing over the next four years, I’ll be sending you a contact number too. And I’m going to do more than that. I’m going to use the channels of these abusive lawsuits and criminal investigations to load these folks down with every discovery motion you could have imagined. I’m going to use my cash and the courts not just to protect people but to embarrass and humiliate the abusers, make them wish they’d never started.
That is, after all, how Trump has for decades used lawsuits to harass creditors until they run out of fight (and money) and go away. Defenders must exact a cost on those who would foul the civic square to create a “penumbra of fear,” in Marshall’s words.
But in an age when politics is a pro-wrestling spectacle, BPM groups must be seen doing it. Landing punches, and “damaging and embarrassing and humiliating the other side.” Turning idle spectators into fans and investors in creating a penumbra of safety. Because right now there is only one fighter in the ring throwing folding chairs.
How many Rocky movies?
Marshall concludes:
Any operation that doesn’t play in that realm isn’t playing this performative, public role. That’s critical. It also operates a virtuous or at least non-vicious circle. People need to open their pockets — billionaires and average people. People open their pockets when they’re seeing points put on the board, when they see punches being landed.
First, like it or not, the public wants Thunderdome. The press covers Thunderdome. Thunderdome draws eyeballs in this attention economy. Again, and again and again: How many Rocky movies did Stallone make?
People pay money to see that. They want to cheer for the little guy with heart facing insurmountable odds. They want to watch The Equalizer squash baddies the law cannot touch. Seen any of those lately?
Maybe the Big Pile of Money could run a classified ad.
