Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab who in March wrapped up a three-year stint on the White House Council of Economic Advisers was asked by Business Insider, “was the “vibecession” fake?  He replied:

  “The short answer is no. The vibecession was not fake. The long answer is no, but … ,” he said. Perceptions of the economy have to do with more than the economy itself. That doesn’t mean that people were lying or that their answers didn’t have some real economic motivation, but there’s clearly more to it than the material conditions in front of them — it’s also about their ideological leanings and how that shapes what they believe is ahead.”Perceptions of the economy are definitely deeply partisan,” Tedeschi said.

That’s right. Republicans are now very rosy on the economy and Democrats are gloomy (although the GOP voters’ abrupt switch is far more dramatic.) BI continues:

It’s easy to say the shift in sentiment is partisan flag-waving — now that Donald Trump is headed to the White House, Republicans are going to say everything’s great, and to the Democrats, it’s all terrible. But that’s not really what’s happening, said Joanne Hsu, the director of consumer surveys at the University of Michigan. When people say their expectations are better or worse, it’s not simply the outcome of the election they’re responding to but the policies they believe are on the horizon.

“With the election of Trump, people have an idea of how economic policy might change over the next year and over the next four years. So people are expecting tariffs. They’re expecting action on immigration,” Hsu said. “The thing is that people across the population really disagree on whether or not these policy changes are a good thing or a bad thing for the economy.”

Democrats are worried that Trump’s threatened tariffs and promise to undertake mass-deportation efforts will make things pricier. Republicans, on the other hand, think that these policies will be good for the economy and that Trump will help bring down inflation. Independents, Hsu said, are in the middle.

Democrats beliefs are shaped by economic experts who are evaluating the policies based upon empirical evidence and history while Republicans are basing their beliefs on a shared worship of their cult leader they erroneously believe is a self-made businessman when he is actually a spoiled heir to a fortune he squandered and then created a fake image on reality TV.

But sure, both sides…

Businesses don’t love the idea of tariffs, but many are hopeful that there are ways they can get around them or that the president-elect isn’t so serious about them. Or they just plan to pass along any price increases to consumers anyway. (There may be some amount of denial going on among corporate executives and Wall Street investors, all of whom seem to be ignoring some of the potential downsides of Trump’s policy promises and the instability he could represent.)

Ya think?

No, they’re excited about their tax cuts and deregulation and very likely the fact that they can gouge their customers with tariff rationales if they are enacted. Whatever works.

The Real American MAGAs will pay, one way or another, but they’re fine with that. After all, these are people who happily send their life savings to a billionaire.

I don’t mean to sound hopeless. I’m really to the point that I’m just hoping Trump can be stopped from doing his worst even if he pretends he’s hugely successful. I keep my fingers crossed that world events don’t catapult out of control and that we get out of this without a catastrophe like the COVID pandemic or war. That’s about it.

Right now, we just need to survive this with as little damage as possible. It’s a huge lift but it can be done.

I don’t know what comes after him, but I don’t think anyone has quite the constellation of talents and flaws that Trump does so there’s little point in anticipating Trumpism as an ongoing political force. It will be something different.

Not Gonna Happen

To quote Joey from Blossom, "Whoa!"…

We're underselling the smallness of the new GOP House majority. It won’t be the smallest since 1931. Due to vacancies, it will be the smallest at the start of a 1st session since at least 1917!

Johnson's speakership is very precarious. pic.twitter.com/l9cwpVLxGu

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) January 2, 2025

Trump has a tremendous amount of power as the executive (some of it still subject to judicial interpretation.) But anything he wants to do that requires Congress is going to be an extremely heavy lift. Notus reports:

But as Republicans try to shake off a close call with a government shutdown and prepare for Donald Trump’s first 100 days, lawmakers are starting to grapple with a simple reality: They may not be able to do much of anything.

“They can’t even extend government funding,” a frustrated Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS in December, as the House GOP nearly imploded over a stopgap spending bill. “They’re going to do this all over again in March. There’s a debt ceiling fight coming up,” he said. “Good luck.”

Before Trump even takes office on Jan. 20, House Republicans must elect a speaker — a delicate, historically difficult task given the mutiny currently on Mike Johnson’s hands. Republicans then had to agree to a rules package, which was released on Wednesday. Those rules are rife with potential trip wires, like the nine members required to hold a vote to oust a speaker, and are already under negotiation as Johnson tries to secure the votes he needs for the speakership.

That’s just the beginning. In the first hundred days, Trump wants to confirm his rogues gallery of unqualified, dangerous miscreants to the cabinet, they want an expensive, draconian immigration package to fund mass deportation, drill baby drill and a huge increase in defense spending all done through reconciliation.

Or maybe Republicans plan to first do a tax bill through reconciliation. Or maybe they plan to do just one reconciliation bill for the whole lot. There hasn’t been clarity on the plan, but there’s already a lot of debate.

The continuing resolution expires on March 15th and they will have to negotiate some kind of budget to fund the government for the rest of the year. Maybe.

Throughout those early days, Republicans and Democrats will also be negotiating a larger spending package to carry the government through the rest of the fiscal year, until October. They will likely need Democratic votes for that but it doesn’t look good, especially if Trump lets ELON and Vivek play with their toys. There could easily be a government shutdown in the first 100 days.

They wanted destruction and they may get it. I hope the elected Republicans understand that they’ve entered into a career suicide pact.

Chuck Schumer weighs in on DNC chair race

This is new (Politico):

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer is endorsing Ben Wikler to lead the Democratic National Committee, a boost for the Wisconsin state party leader in a race that has drawn little attention and few big names.

Schumer’s endorsement — shared first with POLITICO — comes as Democrats prepare for a month-long campaign to run the DNC, with four candidate forums in January. Following the party’s bruising losses in November, members of the committee will elect their new chair on Feb. 1.

Schumer, the most prominent Democrat so far to weigh in publicly on the race, called Wikler a “tenacious organizer,” a “proven fundraiser” and a “sharp communicator” in a statement. He emphasized Wikler’s work in 2024, when Democrats in Wisconsin held on to their Senate seat and flipped 14 state legislative seats, even though Kamala Harris did not win the state.

“Ben has what Democrats need right now — proven results — and that’s why I’m backing Ben,” Schumer said.

Kudos to Wikler, 43, who I met in 2019. But the Democratic Party needs more than a solid field guy running the DNC.

There is a serious discusssion going on among friends about decades-old narratives deeply embedded in people’s preceptions of the country, their place in it, what Democrats have to offer, and whether people can even hear that offer, however well-crafted, amid the din of what early bloggers once called the right’s Mighty Wurlitzer. That’s a long-term challenge not easily addressed by swapping out personnel.

(Still, I can think of more than a few personnel I’d like to see Democrats swap out on Capitol Hill.)

After stinging losses like Democrats experienced in November, the finger-pointing and plethora of hot takes on what Democrats did wrong obscures what (and where) Democrats did right. That’s where Wisconsin comes in, as Peter Slevin writes at The New Yorker. “How Much Do Democrats Need To Change?” reads the headline. Not that much, if they emulate Wisconsin (or North Carolina, I’d argue; emphasis mine):

The mood among Democrats on a December morning in the Wisconsin state capitol was celebratory. Ten Assembly candidates—among them a school administrator, a tavern owner, an accountant, and a county politician—had flipped Republican seats after the state Supreme Court threw out a heavily gerrymandered map. “I am super excited. Who else is super excited?” Representative Lisa Subeck, the caucus chair, said. Some of the newly elected spoke about what they hope to deliver: affordable housing, broadband, clean energy, and more money for public schools. One said he wants to show “that government can be a force for good.”

In addition to the Assembly candidates, four Democratic state Senate candidates won Republican-held seats. Though the G.O.P. still controlled the state legislature, its margins narrowed significantly. Further up the ticket, Senator Tammy Baldwin, a widely liked Democrat, won a third term. Though Kamala Harris lost her Presidential bid, the popular vote, and seven swing states to Donald Trump, the message—even in Wisconsin, which Harris lost—is not so straightforward. The same is true in North Carolina, where Harris was defeated by Trump but Democrats swept the other six statewide races. Of the five battleground states where a Senate race was on the ballot, Democrats won four, losing only Pennsylvania’s, and that one by a mere fifteen thousand votes, or 0.2 per cent. Looked at another way: Donald Trump won the national popular vote, but if one hundred and fifteen thousand of the eight million Trump voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had voted instead for Harris, she would be headed to the White House.

“I’m not setting fire to any playbooks around here,” says Ryan Spaude, 30. He flipped a Republican-held seat near Green Bay. “We nudged this district to the left on a day when the whole country was moving to the right,” adding that an idological pivot is not what’s needed.

“Just tell working folks how you’re going get more money in their pockets,” says Ryan Spaude. Telling working folks is the rub. Democrats have no billionaire owned and funded Wurlitzer.

Rebecca Cooke who lost her bid for WI-3 by three points thinks national Democrats have a branding problem. If so, it is among their problems.

Organizer Bill Hogseth thinks branding is not it exactly:

What struck him most as he knocked on doors this year was how few voters even mentioned the Presidential race. “I can count on my hand the times where I heard people say, ‘Well, hopefully So-and-So gets elected and then this will change,’ ” he told me. “More often than not, it was, ‘Something needs to happen in my local community,’ ‘We need to take on the landlords,’ or ‘There needs to be rent control.’ ”

Wikler’s influence and staffing a year-round organizing effort has been what’s pivotal.

Donald Trump plans to upend government within hours of his inauguration. He’ll pardon Jan. 6th convicts and arrestees and launch a deportaion program that will besmirch whatever positive brand America has left in the world.

That will be followed by a raft of other combative moves, including a Republican attempt to extend the 2017 tax cuts that favored corporations and the wealthy. As Wikler put it, “We’re about to have a big defining battle that gives us a chance to show who we are.”

Same-old at the DNC won’t cut it. Even Schumer seems to understand that. There is too much focus on what Democrats (Harris) might have done wrong in an otherwise impressive short-schedule campaign, and too little being learned from states where things went right and why.

Coincidences or not?

As authorities investigate Wednesday’s New Orleans truck attack on Bourbon Street and the Cybertruck explosion in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, one odd detail links the two. Or doesn’t. Both vehicles were rented using the peer-to-peer rental app, Turo.

Axios reports that Clark County/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Kevin McMahill said “there was no immediate indication of a connection between the two events, but ‘we are investigating every aspect of this.’ “

The New York Times reports:

The owner of the Ford pickup truck used in New Orleans recognized his vehicle when he saw footage showing the truck and license plate on the news. He had rented the truck to a 42-year-old Army veteran who then used it to ram into crowds on Bourbon Street, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more.

[…]

In Las Vegas, the police said during a news conference that the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump Hotel’s lobby entrance, killing one and injuring at least seven others, was also rented from Turo. Officials called it a “coincidence” and said they were continuing to investigate any possible connections.

The driver in the New Orleans attack, identified as Texas-born Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was killed in a shootout with police.

In another blurb from The New York Times:

The Army veteran who rammed a pickup into New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street was “inspired by” the Islamic State terrorist organization, President Biden said Wednesday night in a short address from Camp David. In videos posted to social media shortly before the attack in New Orleans that killed at least 15, the man indicated that he had a “desire to kill,” Mr. Biden said.

Elon Musk and Tesla are issuing statements and doing spin control, as is Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

Turo issued a statement saying, “We do not believe that either renter involved in the Las Vegas and New Orleans attacks had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat.” The company is cooperating with the FBI on the New Orleans investigation, reports the Associated Press.

That’s two coincidences

A Colorado man rented the Cybertruck and drove it to Las Vegas. Police were still working on extracting the body late Wednesday. Like Shamsud-Din Jabbar, Matthew Livelsberger of Colorado Springs was an Army veteran. He was 37.

Denver7 fills in some details:

The driver of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded in front of a Las Vegas hotel on New Year’s Day has been identified as an Army veteran who lived in Colorado Springs, multiple informed sources told Denver7 Investigates.

Those sources tell Denver7 the driver was Matthew Livelsberger, who has multiple Colorado Springs addresses associated to him. FBI agents were staking out one of those addresses on Marksheffel Road late Wednesday awaiting a search warrant.

Make that three coincidences

Denver7 adds this:

Late Wednesday, Denver7 Investigates learned that Livelsberger served at the same Army base as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the suspect in a New Orleans truck rampage hours earlier.

A lot of people serve in the Army. There is no reporting that Shamsud-Din Jabbar and Matthew Livelsberger served at the same base at the same time. Authorities and reporters are scouring the men’s social media accounts for evidence of motive and/or radicalization.

Newsweek:

Jeremy Schwartz, acting FBI Special Agent in Charge for the Las Vegas office, at a news conference: “I know you have a lot of questions.”

“We don’t have a lot of answers,” he added.

If you were going to choose a metaphor for our current state of politics, a Tesla Cybertruck exploding and burning in front of a Trump Tower in a city where millions of Americans go each year to lose their money, is pretty spot on.
pic.twitter.com/xOwXImUIgM

— Melanie D'Arrigo (@DarrigoMelanie) January 1, 2025

ABC News:

Authorities are investigating a Tesla Cybertruck explosion on Wednesday outside the Trump Las Vegas hotel in Nevada as a possible act of terror.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said it was investigating a fire at the entrance to the tower. The public was told to avoid the area, though the police noted the fire had been put out.

The driver pulled into the valet area of the hotel and the vehicle exploded, according to an official. The driver is apparently dead and, so far, the only casualty from the incident. Seven bystanders had minor injuries, authorities said.

Investigators do not know what caused the blast, such as whether something was wrong with the vehicle or whether something external prompted it. Determining what was behind the explosion is the key focus of the probe.

An official briefed on the probe told ABC News that the Tesla Cybertruck had a load of fireworks-style mortars onboard. Investigators are urgently working to determine a motive and whether the driver intended to set off an explosion and why.

You CANNOT make this shit up.

Will they finally catch on?

I keep saying that reality is going to bite Trump eventually. I refuse to believe that his con game isn’t going to catch up with him and I don’t think for a moment that he’s got some kind of magic that transcends all reason. He’s a very lucky guy who happened into the political world at a time when celebrity, social media and right wing propaganda outlets were ascendant in our society and he exploited it like the grifter he is. But the cult he built is like all cults — it’s strong until it isn’t. And its strength is about to be tested.

The New Republic’s Robert McCoy took a look at the weird phenomenon as well as the possible reckoning ahead:

Consider these archetypal dispatches from the 2024 campaign trail. “A lot of people are happy to vote for [Trump] because they simply do not believe he will do many of the things he says he will,” an October New York Times “campaign notebook” entry observed. The following week, The Washington Post noted of prospective Trump voters: “Some read between Trump’s lines about how he would govern, while others disregard parts of his past or present platform.”

Then there was the phenomenon Paul Krugman, the retiring Times columnist, dubbed “Trump-stalgia,” which could just as well have been called “Trump-nesia.” Most Americans are undoubtedly better off than they were four years ago, he wrote in May. “But for reasons that still remain unclear, many seem disinclined to believe it.” This sentiment held true through the election. As TNR’s Greg Sargent reported on November 9, citing internal Democratic polling, “It proved disturbingly difficult to persuade undecided voters that Trump had been a bad president.”

As the author writes, people just projected onto him whatever they wanted him to be regardless of the stupidity, the inconsistency, the hypocrisy or the incoherence. Pick one from column A and one from column B.

But the chimerical allure that helped propel Trump to the White House has an expiration date. He sold myriad, and often conflicting, fantasies to voters. In three weeks’ time, he’ll face reality. And many Trump voters will undoubtedly start to realize that he is not at all the person they thought they were voting for.

Already, there are two major contradictions emerging in the nascent Trump administration, Vox’s Zack Beauchamp argued in November. “The first centers on economic policy—or, more fundamentally, the role of government itself,” he wrote, noting that some Trump picks are proponents of unfettered capitalism while others are economic nationalists who want to “transform American society, including by attacking the practices of large corporations.” The second contradiction, meanwhile, “centers on foreign policy—or, more fundamentally, the purpose of America in the world.” The advocates of hard power versus the isolationists, essentially.

These diverse allies found common cause on the campaign trail in opposition to the left, but “when governing, the administration will be forced to make choices in areas where its leaders disagree at a fundamental level, leading not only to internal conflict but potentially even policy chaos.” In other words, Trump will have to pick sides. In some ways, he’s already doing so based on the balance of his nominees: His Cabinet is shaping up to be rather interventionist and plutocratic.

Many cultists will find ways to rationalize these betrayals. They already are. But the activist right sees their influence with Trump waning and they are already working to wrest control of the movement from the tech-bro interlopers. Those are the people to keep your eyes on and they are more influential than people realize.

McCoy points out that there’s always some backlash in any new administration, asserting that “according to the well-demonstrated theory of thermostatic politics, public opinion tends to move in the opposite direction of policy. ” But he says that if he overestimates his mandate (which is certainly is) it could produce a historically “fierce” backlash.

For example he observes that the draconian deportation plan could elicit a massive backlash. We’ve seen an awful lot of anecdotal evidence (and some polling as well) showing that people just didn’t think he’d actually deport anyone but the vicious criminals he insists are roaming on every street in America. It’s possible that he’ll just stage a few deportations of tattooed gang members, point to the already low crime numbers and say Mission Accomplished. But again, you have to wonder how his hardcore MAGA cultists will respond. They really wanted that mass deportation of immigrants. That Haitian Springfield story proved that.

I do think that prosecuting his enemies and mass pardoning the J6 rioters could have an effect though. The true believers will be on board but I have a sneaking suspicion that at least some of the slightly less cultist types who thought he was going to lower the price of eggs might start to see through his phony promises and wonder why he’s focusing on petty vengeance. If the Congress starts talking about cutting Social Security and Medicare with Elon and Vivek dominating the conversation I think the backlash will indeed be fierce.

If the Democrats and their allies have any tactical sense they will remind people of stuff like this:

Take his improbable vow to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, which he recently walked back in a Time interview, acknowledging that “this is trickier than he let on.” In the same interview, he also managed expectations about lowering the cost of groceries, saying doing so will be “hard” and, if he fails, he would not consider his presidency a failure. It’s a stark pivot from his September pledge: “Vote Trump, and your … grocery prices will come tumbling down.”

On those issues and more, Trump has, as a recent Times headline put it, promised the moon with “no word on the rocket.” On many issues, though, not only is there no rocket, but there are instead blueprints for a deep-sea submersible: Trump’s core policy proposals are poised to do the opposite of what he says, exacerbating the economic discontent he tapped into. Between his proposed tariffs, deportations, and tax cuts, Time reports that if Trump “enacts many of the policies he proposed on the campaign trail, voters may see prices continue to rise.”

This is one of the weird advantages Trump has because everyone knows he’s a pathological liar. The people who like him see that as a sign that he’s a smart politician who wisely tells people what they want to hear in order to get elected.They don’t believe him any more than the rest of us do but they think his threats and promises are good politics anyway. The question is whether what they actually get — this billionaires revolution — is what they thought they were getting:

Or, to return to Trump’s words in The Art of the Deal: “You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.” Trump has proven, in business and politics, that in fact he can con people for a very long time. But, come 2025, when he’s confronted with the reality of governing—and, one can hope, a reinvigorated opposition—Trump may finally be exposed to his newfound supporters as the huckster we’ve long known him to be.

We’ll see. Those swing and unreliable voters might be disappointed. Or they might just lose interest and leave the polarized country where it’s been stuck for almost a decade. I do hope that reality still means something — I have to. I just wish I was more sure that it will catch Trump before he does his worst.

Community Notes can’t keep up with the amount of MAGA misinformation about the New Orleans terror suspect. These three were flagged, but there are countless others.

Looks like 2025, will be much like 2024 for these MAGA misinformation accounts. pic.twitter.com/9NSkvw2yCB

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) January 1, 2025

At this point we have very limited information about the attack in New Orleans last night. It’s a horrific assault which the authorities are saying they don’t believe was done as a lone act of terrorism. The story is unfolding and very little is known as yet except for the fact that the perpetrator was an American from Texas whom they think was flying an ISIS flag. If you’d been on Elon’s hellhole for the past few hours — or watching Fox News — you would have been told that he was an illegal immigrant who had come over the border unlawfully in the last few days, among other lies.

Of course. pic.twitter.com/ykxzFNWzqJ

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 1, 2025

I’m not going to speculate about what this is about but I wanted to alert everyone once more to the fact that Twitter is a cesspool of misinformation on any day but especially at times like these, much of it led by dishonest MAGA leaders. It’s a terrible space during any kind of emergency nowadays which is truly sad because it used to be so good.

BlueSky doesn’t have the scale but if you got there at least you won’t be confronted with a bunch of MAGA weirdos, foreign bots and racist miscreants flooding the zone with lies.

Caption Contest! What do we even call this?pic.twitter.com/QSUpNosiD5

— Don Lewis (@DonLew87) January 1, 2025

Remember yesterday when I called Elon the son Trump never had? Well…

Donald Trump Jr. has trashed his father’s annual New Year’s Eve bash at Mar-a-Lago on his “Triggered with Don Jr.” podcast, calling it “amateur night” and saying guests have often treated him like a “freaking imbecile.”

Footage of this year’s celebrations captured Donald and Melania Trump, running mate J.D. Vance (and his wife Usha) and partying MAGA supporters clapping and singing along to Village People’s “YMCA.”

He was there but he wasn’t having any fun. Probably because Lara Trump was singing.

Trump is inflicting Lara Trump’s singing onto his Mar-a-Lago guests tonight pic.twitter.com/GN0biZdX7Q

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) January 1, 2025

And then there was this which angered Don Jr’s pals to no end:

Reporter: Why did you change your mind on H1B visas?

Trump: I didn’t change my mind. I always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country. We need competent people. We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in. We’re going to… pic.twitter.com/Ot5LNMruyI

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 1, 2025

It seems his voters didn’t know about this, since he never mentioned it. In fact, he was on record opposing the H-1B visas for years:

President Trump in 2020: "As we speak, we’re finalizing H1-B regulations so that no American worker is replaced ever again."

What changed? pic.twitter.com/OTPBs0CeWv

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) December 29, 2024

Many of the rubes won’t know about this or they’ll forgive him. But it’s caused a huge rift among the big MAGA grassroots leaders. It’s going to be a problem.

He’s the smartest broke billionaire in the room

No superlatives are too bigly to describe El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago.

Trump knows competence

“I always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country. We need competent people. We need smart people coming into our country.” It takes a very stable genius to recognize other extraordinary people like RFK Jr. and foreign models.

Reporter: Why did you change your mind on H1B visas?Trump: I didn’t change my mind. I always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country. We need competent people. We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in.

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2025-01-01T02:21:31.702Z

Trump knows social media

Days ago, Trump filed an amicus brief on his desire to rescue TikTok from the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that will likely ban the app in the U.S. on January 19. Even the Wall Street Journal found Trump’s argument preposterous. He wants the Court to treat him (a private citizen) as though he’s co-president with Joe Biden before being sworn in (Raw Story):

“The brief is extraordinary in several ways, none of them good,” the board said, later adding: “Mr. Trump wants the Court to treat him as if he’s already President before he’s inaugurated.”

Trump for all intents and purposes is a “private citizen” until he’s inaugurated, the board countered. He is also in essence “asking the Justices to let him rewrite a law he doesn’t like,” it added.

Trump, the board said, “instructs the Court that he deserves this power because he won the election and is a wizard on social media. Really, that’s his claim.”

No kidding (from the brief): “President Trump is one of the most powerful, prolific, and influential users of social media in history.” Plus, “President Trump alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform while addressing the national security concerns…”

Who can argue with that?

Trump knows who’s boss

“Trump is a little guy, and Musk is a big guy when it actually comes to having money,” historian Timothy Snyder tells The Guardian. “And I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried.”

“I think we overestimate Trump and we underestimate Musk,” Snyder said. “People can’t help but think that Trump has money, but he doesn’t. He’s never really had money. He’s never even really claimed to have money. His whole notion is that you have to believe that he has money. But he’s never been able to pay his own debts. He’s never been able to finance his own campaigns.

“Musk, with an amount of money that was meaningless to him, was able to finance Trump’s campaign, essentially.”

Trump married his wives for their curb appeal. He married Musk for the money.

“Unless Trump breaks it off right now, he’s going to be in this kind of dependent relationship for the rest of the way, because you get used to people giving you money … and I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried.”

But then, Trump has no friends. Everything in his life is transactional. Now Musk is the biggest transactor in the room.

We’ve all wondered when Trump will die from his fast food diet. Maybe he’ll die from a broken heart when Elon dumps him.

You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone

People with higher profiles have warned what could happen to this country under Donald Trump if he were reelected to the White House. I did so myself in 2024 here and here and here. Those three posts all referenced Michael Lewis’s “The Fifth Risk,” his celebration of selfless dedication, essentially, in public service by geeks more interested in mission than in money. Blasphemy!

In a few short weeks, America will embark on a journey into the unknown. Dave Neiwert published “Alt America” in 2017 about the rise of the eliminationist alt-right movement. Trumpism, an expression of that movement, seeks not only to eliminate non-white immigrants but those very civil servants who make the nation you know the nation you know.

Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S. Kopstein consider what it means that Trump 2.0 will be staffed with incompetents and cronies chosen more for their loyalty to one man than to stewardship of the republic that will be 250 years old in 18 months. What Trump and those backing him intend for this country is not new, inventive, or an improvement on popular sovereignty. They intend “an assault on the modern state as we know it” by figures committed to its undoing (New York Times gift link):

Eviscerating modern state institutions almost always clears a path for a different type of political order, one built on personal loyalties and connections to the ruler. The German sociologist Max Weber had a word for this type of regime: patrimonialism, based on the arbitrary rule of leaders who view themselves as traditional “fathers” of their nations and who run the state as a family business of sorts, staffed by relatives, friends and other members of the ruler’s “extended household.”

Social scientists thought that patrimonialism had been relegated to the dustbin of history. And for good reason: Such regimes couldn’t compete militarily or economically with states led by the expert civil services that helped make modern societies rich, powerful and relatively secure.

But a slew of self-aggrandizing leaders has taken advantage of rising inequality, cultural conflicts and changing demography to grab power. The result has been a steep decline in the government’s ability to provide essential services such as health care, education and safety.

My gripe here is with patrimonialism, ten-dollar word for cronyism and/or nepotism.

Trump 2.0 will not actually downsize the alleged “deep state.” They will repurpose departments run by the sort of public servants Lewis met that are the “foundations of both public and private life” and make them serve Dear Leader’s and his billionaire buddies’ bottom lines.

Hanson and Kopstein conclude, “The threat we face is different, and perhaps even more critical: a world in which the rule of law has given way entirely to the rule of men.”

I’ve long described men like Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Koch network, and their ilk as members of the Midas cult. They believe like Midas that everything that might be turned into gold should be. Their bottomless greed, like Midas’s will kill the golden goose that brought them riches and bring them to ruin. But perhaps not before they ruin the rest of us. They will, as Hanson and Kopstein observe, destroy “the predictable enforcement of laws essential to modern capitalism.”

My warning to the kleptocrats and kakistocrats and to American voters who handed them the keys to our government is the timeless lesson of Midas: be careful what you wish for.

Kaecilius: What have you done?
Dr. Stephen Strange: I made a bargain.
Kaecilius: What is this?
Dr. Stephen Strange: Well, it’s everything you’ve ever wanted. Eternal life as part of the One. You’re not gonna like it.
[Kaecilius and his Zealots are sucked into the Dark Dimension]
Dr. Stephen Strange: Yeah, you know, you really should have stolen the whole book because the warnings… The warnings come after the spells.
[Wong laughs]