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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Like a Kid Throwing A Tantrum

Break, throw, kick, scream

As Paul Krugman said Friday, what the Musk and Trump are attempting is a self-coup with “the full support of every Republican in the House and the Senate.”

“The president is openly violating the law and Constitution on a daily basis,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, told The New York Times:

“We’re talking about the idea of whether the president has to follow the law at all,” Nyhan said. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d have to say about the United States, but here we are.”

The GOP has not only rejected democracy, as David Frum predicted tardily six years ago., but the American experiment itself. The very idea of it. All that’s left of the Republican Party is crumpled bunting. It’s not clear if their goal now is the return of the monarchy or feudalism. Oligarchy is too soft a term. Trump wants to be king. He’s always wanted to be king. But Musk? He and his Silicon Valley chums want to be gods. Ill-tempered ones at that.

And a large faction of our neighbors, both the complacent and the violent, are prepared to allow it.

This week has felt like one of those nightmares in which you’re trying to run from a pursuer but your legs don’t seem to work.

What’s stunned us (even those who warned what was coming) is the speed and nastiness of Trump 2.0. Trump with his vengeance-palooza and Musk with his deep hatred of people who spend their lives in public service not trying to maximize their wealth. Trump thinks they’re losers out to get him. (He thinks the world is out to get him.) Musk, as evidenced by his palling around with racists and a eugenecist, really does seem to embrace a “master race” ethos. He wants inferiors not just out of the government but out of the gene pool. He’s as gleeful about his work as a Bond villain mowing down the hired help. (He’d find the comparison flattering.)

Musk is malware burrowing deep into the software of the United States, and no one is quite sure what he’s doing in there.

Also stunning is how Senate Democrats (unless I missed it) did not make more of an issue of Pam Bondi’s confirmation evasions by drawing a direct, very public parallel with Bill Barr’s confirmation and tenure as Trump AG. Barr elided through his grinning teeth during direct Senate questioning and then went to work serving as Trump’s personal attorney instead of guardian of the law. No one should have missed that that’s just what Pam Bondi would do the moment she was sworn in. But they missed the opportunity to state the obvious. Now that she’s launching investigations into a list of enemies she swore her department would never have, it simply looks like for Democrats it was fool me twice, shame on me.

Josh Marshall has this advice from Thursday:

I had been somewhat pessimistic about what I was seeing from congressional Democrats on this front. But starting yesterday they began to change their tune and started saying explicitly that the budget and debt ceiling were a key lever for them in handling the situation. That’s real progress. But I think the terms need to be sharpened a lot. The standard should be: no help on the budget or the debt ceiling until the lawbreaking stops. Period. End of story. No wilding gangs marauding through the federal government. End the criminal conduct. Period.

That’s it. No nuance.

That is, if the party can find it within itself.

And yes, this isn’t creepy at all.

Friday Night Soother

The Oregon Zoo has an adorable new baby:

The long wait is over. After more than 20 months of pregnancy, Rose-Tu, a 30-year-old Asian elephant at the Oregon Zoo, gave birth at 4:29 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Staff are keeping their distance to give the pair time to bond, but the calf appears to be a healthy, strong female, weighing in the vicinity of 200 pounds.

“We couldn’t be happier with how everything is going so far,” said Steve Lefave, who oversees the zoo’s elephant program. “This was one of the smoothest births I’ve ever seen. Rose knew just what to do. She helped her baby up right away. The kid was standing on her own within 15 minutes and took her first steps soon after that.”

Zoo staff had been on baby watch since Jan. 29, when Rose-Tu’s progesterone levels dropped to near zero, indicating labor should begin soon. Rose experienced early labor throughout the day on Feb. 1 and began showing signs of active labor a little after 3 p.m.

Veterinary staff have yet to conduct their first check-up, but once Rose and her calf are ready, they’ll weigh the baby and confirm its sex. Based on their observations so far though, everything is going very well. “Rose is a fantastic mom,” Lefave said. “She’s so gentle and protective, and the calf is already nursing well. These are signs that they will have a strong bond, which is exactly what we want to see. We’re ready to help if needed, but so far mom and baby are doing just fine on their own.”

It might take a little time before the new baby is ready for visitors, Lefave says, but once they’re feeling comfortable they’ll spend time in Forest Hall, where guests can catch a glimpse of the smallest member of the herd. “We want to make sure the calf continues to do well and that Rose-Tu is calm and comfortable with people around,” Lefave said. “And we also want to give the baby a chance to bond with the rest of the elephant family.”

Considered highly endangered in their range countries, Asian elephants are threatened by habitat loss, conflict with humans and disease. It’s estimated that just 40,000 to 50,000 of them remain in fragmented populations from India to Borneo, and their home range overlaps with some of the most populous human areas on the planet — 20% of people worldwide live in or next to Asian elephant habitat.

The Oregon Zoo is recognized worldwide for its elephant care program, which has spanned more than 60 years. The zoo supports a broad range of efforts to help wild elephants and has established a $1 million endowment fund supporting Asian elephant conservation.

Why Are They Slashing So Much?

Tax cuts, what else?

Yesterday Trump unveiled his priorities for his tax bill. Everyone needs to understand what’s going on here. It’s a massive tax giveaway to the rich and powerful, financed by deadly cuts to programs like Medicare and the ACA that help regular people. I explain it here — Chris Murphy

In a closed-door meeting with House Leadership today President Trump reportedly outlined his tax priorities. According to press reports, they included extending the expiring pieces of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA); expanding the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction; enacting tax breaks for goods made in America; cutting taxes on income from tips, overtime pay, and Social Security benefits; and eliminating tax breaks for carried interest and stadium owners.

Depending on the details of these proposals, our rough estimate is that a package of this nature would:

  • Reduce revenue by $5.0 trillion to $11.2 trillion over ten years.
  • Lower revenue by 1.3 to 3.0 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
  • Boost debt to between 132 and 149 percent of GDP by 2035, if not offset, compared to nearly 100 percent today and 118 percent under current law.

Such a package could also lead to significant income shifting and tax avoidance, weaken the Medicare and possibly Social Security trust funds, dramatically boost interest costs, and increase the risk of a debt spiral.

This is why they need to eradicate as much government spending as they can. Musk and the boys need their tax cuts and Trump wants to deliver on his promises:

Obviously, this is just a wingnuts wet dream. But you can bet that the tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations will go through on a party line vote no matter what. They always do. The big question is how much they’re going to take out of the hides of the rest of us to make it happen.

The Door Is Now WideOpen To Kleptocrats

Surprise!

Now why do you think they’d do that?

On Wednesday evening, one day into her tenure as U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi announced the end of the Kleptocracy Initiative, launched by the Justice Department in 2010 to battle high-level corruption worldwide and return ill-gotten funds to victims of financial crimes. The former Florida attorney general and legal counsel to President Trump during his first impeachment trial, who spent the last several years as a corporate lobbyist, also closed the KleptoCapture task force, created under AG Merrick Garland in 2022 to target Russian oligarchs violating U.S. economic sanctions imposed because of Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. Through the initiative, the DOJ has prosecuted frauds worth billions, recovering embezzled funds and seizing assets like megayachts and luxury condos.

The irony of this is simply overwhelming:

Bondi’s DOJ is now presumably free to spend a multi-billion dollar forfeiture fund of money seized through these efforts — otherwise repatriated to the nations it was stolen from — however it likes. That could mean anything from expanded contracts with private prisons (Trump has already reversed a Biden administration order that prevented the Justice Department from renewing such contracts) to new mass detention camps for immigrants in Guantánamo Bay and along the border.

Kleptocrats using the kleptocrats’ stolen billions. Sweet.

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.

The word “Orwellian” is overused but this is actually Orwellian. 404 Media reports:

While responding to the most damaging wildfires in the history of California, FEMA employees received an order “for immediate compliance” this week that states they must immediately change their vocabulary to comply with the Trump Administration’s preferred terminology on gender and immigration. 

For example, FEMA employees are no longer allowed to call undocumented immigrants “migrants” or “undocumented individuals,” they must instead call them “undocumented aliens or illegal aliens.” FEMA can no longer refer to the idea of “integration,” it must begin to say “assimilation.” 

The subject line of the email was “For Immediate Compliance.”

“While the chart presents examples of terminology that should be replaced, it should not be considered to be comprehensive, particularly in the immigration space. Please consult your program counsel for additional language if you are unsure,” the email says.

It’s happening all over the government. Check this out:

Last year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded its Nobel Prize in economic sciences to a trio of researchers based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Chicago. Their work assessed “how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.” The team’s 2000 paper, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” for example, argued that the difference in wealth between Europe and Africa is largely a function of the former having more robust institutions.

Were that paper submitted today to the National Science Foundation for funding, however, it likely wouldn’t have been approved. The NSF supports research considering “how social, economic, political, cultural and environmental forces affect people’s lives,” but the introduction to the paper includes the words “inclusion,” “institutional” and “political” — all of which are red flags for reviewers during the second Trump administration.

As The Post reported on Tuesday, NSF staff have been comparing existing grants to a lengthy list of terms to establish whether the work being conducted violates President Donald Trump’s executive orders uprooting “DEI,” a catchall term for programs aimed at addressing historic systems of discrimination.

Staff have been asked to look at the title or abstract of the research proposal, checking whether any of the worrisome terms — like “gender” or “status” — appear. Then staffers consider the project summary and, finally, the project description. If any of the terms — like “advocate” or “trauma” or “women” — appear, the proposal is flagged. There are about 100 terms included in the review. (Also included: “inequities,” “racial,” and “female,” though not “male.”)

You can’t use the word “women” or “female” in a scientific paper. Wow. And that’s not all:

Ugh, the Declaration of Independence includes words that would trigger a review by the NSF. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/int…

Philip Bump (@pbump.com) 2025-02-06T21:45:16.468Z

Pam Bondi’s Rolling Thunder Revue

While President Trump flamboyantly signs executive orders banning little trans girls from playing softball and celebrating his delusional order to have the Army Corps of Engineers dump millions of gallons of water in a California flood plain, his man-Friday Elon Musk and his teen-age cyberpunk gang have taken a sledgehammer to the federal government. Systematically infiltrating one agency after another (the latest being the Social Security Administration!) they are fulfilling the Project 2025 blueprint to smash everything they come in contact with.

It’s only been two and a half weeks and they’ve already accessed the Treasury Department and are fooling around with the computer system that pays America’s bills, they’ve destroyed the Office of Personnel Management and USAID and are now working on Medicare and Medicaid,the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Department of Education. There are surely more on the menu that just haven’t come to light yet. The boys are working with no supervision other than Musk and a handful of henchmen, allegedly under the authority of the addled president who spends his days screaming at clouds.

Yesterday, in a 53-47 vote the Senate confirmed the original mastermind of this slaughter, Russell Vought, the main author of the Project 2025 plot to annihilate the federal government and turn the country into a Christian Nationalist paradise, as the director of Office Management and Budget. That he somehow got two wealthy libertines to do his dirty work for him is a true testament to the power of his vision.

He’s been “advising” behind the scenes already so it shouldn’t make too much difference now that he’ll be in the office and anyway Musk has been given the go ahead to wreck whatever he can get away with. The only thing that might stop him are judicial orders but since everything is so secretive we really don’t know if they’re following them.

Still, for all of Vought’s and DOGE’s ability to feverishly slash and burn, they really can’t do it all. But they don’t have to. This week the Senate also confirmed Pam Bondi as the Attorney General of the United States. At the swearing in ceremony, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, (of course)Trump said: “I’m supposed to say she’s going to be totally impartial when it comes to Democrats but I’m just going to say that she’ll be as impartial as a person can be,” so that was reassuring.

Adopting the patented Trump/Musk shock and awe technique, she hit the ground running. Working with her two top deputies, former Trump personal defense lawyers Emil Bove and Todd Blanch, she has issued a flurry of orders demonstrating that she is on a mission from Dear Leader. The Washington Post reported that on her first day:

Despite pledging during her confirmation hearing that “politics will not play a part” in her decision-making, Bondiwithin hours of taking office,created a “Weaponization Working Group” to review instances of what she described as “politicized justice” — starting with the federal criminal cases brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith.

She also ordered an examination of what she alleged was federal cooperation in the criminal and civil investigations of Trump in New York — even though they were carried out by state authorities, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

She wrote, “these steps are required because, as President Trump pointed out following his second inauguration, ‘[t]he prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process.'” She added, “No one who has acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions has any cause for concern about our efforts to root out corruption and weaponization.” I’m sure that was very reassuring.

At least one employee almost surely is very happy with this edict. That would be the Acting US Attorney in Washington DC, the former Stop the Steal lawyer, Ed Martin. He’s so committed to ending partisan weaponization that he posted the following letter on X addressed to Musk saying “Dear @elon, Please see this important letter. We will not tolerate threats against DOGE workers or law-breaking by the disgruntled. All the best. Ed Martin”

Martin has a very bright future in the Trump Justice Department.

Chris Geitner at Lawdork reported on another Bondi memo effectively ending any remaining norm that the Department of Justice would operate as an independent arm of the government, answerable only to the law and the Constitution. She demanded “zealous advocacy” of Trump’s agenda and threatened that dissent would not be tolerated:

“Any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law”

She issued yet another order titled, “Ending Illegal DEI and DEIA Discrimination and Preferences” and ordered a report from the Civil Rights Division on the private sector’s “illegal” use of DEI for potential criminal investigation. (This tracks with a group of GOP state AGs, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton threatening COSTCO for keeping its DEI policies in place.)

Her use of DEIA, which adds “accessibility” to the usual DEI slur indicates they are prepared to challenge the Americans With Disabilities Act as discriminatory which is all the way through the looking glass.

There’s more. Trump has long advocated the repeal of corruption laws pertaining to bribery of foreign players so it’s unsurprising that one of her first moves would be to scale back “enforcement of laws governing foreign lobbying transparency and bribes of foreign officials.” .) But the real tell is the announcement to end the end of the Kleptocracy Initiative initiated in 2010 to end international corruption and return the ill-gotten gains to victims. Rolling Stone reported:

The former Florida attorney general and legal counsel to President Trump during his first impeachment trial, who spent the last several years as a corporate lobbyist, also closed the KleptoCapture task force, created under AG Merrick Garland in 2022 to target Russian oligarchs violating U.S. economic sanctions imposed because of Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine. Through the initiative, the DOJ has prosecuted frauds worth billions, recovering embezzled funds and seizing assets like megayachts and luxury condos.

That’s got to make some of the world’s rich oligarchs very happy. In fact, one might even call it the first legal foreign bribe under the new Trump administration. One only wonders if anyone’s getting something in return.

All in all it’s been a very productive week so far for the new Attorney General. As far as I know she’s yet to weigh in on the anticipated purge of the FBI, but I think we can be assured that she’s for it. After her deputy fired the Jack Smith prosecutors, on Trump’s personal order, and put a number of others on notice that they are to be demoted if they refuse to resign, it’s very clear that Bondi and her henchmen are turning the Justice Department into Trump’s personal law firm. Since all three of the top officials have actually been Trump’s defense attorneys, that makes a lot of sense. He’s finally found his Roy Cohn.

Update—

Ed Martin is on a roll:

Salon

Trumpists’ Turn To Freak Out

And yours

Raw Story:

Adding to reports that billionaire Elon Musk is making the lives of Donald Trump’s inner circle a living hell with his freelancing, Wired’s Jake Lahut reported on MSNBC that some are looking to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to step in and right the ship.

That would be the same Susie Wiles who, when her boss spoke this week of the U.S. ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip to occupy and develop the prime beachfront property, looked like this:

Lahut spoke with MSNBC’s “Way Too Early” this morning on the tensions Elon Musk’s Agents of DOGE are generating inside the White House.

By the kids the South Africa-born boy genius enlisted to take a wrecking ball to the federal government — like 19-year-old hacker “Big Balls” and the racist-eugenecist Marko Elez — Musk means to wreak as much havoc as he can without considering or caring about the consequences for others. Much like the Narcissist-in-Chief who’s letting him trash federal personnel and policy infrastructure unsupervised. This is the plot of a Superman movie.

Four federal-government IT professionals The Atlantic spoke with are “terrified” about incursions into federal computer systems by Musk’s Agents of DOGE wannabe supervillains:

“This is the largest data breach and the largest IT security breach in our country’s history—at least that’s publicly known,” one contractor who has worked on classified information-security systems at numerous government agencies told us this week. “You can’t un-ring this bell. Once these DOGE guys have access to these data systems, they can ostensibly do with it what they want.”

There is a level of danger in the untrained tinkering with complex systems built up over years.

The four experts laid out the implications of giving untrained individuals access to the technological infrastructure that controls the country. Their message is unambiguous: These are not systems you tamper with lightly. Musk and his crew could act deliberately to extract sensitive data, alter fundamental aspects of how these systems operate, or provide further access to unvetted actors. Or they may act with carelessness or incompetence, breaking the systems altogether. Given the scope of what these systems do, key government services might stop working properly, citizens could be harmed, and the damage might be difficult or impossible to undo. As one administrator for a federal agency with deep knowledge about the government’s IT operations told us, “I don’t think the public quite understands the level of danger.”

By the way, DOGE wants to tinker with the air traffic control system computers and make “rapid safety upgrades”:

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) told FLYING it would welcome any serious initiative to modernize the ATC system, but not without a seat at the table.

“It is critical that the experts who know and understand the intricacies and have detailed knowledge of the very complex system—the dedicated aviation safety professionals represented by NATCA—are involved in the process from design to testing and to implementation,” the union said in a statement.

Musk is trying to reimagine the federal government they way he mismanages a software company. The approach echoes the “move fast and break things” culture of Silicon Valley (elsewhere in The Atlantic):

Here’s the problem: The federal government is not a software company. “The stakes are wildly different,” a former senior Twitter executive told me recently. This person, who requested anonymity because they worked closely with Musk during his takeover and fear retribution, argued that Musk seems incapable of recognizing the limits of his own knowledge. When I asked them to describe Musk’s managerial strategy, they borrowed a term of art from SpaceX’s own rocket mishaps: “This is a rapid unscheduled disassembly of government services.”

Listen. I am/was a mechanical engineer. The ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code books I used fill 4-5 ft of shelf space. There is a lot of materials science in them. But also a lot of trial and error. The code has built up over a century-plus. A lot of it, like airline design, comes from forensic analysis of boilers, etc., that failed or blew up. Some killed people. Oh, let’s not build them THAT way again. Better update the code.

Like a friend’s observations about legacy computer code — cuneiform by 21st-century standards — deep below the surface of programming Big Balls and Marko take for granted, there’s stuff in the boiler code that no one alive knows why it’s in there. That doesn’t mean it’s useless and that ripping it out will do no harm. It means the reason it’s in there has been lost to time, but there was a damn good reason for it. And likely still is. 

Musk and his brigands haven’t a clue about that. Even while Musk is having to learn through trial and error how to fly his rockets, he’s standing on the backs of government-funded research with rockets that blew up for years before they got the science and engineering right. (There are 20 min. reels on YouTube.) But he’s having too much fun breaking things.

Autogolpe

Get familiar with it and stop it

The Musk-Trump administration is not looking to reduction-in-force its way to cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. That’s a smokescreen. What they’re attempting, says Paul Krugman, is an autogolpe, a self-coup. And with “the full support of every Republican in the House and the Senate.”

“The federal work force is no larger now than it was under Dwight Eisenhower,” writes the economist. Laying off federal workers doesn’t even put a dent in $2 trillion. So why do it?

It’s an attempt to capture the government wholesale. It’s a purge. Pure and simple. Throw out the old. Indescriminately. Bring in the newer, truer believers. Even if some Trump babies get tossed out with the bathwater. Republicans have long been willing to scarifice their own so long as they believe far more on the left will die a swift political death. *

Krugman writes:

Musk-Trumpocracy’s illegal shutdown of USAID should be seen through this lens. Musk clearly hates the idea of helping people in need: just look at the rage he has expressed over the philanthropy of MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife. While he may believe that the agency is “a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America”, it also serves the purpose of purging civil servants while demagoguing to Trump’s base. The same can be said of the confected furor over DEI.

It hardly needs pointing out that the attempted purge at the FBI, targeting anyone who investigated Jan. 6 rioters or Trump himself, is an integral part of the autogolpe. And so, obviously, is the terrifying attempt of Musk and his acolytes to seize control of the Treasury payments system and give crucial power to rewrite the code to a 25-year-old who turns out (surprise!) to be a racist and eugenicist.

(Please note that it was the Wall Street Journal that outed the racist-eugenicist.)

So, now what? Is it stoppable by people who still believe in our democratic republic?

The resistance to this attempted coup is still expanding. But so is the coup itself. Trump’ AG Pam Bondi just disbanded the task force that targets Russian oligarchs.

Pam Bondi ends FBI effort to combat foreign influence in U.S. politics

It’s a race to save the republic and we in the resistance are playing catch-up.

Krugman suggests:

The good news is that there are many ways in which an autogolpe delayed can become an autogolpe denied. The alliance between Musk and Trump, two men with giant but obviously fragile egos, could break down. Musk’s meddling at Treasury and the assault on federal workers may lead to some highly visible disasters. Voters may eventually realize that Trump’s claims of success are smoke and mirrors and wonder what happened to his promise to make groceries cheaper. 

But waiting around for Musk-Trump to fail is whistling past the graveyard. Politics, it’s said, is not a spectator sport.

Anat Shenkler-Osorio tells Anand Giridharadas that if 3.5% of the population can change the course of a nation, then we’d best get to it:

“It turns out that no autocracy in the world has withstood that sliver of a population, engaged in active, ongoing, IRL resistance, refusal and ridicule.” (IRL= in real life, for the initiated)

That means you can do everything from learning and spreading Know Your Rights to stop ICE in their tracks, calling Dem lawmakers with concrete and specific demands to grind Congress to a halt, organizing very localized actions (think about your next school board or city council meeting) to beat down bad bills and demand good ones, just to name a few. This current administration of the bullies for the billionaires is hellbent on sweeping shock and awe — but what actually happens in our country comes down to what we do together in the places where we live.

Most politicians do not care what you think, she believes, but they pay close attention to what you do. MSNBC Thursday night reported that a large crowd of protesters rushed to where Musk’s DOGE goons where scheduled to visit the Department of Labor. Musk’s brigands for some reason never arrived. And a judge blocked access.

It’s going to take more than clicktivism. Visible protests matter. But so do small actions. In bulk. Flooding phone lines and clogging in-boxes matter. Like Anat said, they may not care what you think, but they watch what you do. Volume and numbers are persuasive.

* In North Carolina as we speak, Judge Jefferson Griffin, the Republican loser in last fall’s state Supreme Court race, is asking courts to throw out 60,000+ ballots in his contest — Ds, Rs and UNAs — because he believes on balance that the revised vote count will erase his 734-vote loss.

Nobody Voted For Elon Musk Part VII

The Dems are getting focused:

Armed with new polling showing Musk’s popularity in the toilet, key Democratic leaders are going after the top adviser to President Donald Trump who is dismantling the federal government. They are attempting to subpoena him and introducing legislation to block him from receiving federal contracts while he holds a “special” role leading Trump’s cost-cutting crusade…

“If you oppose Donald Trump, making Elon Musk the face of his administration is the smart way to go,” said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. “Where the rubber really hits the road on all of this is for people who are inclined to be supportive of Donald Trump and they, for whatever reason, think Donald Trump is on their side. But many of them have a different view of Elon Musk.”

[…]

New internal polling, conducted on behalf of House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership, found Musk is viewed negatively among 1,000 registered voters in battleground districts. Just 43 percent approve of him and 51 percent view him unfavorably. The poll, conducted by the Democratic firm Impact Research and completed between Jan. 19 to 25, also found that Musk evoked strong negative feelings. Of the 51 percent who disapproved of him, 43 percent did so strongly.

The survey isn’t a one-off, either. An Economist/YouGov poll published on Wednesday also found Musk’s approval rating underwater, 43 percent favorable to 49 percent unfavorable.

A poll by Garin’s Hart Research of 1,735 voters taken between Jan. 24 and Jan. 30 found that a majority — including 56 percent of independents — have a negative view of Musk.

In House Majority Forward’s internal polling, pollsters asked respondents for their thoughts on “the creation of a government of the rich for the rich by appointing up to nine different billionaires to the administration,” and found 70 percent opposed with only 19 percent in support — a stat that suggests Democrats have landed on a message that could gain traction with swing voters.

That data and focus groups held by House Majority Forward helped bring attacks on the administration into focus: Democrats “shouldn’t chide Musk, Trump, and others for being rich,” the group wrote in a memo, but point out Musk’s conflicts of interests as head of DOGE and note that he could undermine key safety net programs to enrich himself at the expense of American taxpayers.

That makes sense. Musk is way too public and way too weird and there’s already one weirdo at the top,

People have to be wondering why the richest man in the world is doing all this even as he’s running his companies. It’s bizarre, even by Trump standards. Dems are smart to push this and they should aim at Republicans who are looking for an off-ramp. Blame Elon, get him out. Nothing is more important right now.

Dementia On Parade

Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast: “The water comes down from the northwest parts of Canada, I guess, but the Pacific Northwest. And it comes down by millions and millions of barrels a day and uh, I opened it up. It wasn’t that easy to do. But I opened it up and it’s pouring down.”

It’s actually raining right now so I guess he’s turned the valve on and pointed it up at the sky?

Where are the farmers whose water has been wasted and which they’ll need next summer? Well…

Agriculture is a form of legalized gambling here in California, our land is prone to deluge or drought. Our farmers, relentlessly adapting, are as innovative as any set of suits in Silicon Valley, learning new ways to grow more food with less water. As sure as the sun, our farmers have always shared their views of California politics as they relentlessly pursue the water necessary to grow much of the nation’s fruits and vegetables.

Yet now, an eerie silence has begun descending over California farming. A candidate many of them undoubtedly supported for president, Donald Trump, has shockingly wasted some of their water in a downright dangerous stunt unlike anything in memory.

When I spoke last week before two water conferences in two different states filled with Central Valley farmers, the first question I confronted in Sacramento was basically how to make all this Trump stuff go away. When I theorized at the second conference in Reno that Trump may not know what he’s doing out here, I got no eye contact from more than half the room as we all exited.

They haven’t said a word. Dear Leader cares about them. They know that. If he sounds like a moron and wastes their water it’s got to be for a good reason. He’s a genius.