He could go down in history as one of the worst
Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial philosophy when he acquires a company is to immediately shut down everything and then restore a few once they get the lay of the land and determine what he thinks is necessary. We saw that at Twitter when he came in and fired everyone, determined that any kind of moderation was unnecessary and it’s now overrun with bots, disinformation, foreign propaganda and Nazis. He likes that. He fired the disaster team that made Twitter an important resource during those times, getting out information you could rely on as real. As we found out during the LA fires, it’s completely useless for that purpose now.
He thinks the United States federal government is just like twitter. For instance he said this just the other night:
“Regulations, basically, should be default gone,” Musk said. “Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”
“These regulations are added willy-nilly all the time. So we’ve just got to do a wholesale, spring cleaning of regulation and get the government off the backs of everyday Americans so people can get things done,” Musk said, adding later: “If the government has millions of regulations holding everyone back, well, it’s not freedom. We’ve got to restore freedom.”
As we’ve seen with USAID, he’s also willing to completely shut down agencies he says have engaged in fraud with no notice. I’ve heard some fatuous Republicans on television saying that they can always “restore” the functions that are really important. Sure. Republicans love helping foreigners.
What are the odds that this is going to end well?
Two weeks into President Trump’s sweeping freeze on foreign aid, H.I.V. groups abroad have not received any funding, jeopardizing the health of more than 20 million people, including 500,000 children. Subsequent waivers from the State Department have clarified that the work can continue, but the funds and legal paperwork to do so are still missing.
With the near closure of the American aid agency known as U.S.A.I.D. and its recall of officers posted abroad, there is little hope that the situation will resolve quickly, experts warned.
H.I.V. treatment and services were funded through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a $7.5 billion program that was frozen along with all foreign aid on Mr. Trump’s first day in office.
[…]
Without treatment, millions of people with H.I.V. would be at risk of severe illness and premature death. The loss of treatment also threatens to reverse the dramatic progress made against H.I.V. in recent years and could spur the emergence of drug-resistant strains of H.I.V.; both outcomes could have a global impact, including in the United States.
There are very serious consequences for the impulsive, wrecking ball mode of government that Project 2025 and Elon Musk are carrying out. They don’t care. Musk is a sociopath and Russell Vought (who is clearly guiding this behind the scenes as well) is a racist white nationalist religious fanatic who no doubt thinks that people with HIV were asking for it. Neither they, nor Trump, care at all if 20 million people die. In fact, I suspect they think it’s probably a good thing since the sick are a burden on the rich people (producers) who are responsible for everything good in this world.
