Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

That new Willie Brown ad was just the beginning

Harris was just saying that she would uphold the law. That ad was probably decisive in her loss and it was a grotesque attack on transgender people. They’re now going to change the laws so they can overtly discriminate against them.

This is a crime against humanity in my book. In fact, it sounds like something out of Nazi Germany:

Earlier this fall, Florida officials ordered transgender women in the state’s prisons to submit to breast exams. As part of a new policy for people with gender dysphoria, prison medical staff ranked the women’s breast size using a scale designed for adolescents. Those whose breasts were deemed big enough were allowed to keep their bras. Everyone else had to surrender theirs, along with anything else considered “female,” such as women’s underwear and toiletry items.

This article was published in partnership with the Tampa Bay Times.

The examinations came after people who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by the prison system’s own providers were brought into meetings at the end of September and told of the prisons’ new policy, which would make it nearly impossible for them to get hormone therapy and other gender-affirming medical care, according to interviews and emails with more than a dozen transgender women who said they attended the meetings.

Josie Takach, who is incarcerated in a men’s facility south of Tallahassee, said a male doctor told her to lift up her shirt, then glanced at her breasts and wrote something down without saying a word. When she tried to ask a question, a nurse “told me not to ask any questions and to just shut up and do what I’m told,” she recalled.

“It felt like I was being treated less than human,” she said.

Unless the whole world regresses to the dark ages, which is certainly possible, this period is going to be looked back on as akin to Jim Crow for its bigotry and cruelty. I honestly can’t believe I’m seeing what I’m seeing.

They’re making these women get a buzz cut and wear men’s underwear. And for what? So they can prove that transgenderism doesn’t exist?

So far, the courts have decided that gender affirming care is required but that’s being tested. Just last week the Supreme Court heard the case from Tennessee in which the state banned such care for minors and it certainly seemed that they were ready to uphold that ban. That case is seen as a gateway to a whole panoply of other anti-trans laws, depending on the criteria upon which they base their opinion.

As Tatyana Tandanpolie at Salon wrote:

Against a virulently anti-trans social and political landscape, a Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti, which is expected by July 2025, in favor of Tennessee could also have broader impacts on the trans community as a whole, Colker argued. 

“There’s nothing to stop a state from banning this kind of medical treatment for all transgender people. There’s nothing special about youth,” she said, adding: “Will we start seeing more and more of these restrictions for adults, and then will Congress decide to get into the game and ban this treatment nationally for both youth and possibly adults as well? Those are scary thoughts.” …

Meanwhile, the community’s rights and freedoms remain in flux and at risk of further rollbacks as state legislatures ramp up the number of proposals aiming to curtail youth access to gender-affirming care, limit participation in sports and restrict bathroom usage by sex assigned at birth. According to Trans Legislation Tracker, more than 650 anti-transgender bills, including 274 carried over from 2023, are under consideration in state legislatures this year. 

This is a war on transgender people. It’s sick. Why in the world do these people think this is such a terrible problem? I just don’t get it.

7,309 votes were the difference between a Dem and GOP majority. Obviously, the Democratic Party needs to completely renounce its values, policies and agenda if they ever expect to win another election.

By the way, Trump’s landslide victory is now at 1.4%.

Full Interview: Stephen Miller (@StephenM) joins Sunday Morning Futures w/ Maria Bartiromo (@MariaBartiromo) to discuss investing in Border Security, a Tax Reform Package (Tax Cuts), what exactly the Senate is expected to do once President Donald Trump takes office, squashing the… pic.twitter.com/hWqNau7IUS

— Dusty (@thatdudedusty) December 8, 2024

Stephen Miller appeared on Fox and laid it all out. He declared that it was Trump’s number one priority ahead of everything else including tax cuts, tariffs and “drill, baby,drill” which Trump asininely says it what he plans to do on day one. Apparently, they’re looking at something in the neightborhood of $120 billion dollars:

Miller said on Fox News that first, incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have “promised that they can get a full funding package for the border, the most significant board of security investment in American history … to the president’s desk in January or early February.”

That would mean a “massive increase” in Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers working on Trump’s deportation operation and a “historic increase in border agents,” with both getting a pay rise, Miller told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.

There would be “full funding for ICE beds, full funding for air and marine operations, full funding for all of the barriers and technology that you need to ensure there’s never another got-away entering this country,” Miller added.

Trump aides have previously said the president-elect would prioritize deporting dangerous criminals — something the federal government already does.

An Axios review of the most recent immigration court records found that less than .5% of over 1 million cases last year resulted in deportation orders for alleged crimes other than illegal entry into the U.S.

After Trump has signed executive orders to “seal the border shut” and begin deportations, the senators would “move immediately” in the same timeframe “to the comprehensive tax reform package,” Miller said.

“What they’re talking about doing is, before government funding expires in March, before the debt ceiling expires in June, just days after he puts his hand on that Bible …” added Miller before Bartiromo asked if waiting until later in the year to extend tax cuts through a separate reconciliation process could risk it not happening.

“There’s zero chance of that because, as you know, the tax cuts expire this year,” Miller replied.

“And you’re not just going to have tax cuts, but you’re going to have other fiscal reforms … going to have energy reforms, maybe additional border reforms. But the very important point in all of this is that, with the current [slim] size of the majority in the House, there isn’t a proposal to pass taxes in February,” he added. “That’s going to take some period of time.”

So, how do they plan to pay for all this? Well:

Incoming Senate GOP leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is actively seeking ways to make next year’s border and defense package deficit-neutral, if not deficit-negative. […]

The border portion of the first reconciliation package — which also includes energy and defense — could be as much as $120 billion, a source familiar told Axios.

It would go toward wall and border agents but also build out infrastructure at Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Trump’s deportation efforts.

After pressure from some Senate Republicans, Thune is gathering ideas for ways to pay for the package likely to include hundreds of billions of dollars for defense and the border — though the exact total is not clear.

One idea: Overturning President Biden’s student loan program, which could free up to $200 billion, sources familiar with the conversations told Axios.

$120 billion? To put that in context, if you add up ever single Border Patrol budget from 1990 through 2024, adjusted for inflation, it’s $121 billion. That’s THIRTY-FOUR YEARS of funding. They did say it included defense but we don’t know it that’s the full defense bill or just some part of it. Energy supposedly is a revenue offset.

I wonder what DOGE has to say about this? I didn’t think they wanted to do anything deficit neutral. And surely they want to cancel that student loan program to lower the deficit not pay for new spending, right? And they’ve got all those tax cuts coming too. What a dilemma.

I’m going to guess that Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are definitely coming into focus as targets of their cuts. After all, they always wanted to eliminate them anyway.

Here’s another Republican talking about it:

Rep. Mark Alford: "It's gonna mean cuts to the 24 percent of the discretionary spending that we have. And it's also going to mean looking long term at the front end of some programs like Social Security and Medicare … we can move the retirement age back a little bit." pic.twitter.com/utj2x4yO5t

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 9, 2024

It should be noted that the House isn’t exactly on board with splitting the reconciliation bill. But from what we’re seeing at the moment, what Trump wants, Trump gets. So I have to assume they’ll all go along or face some very unpleasant threats from MAGA. That’s how it works now.

Ingraham: The instagram posts from nut bag people ..people celebrating. This this is a sickness, honestly, it's so disappointing, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised.. up next, the other big news out of New York, Daniel Penny, a lot of people think he is a hero. pic.twitter.com/DRi5d1QNTv

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 10, 2024

Here’s how the next segment started

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2024-12-10T00:43:47.240Z

Jeanine: It's a good day for America. I started by saying that Danny Penny was acquitted. This guy was arrested. pic.twitter.com/v3EVtFsMcC

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 9, 2024

Watters: He’s way too soft. He’s going to get annihilated. If he's not going to get the death penalty, maybe someone will do him justice behind bars

Jeanine: You should stop there pic.twitter.com/NFuvKNhshv

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 9, 2024

Basically: Vigilante who kills homeless Black man on train good, vigilante who kills rich white guy on sidewalk bad.

That’s your right wing morality, right there.

(And yes, I know there are people on the left taking the opposite POV but they aren’t on what amounts to state TV flagrantly spreading their hypocrisy to millions in the same breath.)

Ben Wikler on “The Daily Show”

Ben Wikler, Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair, appeared Monday night on “The Daily Show” and made an impression on host Jon Stewart. That’s not easy to do for a political operative. Wikler, 43, a founding producer for Al Franken’s Air America radio show and former national adviser to MoveOn, is running for Democratic National Committee chair.

“The passion that you’re bringing, that feels like what it needs in this moment,” Stewart said, remarking that DNC chairs he’s interviewed before felt much more corporate.

“You are approaching [politics] from a much more populist, bottom-up standpoint than I’ve heard in the past. Other than Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.” At that Dean reference, the audience applauded.

I’ve mentioned Wikler in the context of the DNC chair’s race twice already. The two front runners for the position are Wikler and Minnesota’s DFL chair Ken Martin. I met Martin in passing this year at a North Carolina party meeting. He’s known, experienced, impressive, and connected. But indulge me. How I met Wikler says worlds about the man.

Netroots Nation held its 2019 conference in Philadelphia. A few weeks earlier, I’d sent Wikler a link to For The Win via IM. At an after-hours party in a hotel suite packed elbow-to-elbow, I’d slipped into an adjacent bedroom for a conversation where the din was somewhat less. While attendees in the main room sipped beers, ate cheesesteaks, and traded political gossip, a guy sat in the corner of the bedcoom in a cushioned chair with his nose in a laptop: working. Seriously, working. I caught a glimpse of his name badge: Ben Wikler.

When he came up for air, I walked over and introduced myself. He recognized my name.

“Didn’t you send me a message recently?” Wikler asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Did I respond to it?” Wikler asked, recalling what I’d messaged about.

No, he hadn’t.

“I’m putting you in touch with my training director,” Wikler said, pulling up an email form and e-introducing us on the spot. I had a 45-minute call with her the next week.

That’s the kind of chair Democrats need running their national party. A guy who understands and appreciates field work and is passionate about boots on the ground work. It’s what Stewart saw across the table last night.

Update: Let me say again, There is no The Democratic Party. A lot of the negatives Stewart reacts to as “the Democratic Party” are more a feature of the Beltway caucus fundraising arms — the DCCC and DSCC — than activists farther down the food chain. But the DNC chair gets more media face time than the heads of those groups and can set a new tone and agenda, as Howard Dean did and caught grief for inside the Beltway:

“We’re going to be in places where the Democratic Party hasn’t been in 25 years,” Dean likes to say. “If you don’t show up in 60 percent of the country, you don’t win, and that’s not going to happen anymore.”

50-state worked while Dean lasted.

The anger of the crowd and the pettiness of plutocrats

Princeton economist Paul Krugman just published his final New York Times column in a body of work begun in January 2000. He considers how the world has changed over 25 years. It’s a grimmer place:

What strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. And I’m not just talking about members of the working class who feel betrayed by elites; some of the angriest, most resentful people in America right now — people who seem very likely to have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration — are billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired.

Krugman doesn’t mention Trump again, but he’s the most prominent of those resentful billionaires.

In early 2000, Krugman writes, “Polls showed a level of satisfaction with the direction of the country that looks surreal by today’s standards.” One could point to many reasons for the public mood, but the collapse of public faith in elites features prominently. “The public no longer has faith that the people running things know what they’re doing, or that we can assume that they’re being honest.”

Krugman touches on the financial crisis of 2008 as one reason, eliding the crisis of confidence in American invulnerability that was the fallout from the September 11 attacks. Still, the Great Recession hit more Americans where they live, and their resentments swelled.

Wall Street’s  Masters of the Universe were uncontrite and escaped well-earned criminal prosecutions, adding to public cynicism. They kept their bonuses but lost stature in the public eye. They responded with “Obama rage” to the 44th president’s suggestion that they were, you know, in some small part to blame.

These days there has been a lot of discussion of the hard right turn of some tech billionaires, from Elon Musk on down. I’d argue that we shouldn’t overthink it, and we especially shouldn’t try to say that this is somehow the fault of politically correct liberals. Basically it comes down to the pettiness of plutocrats who used to bask in public approval and are now discovering that all the money in the world can’t buy you love.

There is not enough money on the planet to fill an empty soul. So not to overthink things, then, it is clear that the incoming 47th president has been trying to buy love his entire career. As have many of the billionaires with which he plans to populate the White House next year. Trump chief among them demands worship. Wealth equals worth in the billionaire universe, and in the country club of the gods.

Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer famously deconstructed billionaire’s mythmaking in a 2012 TED talk. He told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell:

“When a capitalist like me claims to be a ‘job creator,’ it sounds like we’re describing how the economy works, but what we’re doing is something far more interesting. What we’re doing is making a claim on status and privilege. Look, there’s a small leap from ‘job creator’ to ‘The Creator’ — someone at the center of the economic universe…

But elites in general have taken it on the chin over the last 25 years, not just the One Percent. The public mood has curdled, in Krugman’s view, towards elites in particular, and of any kind.

The Washington Post reports this morning, “University leaders are bracing for an onslaught of aggressive legislation and regulations amid growing hostility from an ascendant Republican Party that depends less and less on college-educated voters.”

This is not a new trend. Attacks on elite academies by state legislatures have taken place in the last decade in North Carolina and Wisconsin. Only now they may come from Washington, D.C.:

For years, conservatives have seen colleges and universities as unwelcoming and disdainful of their values. Tensions between Republicans and higher education have been rising over questions of free speech, the cost of college, diversity, race and more.

Now that rift has become a rupture.

In a “Morning Joe” interview aired Monday, President Bill Clinton commented on how “deeply and yet closely divided” the U.S. is as a country.

That divide, distrust of learning and expertise is both organic and cultivated, seeded and nurtured by the very petty plutocrats whose wealth can’t buy love.

Commenting on the Clinton interview, a Bluesky commenter notes, “Since Reagan, the GOP has worked to increase citizens’ cynicism about government, and then campaigned against government. Now, under Trump, the GOP is working to increase citizens’ cynicism about democracy, and then campaigning against democracy.”

Is there a way out? Krugman offers:

We may never recover the kind of faith in our leaders — belief that people in power generally tell the truth and know what they’re doing — that we used to have. Nor should we. But if we stand up to the kakistocracy — rule by the worst — that’s emerging as we speak, we may eventually find our way back to a better world.

May you all live to see it.

For now, the satire of Idiocracy (2006) bites deeper than ever and we seem a long way from the corner Joe Bowers turned in his inaugural speech:

And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn’t just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!

5:20 PM: First National Guard troops arrive at the Capitol. Police start to push back against rioters and secure the Capitol.

— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) January 6, 2022

We know that happened on January 6th. We saw it with our own eyes, heard the testimony of his own staff and read the reports. The facts cannot be disputed. Trump lied about the election of 2020, called people to Washington, incited an insurrection in which they stormed the Capitol and hunted for the Vice President chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” And we know that Trump took no action and let it unfold until late in the day he finally told the rioters that he loved them and asked them to go home.

According to the once and future president, Donald Trump, none of that is what happened:

None of this is the story Trump tells. Instead, he inverts both the culpability and the morality: The rioters are victims, and those seeking justice are guilty of injustices. It’s deeply and transparently self-serving. It’s also the position of the incoming president of the United States, someone empowered to enforce his vision of justice on the rest of the country.

Trump sat down for a lengthy interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker last week during which he outlined his upside-down view of the events of Jan. 6.

Welker asked Trump about his repeated pledges during the campaign to pardon those imprisoned for their actions during the riot. He reiterated that sweeping pardons would be one of his first acts as president.

“Those people have suffered long and hard,” he said of those who were sentenced to prison. He noted that there might be some exceptions — but not those accused of being members of extremist organizations or who engaged in the most violent actions. Instead, he mused that there might have been some “antifa” swept up in the prosecutions, resuscitating a long-debunked idea that left-wing actors were involved in the violence that day. In case there was uncertainty about the extent to which he was suggesting that the riots weren’t the fault of his supporters, he brought up Ray Epps, a man whose alleged role in fomenting the riot has been debunked repeatedly and exhaustively.

“But some of them, 169 of them, have pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers,” Welker reminded Trump.

“Because they had no choice,” he responded.

There were some people who deserved to be investigated or thrown in jail, Trump said: the members of the congressional committee that investigated the riot and the special counsel who brought charges against him.

The committee members did something “inexcusable,” Trump said, when they “went through a year and a half of testimony [and] deleted and destroyed all evidence — that they found.” The Democratic-led committee did this, he said, to protect former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who he has suggested was responsible for the police being overrun. But that never happened. Welker offered a wan “they deny doing that” in response to Trump’s claim; the reality is that the committee’s work and evidence are publicly available and Trump’s hoary claim has been debunked.

They did not do it and Welker failed at her job by not saying that clearly. He’s fucking nuts.

I remain hopeful that Jack Smith will issue a full report on this (and Garland will release it) and preserves as much of the evidence as possible. (Making most of it public would go a long way.) It’s not much. But all we have at this point is history. And Trump’s version of events is 100% delusional.

By the way:

Voters think pardons for Jan 6 protesters is a "terrible, terrible, terrible" idea. Most (64%) are opposed. Just 1% want Trump prioritizing these pardons.

Few (33%) think the Jan 6 protesters were demonstrating patriotism. A majority think it was an insurrection (53%). pic.twitter.com/LXq2mlTxnC

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) December 9, 2024

I wish I thought that would make a difference …

I think everyone knows that the HBO masterpiece “Succession” was based upon the Murdoch family. Well, it turns out that the family has actually based some of its actions on “Succession.”

The NY Times (link below) reports that a court in Nevada has ruled today that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch can’t change the irrevocable trust to block the rest of the kids from having any influence on Fox News. He came down hard on them apparently but this isn’t the end of the story. I guess there are appeals and also some end runs to get the job done. But this is just fascinating:

The legal maneuvering came to a head during several days of sealed, in-person testimony in Reno in September by Mr. Murdoch, Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, Prudence and a number of their representatives on the trust. The proceedings revealed that Mr. Murdoch’s children had started secretly discussing the public-relations strategy for their father’s death in April 2023. Setting off these discussions was the episode of the HBO drama “Succession,” the commissioner wrote, “where the patriarch of the family dies, leaving his family and business in chaos.” The episode prompted Elisabeth’s representative to the trust, Mark Devereux, to write a “‘Succession’ memo” intended to help avoid a real-life repeat.

[…]

Mr. Murdoch established the Murdoch Family Trust in 2006, years after he had married his third wife, Wendi Deng, and they had two children of their own, Grace and Chloe. Under the trust, he retains control over the business until his death, at which point his voting shares will be distributed equally among his four oldest children.

The initial trust arrangement was meant to be binding, the product of an agreement Mr. Murdoch negotiated with his second wife, Anna — the mother of Lachlan, Elisabeth and James — who was concerned that he would bequeath an equal share of control and equity to the young children he had with Ms. Deng. Those youngest children were ultimately given an equal financial stake in Mr. Murdoch’s multibillion-dollar empire, but no voting power. However, the language of the trust included a provision giving Mr. Murdoch the right to make changes to it as long as he was acting in the best interests of his beneficiaries.

It was that provision that Mr. Murdoch and Lachlan sought to exploit. In recent years, they have grown increasingly concerned that James — who has left the company and is hardly on speaking terms with his father and brother — was planning to lead a coup with Elisabeth and Prudence to oust Lachlan after their father’s death and change the editorial slant of the company. During the proceedings, Mr. Murdoch and Lachlan’s lawyers pointed to a meeting that James, Elisabeth and Prudence held at Claridge’s Hotel in London in September 2023 as proof that they were scheming against Lachlan. But the commissioner ruled that accounts of the meeting were insufficient evidence of “plotting.”

It was Lachlan who initiated the plan to change the trust in the middle of 2023, according to the ruling. His and his father’s lawyers and advisers ultimately drew up a blueprint to consolidate Lachlan’s leadership by amending the trust. They called it — “perhaps too optimistically,” the commissioner quipped — “Project Family Harmony.” It singled out James as the “troublesome beneficiary.”

[…]

Mr. Murdoch and Lachlan appointed new representatives to the family trust — including Bill Barr, the former attorney general — to give them the votes they needed to disenfranchise James, Elisabeth and Prudence. They also offered voting power to the children Mr. Murdoch had with Wendi Deng, according to the ruling.

Mr. Murdoch and Lachlan introduced their plan at a special meeting of the trust late last year. The ruling quotes a text message from Lachlan to Elisabeth on the morning of the meeting: “Today is about Dad’s wishes and confirming all of our support for him and for his wishes. It shouldn’t be difficult or controversial. Love you, Lachlan.”

There’s much more to this story and as I said, it’s very juicy. Here’s a gift link. Enjoy.

Is everything in life a TV show now? I think it might be.

This is one of the craziest things I’ve heard him say:

Trump's nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth: “The left and progressives used allegiance to state, they used patriotism as a vehicle to untether us from timeless truth, from the Bible. The cross and the Bible were replaced by a flag and a pledge.” pic.twitter.com/jxwlxb6GRi

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) December 9, 2024

What is he talking about? He must have been drunk when he said that. It’s been the right that’s pushed the flag and a pledge for the last 60 years! “These colors don’t run!”, “Love it or leave it!” After 9/11 anyone who wasn’t worshiping the stars and stripes was at risk if they didn’t keep their mouths shut.

As for the pledge:

Francis Bellamy was a minister who was thrown out of his Baptist post because of sermons describing Jesus as a socialist. He and novelist cousin Edward Bellamy both saw a future for the United States as a country in which the government controlled virtually every aspect of a person’s life.

Francis Bellamy (who also wrote for a magazine underwritten by flag sales and therefore stood to gain by having schools require a flag salute each day) and his friends got President Benjamin Harrison to incorporate Bellamy’s pledge into the 400th anniversary celebration of Columbus’ arrival in the New World. It has been recited in public schools ever since…

[T]he pledge has remained a recurring political hot button. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush became its chief defender when running for president in 1988 against former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who had vetoed a bill requiring students to recite the pledge.

And many conservatives defended the pledge against legal challenges in recent years, winning federal a

I guess this guy was a liberal symp too?

There’s nothing about the Bible there…

This is who Trump has chosen to lead the US military and he’s dissing the flag and the pledge as left wing propaganda? My, how times have changed.

I guess I’m feeling cynical about just about everything right now, so perhaps my point of view isn’t realistic. But my immediate reaction to this is that it’s a fool’s game and will just legitimize our shadow president Elon Musk:

Billionaire Elon Musk’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is attracting interest from an unlikely corner: the left.  

Progressives aren’t likely to support much of what Musk and his partner, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, are aiming to do with DOGE — cut some $2 trillion from the federal government, which could include critical programs for Americans.  

But Musk has been critical of wasteful spending at the Pentagon and of overbudgeted programs helmed by defense contractors, potentially aligning DOGE with progressive lawmakers who have long called to slash a defense budget that is approaching a trillion dollars per year. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) drew headlines when he said Musk was “right” about defense spending, because the Pentagon has “lost track of billions.” 

“Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change,” Sanders wrote on the social platform X. 

Other progressive lawmakers have also backed the opportunity to potentially work with DOGE on the Pentagon budget. 

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), a progressive lawmaker who has long pushed to reduce the Pentagon’s budget, said he was unsure if DOGE was a “complete joke” or a “play toy” for Musk.

“Elon Musk is somewhat more of a colorful figure than an expert in government funds,” he said, but “if they actually give them some staffing and put in some responsible efforts and they seek bipartisan input, like I said, I’m more than willing to try to work with them on things, but especially on the defense budget.” 

There’s a part of me that thinks this is worth trying since Musk does seem to be open to defense cuts (for the moment.) But I do not believe there is any chance that the GOP congress will do this and even if they do, the price for their cooperation would be something completely unacceptable to Democrats. It feels like a trap.

I find it hard to believe that Donald Trump has an appetite to cut the military budget. Last time he bragged endlessly about raising it. He likes to pretend that he is some kind of peacenik but the whole thing is based on spedning vast sums on the military “so we never have to use it.” It’s about being so big that everyone in the world will be afraid of the United States.

I do not trust Elon Musk’s “populism” because that’s completely absurd. He is the richest man in the world and his agenda is self-serving and obscure at best. I just can’t believe that legitimizing his DOGE advisory board is worth any of this. My instinct is to resist it altogether.

This whole thing is probably going to fall apart sooner rather than later. Musk and Trump are going to lock horns and this relationship is going to fall apart before too much longer. Two narcissists at this scale cannot work as a team. It’s against their nature. So why give this process even the slightest bit of legitimacy? It just doesn’t track for me.

But I could be wrong…