We assume that all of the other threats to national security must have been neutralized, and major crimes solved, because the House GOP has decided that the top priority of Kash Patel’s FBI should be going after Liz Cheney on made-up, nonexistent charges.1
We’ll have a lot more to say about that, but let’s start with the tantrum by the world’s richest and most powerful man that threatened to shut down the federal government.
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Before dawn on Wednesday President Elon Musk, launched a blizzard of Xitter posts denouncing a bipartisan spending bill designed to keep the government open. Calling the bill “criminal,” Musk threatened “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!”
Panic ensued among the notoriously skittish congressional GOP, who quickly wet themselves and bowed to their master’s voice.
But for a few hours this week, Musk didn’t just act as if he, and not Donald Trump, holds the reins of power; the GOP also treated him as if he was the man in charge.
“I was communicating with Elon last night,” Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News. “Elon, Vivek [Ramaswamy], and I are on a text chain together and I was explaining to them the background of this.”
The pleading, lobbying, and groveling to the unelected billionaires went on for hours. Johnson said that “Vivek and I talked last night until almost midnight…. They understand the situation. They said, ‘It’s not directed at you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending.’ And I said, ‘Guess what, fellas? I don’t either.’”
Johnson’s attempted appeasement failed miserably. Within hours, the pseudo-POTUS had kneecapped Johnson (who now seems likely to lose his gavel), killed the spending bill, brought the government to the edge of a shutdown — and gave us a dazzling preview of what the next four years is going to be like: “an unelected oligarch, governing by tweet,” in the words of Representative Dan Goldman. (Donald Trump weighed in somewhat later, also demanding that the GOP abolish the debt ceiling.)
Politico’s Jonathan Martin noted the obvious downsides for Trump: “The Elon risk here is he's not just diverting attention from Trump, he's also threatening to deliver him bad press if the gov't shuts down. Suboptimal combo for anybody in Trump's orbit.”
But the real significance here is what it tells us about the political dynamics of the Musk-Trump-GOP era: Razor thin legislative margins, chaos, bullying, the train wrecks of DOGE; and a real Game of Thrones vibe to the Musk-Trump jockeying for Master-of the-Universe status.
Observed David Frum:
A preview of chaos
You will not be surprised to learn that the mogul’s feverish 100-plus tweet campaign was riddled with disinformation and outrageously false claims.
The chair of the commission charged with slashing government spending repeatedly revealed his own lack of understanding of how government worked and the basic details of budgeting. He got details wrong about a congressional pay raise, and taxpayer funding of an NFL stadium in Washington, D.C. He retweeted an outrageously false claim that the budget funded “bioweapon labs,” and pushed misinformation by a January 6 rioter who claimed the legislation would block Republican investigation of the January 6 Select Committee. (Nope. The provision had nothing do with internal House probes.)
Musk also exulted in the prospects of a complete government shutdown. “YES",” he responded to a post that claimed: “Just close down the govt until January 20th. Defund everything. We will be fine for 33 days.” Another Musk post said a shutdown “doesn’t actually shut down critical functions.”
While it is true that “essential functions” will continue (and Social Security checks will still go out), contra Musk, the shutdown is neither painless nor cheap. Vast swathes of the government will, indeed, shut down, and government employees will miss paychecks. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a five week shutdown in 2018-2019 cost the economy about $3 billion.
But Musk’s démarche may also mark another dramatic shift in GOP politics. For years, conservative Republicans have opposed raising the debt limit as a sign of their commitment to fiscal prudence. On Thursday though, after Musk had stolen a march on him, Trump called for doing away with the debt altogether (possibly because he wants to clear the way for massive tax cuts next year.) His latest demand will force members of the Freedom Caucus to — once again — choose between fiscal conservativism and their slavish loyalty to the incoming president. The latest version of the CR would suspend the debt ceiling until January 2027. (Trump is already threatening to back primary challengers to conservatives like Chip Roy, who are refusing to go along.)
As of this writing, the whole Musk-Trump-GOP plan is crashing and burning — going down in the House by a margin of 174-235-1, with a stunning 38 Republicans voting no.
**
Meanwhile, the soon-to-be lame-duck-president-elect has to deal with the specter of Elon Musk. Early this morning, Senator Rand Paul went on Musk’s X to suggest a more formal role for the MAGA mogul.
“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Paul tweeted. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it . . . nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”
Absurd, you think? Laughable? By this evening Paul’s post had more than 5.4 million views.
Exit take via Josh Marshall: Trump has sewn himself into a sack with Elon Musk, a few billion dollars, a cat and a snake, and had the sack tossed into the Tiber. That’s the story here. And it will go on for a while.”
Seldom have we seen anyone despoil both his wallet and his reputation so completely and with such zeal.
In a single week, the World’s Richest Man, who launches rockets into space, electrifies cars, and was Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”, exposed himself as… what’s the opposite of an idiot savant? A savant idiot? Shallow, petulant, erratic, endlessly needy, and basically absurd.
“I am Iron Man” became “I am Zoolander.”
How it began:
How it’s going:
Actually, this is the scene that captures our peculiar political and cultural moment:
And I think this held up pretty well. Back then, I wrote:
There’s so much going on here that reminds us how thoroughly we deserve all of this.
Confusing entertainment with substance, we turned celebrities into senators, and reality tv stars into presidents; millions of Americans think that an over-leveraged performative asshole has somehow cracked the code of... well, pretty much everything.
Our starf**king culture simply can’t get enough of starf**king someone who is not just famous, but rich beyond the dreams of avarice. And has 114 million followers on Twitter.
In a long-vanished century, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the rich “are different from you and me,” but the new class of FU rich are something else altogether. They live in self-created bubbles of reinforcement that let them live lives of self-fondling solipsism.
This is their precious. But marinating in the power, celebrity, and lulz long enough turns the oligarchs into Gollums, like the one who exposed himself so fabulously and relentlessly this week.
“It’s happening right in front of our eyes”
ICYMI, Senator Chris Murphy had an interesting thread that is very much worth your time. I’ve unrolled it.
He starts with the targeting of Liz Cheney by House Republicans who are doing Trump’s bidding.
It's happening right in front our eyes. It's accelerated rapidly in the last 24 hours. Not sure why everyone doesn't see this.
Can I take a minute to connect the dots - on how Trump is putting into action a plan to cripple our democracy in a way we may never recover from?
He wasn't kidding when he said Democrats were the no. 1 threat to America and needed be dealt with by law enforcement and the military. Today House Republican's referral of Liz Cheney for criminal prosecution - on made up charges - shows you the plan.
Who will stand in the way of Cheney and others being put in jail? Not DOJ. Kash Patel was chosen to lead the FBI BECAUSE he wants to prosecute Trump's opponents. Not the courts. Trump's pliant DOJ can handpick a jurisdiction with a MAGA judge.
Not every Trump opponent will fold, but many will. If you have a family at home, are you really going to stand up to Trump if there's a chance you could end up in jail? History shows that selective prosecution of a regime's opposition has a broad chilling effect.
The second part of Trump's plan is to use the White House to destroy the free media. Today's lawsuit against the Des Moines Register - just because they released a poll showing a close race in Iowa - is stunning. We shouldn't pretend this is normal.
Already, you see how the big media companies are giving in. ABC paid Trump $15m even though his defamation suit had no merit. Bezos told the Post to not endorse against Trump. MSNBC is up for sale because Comcast doesn't want to get in trouble.
Sometimes Trump will win these suits because he controls the DOJ and some courts, but other times he doesn't care. After he lost one case against a journalist, he said, "I did it to make his life miserable, which I'm happy about." He gladly admits it's about intimidation.
Trump has also said he will use the FEC and regulatory agencies - all of which will be run by his blind loyalists - to intimidate news orgs. Even if he uses this power rarely, media companies have already shown they are reluctant to put up a fight.
Is there a chance this is all show and bluster? Maybe, but the developments of just the last few days - ABC's bogus settlement, the referral of Cheney for prosecution, Trump's suit against the Register - all point to this being very, very real.
A majority of Americans oppose Donald Trump’s plans to use the U.S. military to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, to instruct the U.S. Justice Department to investigate his political rivals and to pardon rioters charged with breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a nationwide Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
Even larger majorities of Americans oppose Trump’s plans to jail reporters for writing stories he doesn’t like and having police use force against anti-Trump protests.
Unlike so many others in the Great Capitulation, this lady is not for turning. Cheney issued a fiery statement that read in part:
“January 6th showed Donald Trump for who he really is — a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our capital and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave. The January 6th Committee's hearings and report featured scores of Republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump's own White House, campaign, and administration. All of this testimony was painstakingly set out in thousands of pages of transcripts, made public along with a highly detailed and meticulously sourced 800 page report. The department of Justice conducted its own independent investigation and reached the same fundamental conclusions.
“Now, Chairman Loudermilk’s “Interim Report’ Intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee's tremendous weight of evidence and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did. Their allegations do not Reflect the review of the actual evidence and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.
“No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”
I’m losing my s—t Charlie. I’m yelling at the TV, my news feeds, my husband: WE DID NOT ELECT THIS GUY! How the hell can he tell our elected officials to say no to a bipartisan budget bill? Why isn’t EVERYONE screaming about this? Sorry for all the caps. 😳
Musk is the president. It would be hilarious that the big orange baby finds himself outsmarted by his own greed if we weren’t suffering along with him. He invited the fox into the henhouse and now he’s stuck I would laugh my head off if it weren’t for the fact that I’m going to be hurt by this too.
I’m losing my s—t Charlie. I’m yelling at the TV, my news feeds, my husband: WE DID NOT ELECT THIS GUY! How the hell can he tell our elected officials to say no to a bipartisan budget bill? Why isn’t EVERYONE screaming about this? Sorry for all the caps. 😳
Musk is the president. It would be hilarious that the big orange baby finds himself outsmarted by his own greed if we weren’t suffering along with him. He invited the fox into the henhouse and now he’s stuck I would laugh my head off if it weren’t for the fact that I’m going to be hurt by this too.