Musk's illegal government takeover is scary on its own — but the people he's bringing along make it even worse
‘Things seemed bleak enough when our collective assumption was that Donald Trump, having won the election, would be our president. But, proving that things can always get worse, it's increasingly clear that the real president will actually be South African tech billionaire and ketamine enthusiast Elon Musk. Calling Musk the "shadow president" may be underselling the severity of the situation. Musk and his unofficial "Department of Government Efficiency" are undergoing a hostile takeover of the Treasury Department. Musk seems to believe he can ignore the legal authority of Congress to control federal spending, and instead control all decisions on how to spend taxpayer money. If successful, this effort would functionally make Musk a dictator using the elected official, Trump, as his figurehead.
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The first target of Musk's illegal campaign to cut programs that Congress has authorized money for is USAID, a program started by President John F. Kennedy that administers foreign aid and development assistance. The program has long been embraced by both parties, with Democrats supporting its charitable aims and Republicans more interested in how it buys goodwill that keeps the U.S. as the top international power. Shutting it down would also undermine Trump's efforts to reduce immigration from places like Central America, by increasing the poverty and desperation that drives migration. But Musk doesn't care about the law or the disastrous effects. He's too busy trying to please his minions on X, especially the ones with nice things to say about Adolph Hitler.
One of Musk's ad hoc Twitter troll "advisors" is Michael Benz, a former Trump State Department official who has rebranded as a MAGA influencer. He was outed by NBC News in 2023 as an unapologetic white nationalist who promotes anti-semitic conspiracy theories, despite being Jewish himself. Indeed, he would use his Jewish identity to give credence to his claims that Jews are "controlling the media" and using it to orchestrate a "white genocide." He also used it to justify his praise of Hitler, writing that “If I, a Jew" could read "Mein Kampf" and see "Hitler actually had some decent points," then it should bolster Hitler's credibility for others.
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Over the weekend, Wired exposed how the team Musk assembled for his attempted government takeover are "six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24." Federal employees report being told they must drop everything to "justify their jobs" to a 19-year-old who just graduated high school in May. Investigative journalist Jacqueline Sweet reported the young man, named Edward Coristine, recently changed his handle on X from "BigBalls" and made it private, though his tagline appears to be a reference to the work of anti-democracy blogger Curtis Yarvin.’
Musk's illegal government takeover is scary on its own, but the people he's bringing along are even worse
www.salon.com
Lawless and un-Constitutional, Trump’s assault on democracy is fundamentally fascist – with Musk the primary agent of destruction.
