Donald Trump and Elon Musk are running government right now just like they run their own businesses. It’s all about them and their profits, from Trump’s possibly criminal idea to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza and build a resort there (“I would own this,” he told Bret Baier) to Musk’s so far doomed attempt to get a judge to approve his possibly shady $56 billion Tesla payout.
They are slashing and trashing federal employees, programs, livelihoods, and futures without having the slightest clue about who does what and the consequences that could follow. They appear to be undermining aviation safety, nuclear weapons safety, the safety of classified data, even the safety of Americans working for USAID overseas.
A February 11 executive order called “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” meanwhile, says the plan requires “that each agency hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.” That sounds drastic. And random.
The Bulwark
It IS drastic and random.
By contrast, our government has life-and-death responsibilities, from national security to public health. It has moral and patriotic imperatives, values, rules, laws, oaths, and history. And it has three branches, one of them a 535-member legislature with control of spending under the constitutional “power of the purse.”
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The voters who chose Trump last year because of his business prowess must have forgotten about his six bankruptcies, hundreds of stiffed contractors, $25 million Trump University fraud settlement, and terrible reputation among peers. Maybe they have an affinity for the racism, cruelty, and misogyny he brings to politics. Maybe they like presidents who grift off their supporters, encourage insurrection against their own government, or bury their first wife at their golf club. Or maybe they were upset about egg prices.
Maybe they feel like Musk’s money, or the 13 children he’s had with four women, make him a real man. Maybe they think he’s really smart to start his rampage at eleven agencies engaged in “more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions” into his six companies, according to a New York Times investigation.
And maybe they are surprised by what is happening, as lives are upended all over America and the world. Except, what did they think would happen?
Thinkinbg is not a cult strong suit.
As Tim Walz said at the Democratic convention, “I coached high school football long enough to know, and trust me on this: When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.” They drew up that playbook in three different lengths, including the voluminous Project 2025. And shortly after Trump won the election, they dropped the pretense and proved Walz right.
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The author of The Art of the Deal turned out to be a nightmare negotiating partner—and political negotiating turned out to be complicated. Who knew?
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[Myth:] Tax cuts pay for themselves. This doesn’t happen. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were followed by tax increases starting with him and ending with Bill Clinton, who achieved a balanced budget and a debt-reduction trajectory. George W. Bush and Trump threw that away and launched us into frightening levels of debt. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts not only are adding a projected $1.9 trillion to the deficit over ten years, more than 80 percent of the cuts went to corporations, tax partnerships, and people with high net worth. Workers saw very little benefit and black taxpayers saw even less. But Trump wants to renew his tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year.
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The American dream is about self-determination—people free to chart their destinies and follow their dreams. Except of course if you are a transgender teenager who needs health care, a woman who needs an abortion, a refugee fleeing violence, or anyone else who doesn’t conform to the expectations and requirements of leaders obsessed with money and power.
Here’s one true thing, no myth:
America is indeed an exceptional nation—exceptional in this current moment for the selfishness and cruelty of its leaders, their willful ignorance of recent history (from systemic racism to Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union), their rejection of pluralism, and their determination to make 330 million people speak, think, and live as they say.
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