I’ve been watching what’s happening in the U.S. government with growing dismay. Trump and Musk seem determined to destroy the government’s ability to perform certain functions, some of which are very important to the United States, and some of which are very important to the world. And it turns out that many of the safeguards against this destruction are controlled by the executive branch, which is to say, by Trump.
The feckless cruelty is not unexpected — it’s the standard sociopath playbook, and I was surprised we didn’t see more of it during Trump’s first term — but somehow that hasn’t made it any less shocking. However, I’m surprised and confused by Trump’s tolerance of Elon Musk. The Trump we know craves being the center of attention. Musk’s grandstanding has got to bother him. So why hasn’t he shut down Musk like he would anyone else?
In this late night hour I find myself leaning toward a dark hypothesis. I have no proof, but if Trump is still supporting Musk, it’s got to be because he’s getting something in return. It can’t be Musk’s $288 million donation to the election campaigns because the election is over. Trump may in some sense “owe” Musk for his election victory, but Trump is not known for paying his debts, and he’s never been hesitant about discarding people he no longer needs. It’s got to be something that’s still going on.
We may never figure it out, but my best guess is that somehow, somewhere, money is flowing from Elon Musk to Donald Trump. After all, Musk spent billions to buy Twitter. I’m sure he can afford, say, $1 million a day to buy the President.
If I’m right, I don’t see any way to put a stop to it. Trump is solidifying his control over the FBI and Justice Department in this term, so I don’t see either of them beginning an investigation, let alone indicting Musk. Nor do I think removal under the 25th Amendment is a possibility, not with the sycophants Trump has brought on board.
They way I see it, there are only a few ways out of this nightmare, and most are either unlikely or unhelpful:
- Trump leaves office at the end of his term, in which case we have a lot more of this bullshit ahead of us.
- Trump is impeached and removed. That would almost certainly require one or both of:
- Trump screws things up so bad that Republican legislators face pressure from constituents to turn against Trump.
- Republicans lose control of Congress, especially the Senate, where a 2/3 vote is needed for conviction.
- Trump dies. The actuarial tables give a man of Trump’s age living in the U.S. about a 6% chance of dying in each of the next four years, or about 1 in 4 odds of dying in office.
- Musk moves on to something else. I don’t see this happening unless
- Musk gets everything he wants, or
- Musk is soundly thwarted and loses interest.
- Musk is incapacitated, e.g. through death, arrest by one of the states or in some other country, or severe financial losses.
- Somebody else pays Trump even more money to go away.
- Sweet Meteor of Death. (Object 2024 YR4 is at 3 on the Torino risk scale, baby!)
Until one of those things happens, this is the new normal.
I actually came to see if you’d posted on what’s happening in Minneapolis, and read through some of the backlog I’d missed instead.
Taking aside that this aged like milk, I’m only responding because you touched on one of my favorite topics, the 25th amendment: “Nor do I think removal under the 25th Amendment is a possibility, not with the sycophants Trump has brought on board.”
The 25th amendment is a smart person’s stupid talking point. It was brought in after President Harrison died 31 days after taking office in 1841 and when Woodrow Wilson had a debilitating stroke in 1919. While congress managed to muddle through those cases, there was a concern that the muddling they did wasn’t actually constitutional, so the 25th was devised. The 25th was supposed to give clarity on succession, and control against dead people or vegetables.
And you can see that in the process:
In order for section 4 of the 25th to be invoked, JD Vance would have to decide that President Trump was unable to discharge the duties and powers of his office, and to deal with that, he would have to gather a majority of the Cabinet and go to war with Trump.
He would have to produce a letter to that effect, and deliver it to Steve Scalise and John Thune. That would be enough to actually remove Trump from office for about 34 seconds. That’s how long it would take Trump to scribble furiously on a cocktail napkin that no, he wasn’t incapacitated, crumple it up, and fling it at the faces of Scalise and Thune. Then he would be President again.
That is, unless Vance and the Cabinet leaders wrote a letter to Scalise and Thune within four days that basically says: “No, I really mean it, this dude is cray cray”. And that would start a process – Both houses of congress would be required to assemble within 48 hours and hold a vote in both the house and the senate. Removal of the President would require a two-thirds majority vote in each, and if that couldn’t be achieved, Trump would continue to be President.
You might notice that it’s harder to remove a president under the 25th than it is to impeach a president. Impeachment only requires a simple 50%+1 majority in the house and has the benefit of not requiring the VP and half of cabinet to go rogue. One could argue that impeachment requires a high crime or misdemeanor when the 25th doesn’t, but that didn’t stop the Democrats the first couple of times they tried to impeach. The reality is that these things end up ultimately as political popularity contests, and Trump is popular enough among Republicans that it doesn’t matter how many sycophants trump has in his cabinet, Dems just don’t have the votes.