Wednesday Reads: Musk Is In Charge of the U.S. Government

Good Afternoon!!

News just broke that Tulsi Gabbard has been confirmed by the Senate as Director of National Intelligence. I’m sure Putin is very pleased.

NBC News: Senate votes to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as top U.S. intelligence official.

The GOP-controlled Senate early Wednesday morning voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard to be President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, putting the former congresswoman in charge of the sprawling U.S. intelligence community.

The 52-48 vote was largely along party lines, with nearly all Republicans present voting in favor of Gabbard. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the former longtime GOP leader who has clashed with Trump, was the only Republican who joined all Democrats in voting against her.

Tulsi Gabbard

Gabbard’s confirmation is a win for Trump and represents yet another example of his dominance over the GOP, where few have shown a willingness to step out of line.

After Trump announced Gabbard as his DNI pick in November, Democrats — and a handful of Republicans — voiced serious concerns about her 2017 secret meeting with then-President Bashar Assad of Syria; her sympathetic comments about Russia; her past efforts to repeal a powerful government surveillance tool, known as Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702; and her previous support for Edward Snowden, a former government contractor who leaked classified information to the press about those spying programs.

In the end, McConnell was the sole Republican to buck Trump and vote no on Gabbard. In a scathing, lengthy statement after the vote, McConnell said it was apparent Gabbard was not prepared for the job and demonstrated a “history of alarming lapses in judgment.”

“The Senate’s power of advice and consent is not an option; it is an obligation, and one we cannot pretend to misunderstand. When a nominee’s record proves them unworthy of the highest public trust, and when their command of relevant policy falls short of the requirements of their office, the Senate should withhold its consent,” McConnell said.

“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is a key participant in the process that informs every major national security decision the President makes. The ODNI wields significant authority over how the intelligence community allocates its resources, conducts its collection and analysis, and manages the classification and declassification of our nation’s most sensitive secrets. In my assessment, Tulsi Gabbard failed to demonstrate that she is prepared to assume this tremendous national trust.

Susan Collins was *concerned,* but not enough to go against Trump. If only Mitch McConnell had acted on his true beliefs and voted to impeach Trump, U.S. national security would not be in so much jeopardy today.

It’s a good thing Trump has something to celebrate today, because yesterday was a humiliating disaster for him. We now know for sure that Elon Musk is the real POTUS. Trump is just letting Musk run the country while poor Donald plays golf and posts rage-filled messages on Truth Social. Does Musk have something on Trump besides money? Is Trump afraid of Musk?

William Kristol at The Bulwark: When President Musk Speaks, Donald Trump Listens. DOGE is in charge now.

It was an unusual scene yesterday in the Oval Office. Elon Musk stood and held forth for a half hour to the assembled press corps, while Donald Trump sat at his desk, occasionally chiming in, but mostly looking up at Elon with what seemed to me to be increasing irritation.

With the president looking on, Musk was asked to justify his minions’ wanton rampage through the ranks of our civil servants. He said:

“We do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth. . . . The reality is they’re getting wealthy at the taxpayer’s expense. That’s the honest truth of it.”

Here’s a tip based on many years of watching politicians and, for that matter, of watching my fellow human beings: When someone says “that’s the honest truth of it,” that person is probably not telling the honest truth. Especially if that person is someone like Musk.

The truth is that Musk has no idea what the net wealth is of various government employees. Unless, that is, he’s had his apparatchiks take a look at those employees’ SF-86 security clearance questionnaires or their IRS records. Which would be illegal—an illegality for which we don’t, so far at least, have any evidence.

So Musk is just making this up. But why should the world’s wealthiest man let the truth stand in the way of a casual slander of government employees if that can help his assault on our government?

Musk stood there and lied, and Donald Trump sat there and dealt with being ignored.

Elie Quinlan Houghtaling at The New Republic: Trump Mocked for Fully Ceding Oval Office to President Elon Musk. Donald Trump sat hunched over his desk while Elon Musk did all the talking.

More and more, the president appears to be a puppet of the world’s richest man.

During an Oval Office press conference on Monday, Donald Trump remained hunched over the Resolute Desk while Elon Musk took the reins, spending more time answering reporters’ questions than the president himself.

Trump had called journalists into his office to observe the signing of a new executive order, which effectively green-lighted Musk’s work to cull large swaths of the federal workforce through DOGE. But the jarring visual of a multibillionaire hovering over a U.S. president and answering questions for him stayed with and rattled political commentators.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell called Trump’s “presidential subservience” to Musk the “most powerless image of a president of the United States ever created by a camera.”

Musk—who was not elected by anyone to systematically dismantle the federal government—did “everything he possibly can to tell the world, without saying a word, that ‘Donald Trump is not the boss of me,’” according to O’Donnell.

The Tesla CEO also violated Oval Office norms by appearing at the press conference in casual garb and with his son. By O’Donnell’s measure, Musk spoke 3,666 words at the executive order signing, whereas Trump spoke 2,487 words.

Compare that to the role that Trump’s vice presidents play in his political realm: Former Vice President Mike Pence never spoke more than Trump did at a Trump-centric event during his first term, and Vice President JD Vance likely never will, either.

Seriously, does Musk have something on Trump besides the money?

Janna Brancolini at The Daily Beast: Trump Humiliated in the ‘Most Powerless Image Ever’ of a U.S. President: O’Donnell.

Elon Musk humiliated President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s joint press conference in the Oval Office, which left Trump looking like the “most powerless” U.S. president ever caught on camera, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said on The Last Word.

During a press conference in the Oval Office in which they claimed—without providing a single piece of evidence—to have uncovered billions of dollars of government waste and fraud, Musk spoke 3,666 words to Trump’s 2,487, O’Donnell said.

Musk brought his 4-year-old son X to the press conference, wore a T-shirt and baseball cap, and even interrupted Trump.

He stood over Trump while the president sat behind the Resolute Desk, “delivering a picture of presidential subservience the likes of which we have never seen—the most powerless image of a president of the United States ever created by a camera,” O’Donnell said….

Trump, he continued, has always craved the attention of the “truly rich, virtually all of whom ignored Donald Trump as phony rich and vulgar rich.”

Now he has the attention of the world’s richest man, who can literally bail him out of the $82.5 million he currently owes writer E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued Trump for defamation, and the $500 million judgment levied against him in a civil fraud case in New York.

O’Donnell also opined on the way Trump responded to the Musk child–turning away suddenly when the kid approached him and said something. Trump hates kids, but he let this one into his inner sanctum. He actually picked his nose and wiped it on the  Resolute Desk.

And why is Musk always dragging that poor kid with him everywhere he goes? Does the boy have any friends his own age? Why isn’t he in Pre-K?

The boy’s mother is not happy.

The Independent: ‘He should not be in public like this’: Grimes reacts after Elon Musk parades their son around Oval Office.

Grimes has spoken out after Elon Musk paraded their four-year-old son, X Æ A-Xii, or Lil X, around the Oval Office as Donald Trump signed an executive order to bolster the Department of Government Efficiency’s powers in government.

The Canadian musician, 36, who shares three children with the Tesla CEO, a father of 12 offspring, took to X (Twitter) in response to her son’s surprise appearance saying: “He should not be in public like this. I did not see this, thank u for alerting me. But I’m glad he was polite. Sigh.”

Her comment came in response to another user who chimed that “Lil X was very polite today! You raised him well. He was so cute when he told DJT ‘please forgive me, I need to pee’.”

During the controversial press event, Lil X was seen picking his nose, mimicking his father, and whispering to Trump as he lingered by the Resolute desk.

Making light of more grave matters, the child looked on as Trump bolstered Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (Doge) power to reshape the federal government by signing an executive order requiring agencies to cooperate with the Musk-led department and the effort to slash costs…..

Grimes, singer of “Genesis”, has remained outspoken on X, responding to fans and spouting her political views, as well as denouncing her ex’s alleged ties to the alt-right and Nazism.

One more comment from me. What was with that outfit Musk was wearing? It looked like an overcoat and a T-shirt and sweatpants–and a baseball cap. WTF? Trump is always so fussy about how the people under him dress–another sign that Musk is in charge.

Two serious posts on this madness:

Robert Reich at his Substack: Fraud and Musk.

The Trump-Musk regime is accusing federal civil servants of fraud, based on no evidence, while at the same time allowing corporations to pay off foreign officials, dropping bribery charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, pardoning a former governor of Illinois who tried to sell his Senate seat, and stopping investigations into foreign influence-peddling in the United States.

In other words, Trump-Musk have declared open season on real fraud and bribery.

On Monday evening, Trump signed an executive order halting investigations and prosecutions of corporate corruption in foreign countries under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.

Today, Musk held forth in the Oval Office, claiming that drastic reductions in the federal workforce were justified because it was rife with fraud.

I’ve spent more than a dozen years in the federal government, and I can tell you that the vast majority of civil servants I’ve had the honor of working with are dedicated and hardworking. They are delivering critical services to Americans and protecting them from corporate malfeasance.

For the richest person in the world to be given a bully pulpit in the Oval Office to impugn their integrity is beyond shameful.

Musk has the integrity of a slug. Since Trump was elected president, Musk’s fortune has increased $270 billion. If you think that’s an accident, you haven’t been paying attention.

When Trump was sworn into office, Musk’s six corporations were under more than 32 continuing investigations conducted by at least 11 federal agencies, according to a review by The New York Times.

Most of these cases are now closed or likely to be closed soon, and the agencies that initiated them are being defanged by Musk and Trump.

Reich lists multiple examples of Musk’s fraud against the U.S. Read about it at the link.

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse: Call it what it is.

A week ago, I wrote a piece here called “Is It Really a Coup?” My answer, based on the evidence in front of us, was yes. Since then, life has gone on and DOGE has mostly gone on (despite what they seem to view as the inconvenience of a few temporary restraining orders), committed to nothing less than the radical transformation of government by a small band of unelected, quasi-official people, who are operating outside of government transparency rules. It has all the characteristics of a non-military transformation of a democratic government into something entirely different.

In a statement that made me proud to be a lawyer yet again, the American Bar Association (ABA) all but called it a coup, but without actually using that word: “No American can be proud of a govt that carries out change in this way. Neither can these actions be rationalized by discussion of past grievances or appeals to efficiency. Everything can be more efficient, but adherence to the rule of law is paramount.”

This morning in the Washington Post, Alan Charles Raul wrote an excellent piece on DOGE. Mr. Raul served as the associate White House Counsel under President Ronald Reagan and went on to serve as general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget under Reagan and President George H.W. Bush. He is a lecturer at Harvard Law School. Not exactly a liberal.

In his piece, titled, Why DOGE is unconstitutional, he writes, “What is not debatable, however, is that Congress has not authorized this radical overhaul, and the protocols of the Constitution do not permit statutorily mandated agencies and programs to be transformed — or reorganized out of existence — without congressional authorization.”

It’s such a polite way of saying it’s a coup without saying it.

Maybe now that the Reagan Republican guys have shown up, we can all agree we are living through the quietest of coups. If we don’t start calling it what it is and putting a stop to it, it stands a fair chance of succeeding. The lawyers are hard at work, but that will not be enough alone. They are holding the ground until the public catches up. It would be nice if Congress and the Supreme Court did their jobs too. But for starters, let’s call the coup a coup—while we still can.

Lest you think that’s hyperbolic, yesterday, the Associated Press reported that they “were informed by the White House that if AP did not align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, AP would be barred from accessing an event in the Oval Office.“ Later in the day, they were refused access. It’s a clear and also an extremely petty, violation of the First Amendment, which prevents the government from imposing prior restraints on anyone’s speech, let alone the press.

Apparently, it’s easy to ignore such a ridiculous moment, and most people seem to have. But this is a form of Newspeak, the Orwellian construct of language that a government insists people use in order to narrow people’s range of thought. Sure, it was only over what we call the Gulf of Mexico, but this was not trivial buffoonery; it was a significant moment, a testing of the waters to see if this new White House could get away with stepping on the First Amendment without causing a furor.

“While we still can.” How much longer do we have to save our democracy? Is it too late?

I know this isn’t much of a post; but I’m not feeling well today so that’s all I have. Take care everyone.