There’s this exercise that some Americans–aghast at Donald Trump’s norms and traditions shattering and, ultimately felonious, rampage across our political landscape– engaged in during his first sojourn as our Commander-in-Chief. They wondered how their fellow citizens would have reacted if Barack Obama did the same things.
This is not a holier than thou jeremiad. I was one of those people.
Never mind that Trump is a lifelong criminal and that Obama, our cautious, preternaturally dignified former president, would never countenance, much less engage in, such behaviors.
But readers, with your indulgence, I want to resurrect the exercise and extend it to another figure on our political landscape: Elon Musk.
Musk is a white South Africa-born modern day robber baron who lied, stole and wrestled his way to being the world’s wealthiest man through sheer thuggery. But, imagine, if you will, that he was instead a black – stanch that – a Zulu who acquired his prominence the same way Musk did by claiming credit for things created by others, muscling them out of their companies and then reaping untold billions beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.
Some of you may be uncomfortable with invoking race and/or caste, so, let’s say instead of a Zulu from Africa, he’s Russian, Chinese (you’ll see why I picked those particular nations in a minute) or Saudi.
Would our feckless political establishment be throwing up their hands, saying there’s nothing they can do about Musk taking control of the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, seeking sensitive information on Americans and businesses, including some of his direct competitors? Musk owns SpaceX and Starlink, which are huge U.S. government military contractors. Musk also has relationships with many governments across the world, including China and Russia, America’s biggest adversaries on the world stage.
Or, Musk deciding on his own (and based on no evidence) that the United States Agency for International Development, an independent U.S. government agency created by Congress in 1961, is a criminal organization and summarily ended its operations worldwide.
As a result of this reckless and illegal action, critical life-saving medicine, food and economic assistance supplies earmarked for the poorest people and nations are wasting away at ports around the world because Musk simply ended them overnight.
Would officials in our political establishment, especially Republicans, be standing by twiddling their thumbs as this Zulu/Russian person heads a nebulous entity, the Department of Government Efficiency, that aims to destroy our government?
Mind you, I don’t blame Musk for his impunity. It’s the way he has always operated. And, after all, he spent nearly $300 million of his own cash to buy the presidency of the United States for Donald Trump.
One thing we have always known about Trump is that he’s cheap and he will sell himself, his soul and anything that is not nailed down, including stuff that doesn’t belong to him, for a buck. But there are guardrails in our laws, politics and in our traditions to prevent even him from raffling off our democratic birthright.
While Trump owes Musk his presidency this time around, we elected him, not Musk, to run the country. If he wanted Musk’s help running the country, Trump should have nominated him to a cabinet position, with all the attendant checks and balances, imperfect as they are, available in our system of government. Not going through this process shows something truly criminal is afoot.
This GOP Senate, exercising their “advice and consent” roles, have so far rubber-stamped Trump’s cabinet of horrors, incompetents, drunks, lowlifes, and degenerates. So, I am sure Trump’s GOP Senate Amen chorus would have said hosanna! if he had formally created a Department of Government Efficiency (or asked his minions in the Republican Congress to create it by affirmation), then nominated Musk to head it.
Musk is not a federal employee, has not been hired or nominated for a position in the federal government. Neither are his employees that he has installed in government offices. None of them, not he or his employees, have security clearance to view the sensitive documents in their possession and that they are acting on.
These unaccountable, unvetted Musk minions now have the personal information of millions of Americans that are stored in government databases at their fingertips with influence over the federal bureaucracy. They have also sought access to the Information Technology systems of various government agencies and offices, including at least the Treasury, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Small Business Administration (SBA). They have locked career civil servants out of OPM’s computer systems, which contain the personal data of millions of federal employees and contractors.
Mind you, I have not said anything about Elon Musk’s character, the fact that he is the most erratic political figure on the world stage, that he bought Twitter and turned it into a cesspool of hatred, racism and misogyny, that he promotes the most abhorrent groups from his own account on the platform. Even as we speak, Musk is promoting a neo-Nazi political party in a current election in Germany. And, at Trump’s inauguration, Musk chose that moment to whip out his Nazi salute, then tried to play games about what he was up to.
I see that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, has roused himself from his stupor to declare that he’ll write legislation to stop Musk.
Legislation?
This is the equivalent of locking the barn door after the fox has run off with the hen house. If we put aside the breach of USAID computers by Musk’s minions, the breach of U.S. Treasury Department computers may be the biggest, most damaging data breach in the world. And everyone still insists that nothing could be done about it.
Resources:
- Verified pro-Nazi X accounts flourish under Elon Musk | April 16, 2024
- Racism, misogyny, lies: how did X become so full of hatred? And is it ethical to keep using it? |Thu 5 Sep 2024
- Outrage as Elon Musk claims ‘only AfD can save Germany’ | Fri 20 Dec 2024
- The ambiguity of Musk’s salute is partly the point | January 23, 2025
- Elon Musk and His Allies Storm Into Washington and Race to Reshape It | Jan. 29, 2025
- Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3 Billion in Income | January 30, 2025
- Who Can Stop Elon’s ‘Team’ Wilding Its Way Through the Federal Government? By Josh Marshall | January 31, 2025
- Trump and Elon Musk Just Pulled Off Another Purge—and It’s a Scary One Greg Sargent | Fri, January 31, 2025
- We do not know what exactly Elon Musk is doing to the federal government by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN | Sat. Feb. 1, 2025
- Letters from an American HEATHER COX RICHARDSON | FEB 02, 2025
- Elon Musk’s Team Now Has Access to Treasury’s Payments System | Feb. 1, 2025
- Elon Musk May Have Your Social Security Number |February 3, 2025
- An Act of War | Feb. 3, 2025
- Lawrence: Trump letting Musk intrude into Treasury is biggest, most important data breach ever | Feb. 4, 2025
- Their democracy died. They have lessons for America about Trump’s power grab | Feb. 5, 2025
- America’s constitutional crisis could come to a head in four months | Feb. 5, 2025
- Elon Musk’s secretive government IT takeover, explained | Feb. 5, 2025
