Like many Individuals these days, I’m seized with curiosity about who is definitely working the federal government of the USA. For that purpose, I watched Sean Hannity’s Fox Information interview tonight with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
However I’m nonetheless unsure who’s in cost. If there’s a headline from the interview, it’s that the president of the USA feels that he requires the companies of a multi-billionaire to implement his govt orders. Trump complained that he would write these “lovely” govt orders, that might then languish in administrative limbo. Musk, for his half, defined how the president is the embodiment of the nation and that resisting his orders is similar as thwarting the need of the folks. Hannity, in fact, enthusiastically supported all of this whining about how exhausting it’s to control a superpower.
In different phrases, it was an hour of dialog amongst three males who do not know how American democracy works.
The objective of the interview, I assume, was to calm among the waters round Trump’s relationship with Musk, and particularly to current Musk as simply one other patriotic American who is simply attempting to assist out his authorities in a time of disaster. Hannity deplored how shamefully the richest man on the earth is being handled regardless of attempting to create applied sciences to “assist the blind to see.” Trump and Musk bemoaned how the world is attempting to drive them aside, however affirmed that they like one another very a lot. “I wished to search out any individual smarter than him,” Trump stated in one in all his traditional insult-praise mixture punches, “however I couldn’t do it.”
They could have even been telling the reality: Trump loves individuals who publicly love him again, and Musk appears to be grateful to be in a spot—on this case, the White Home—the place folks aren’t judging him for supporting Trump, a brand new social opprobrium that clearly stings him. “The attention-daggers degree is insane,” he stated, after recounting that folks at a cocktail party reacted to Trump’s title as in the event that they’d been hit with “a dart within the jugular that contained, like, methamphetamine and rabies.” (This, from a person whose social media feed is a each day train in trolling.)
The interview was arduous each for the viewer and for Hannity, as a result of everybody who interviews Trump should all the time deal with the president’s obvious lack of ability to carry a single thought for very lengthy. Hannity, as typical, tried to throw softballs; Trump, as typical, missed each pitch. Hannity at one level famous that Trump has “turn out to be a pupil of historical past” after which requested how the Framers of the Structure would view his efforts to rein within the forms. Trump verbally wandered about earlier than returning to his speaking factors about Musk, who he stated is “superb” and “cares.” So say James Madison and the opposite Founders, apparently.
And so it went, with Trump digressing into numerous riffs drawn from his rally speeches, starting from immigration to the cash he saved on contracts for Air Power One to hurricane injury in North Carolina. (He was attempting to reward Musk for offering Starlink entry to stricken areas, but it surely was evident that Trump has no thought what Starlink is or does.)
Just a few different information flashes from the interview: The president of the USA thinks that the federal government shouldn’t pay its payments in full. It ought to lowball its contractors and drive them to just accept half cost, he stated. Former President Joe Biden was going to depart two American astronauts marooned in area for “political causes” in accordance to Musk. Additionally, Biden wrecked America in each attainable method, however they’re fixing it. Musk stated he has by no means seen Trump do something “imply” or “fallacious,” whereas Trump claimed that he’s all the time revered Musk. Musk added that he’s by no means requested Trump for something, ever, and that if a battle ought to come up in his DOGE efforts, he’ll acknowledge it and recuse himself. (Earlier as we speak, when requested why DOGE and SpaceX workers are working on the FAA and DoD, businesses the place Musk has contracts or regulatory relationships, Trump stated: “Effectively, I imply, I’m simply listening to about it.”) Lastly, Trump and Musk anticipate finding a trillion {dollars} of fraud and waste within the authorities.
Musk did usually behave himself, as a substitute of stealing the present as he did a number of days in the past within the Oval Workplace. When prompted by Trump, he stated he very a lot appreciated “Bobby”—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. —who he stated was demonstrating the scientific methodology by questioning science. And in an attention-grabbing second of inadvertent candor, Musk additionally defended among the folks working for DOGE, noting that they have been taking a lot decrease pay to assist the federal government reasonably than the salaries they may command in personal trade—very like the folks he’s working to get fired.
Hannity at one level brushed away Musk’s standing as an unelected functionary by noting that nobody votes for the Cupboard, both, which returns us to the issue that this dialog came about amongst individuals who don’t perceive the fundamental construction of their very own authorities. (Cupboard officers, in contrast to Musk, are confirmed by the Senate and impeachable; the times when Republicans objected to Hillary Clinton’s activity drive on well being care as a result of she was unelected and unaccountable are actually solely of blessed reminiscence.)
After an hour of this rambling and typically bizarre dialog, all I might consider was George W. Bush’s reported response to Trump’s first inaugural handle: “That was some bizarre shit.”
This low-key fandango was most likely ok for MAGA fan-servicing functions, however appears unlikely to reassure the thousands and thousands of Individuals uncertain that the president and the plutocrat know what they’re doing. The president appears solely dimly conscious of the small print of Musk’s adventures, however he’s sure a sensible man like Musk is furthering his agenda—no matter it’s. Musk, who solutions to nobody, is filled with fervor to kill off authorities businesses he doesn’t perceive, as a result of unelected wealthy males firing probationary federal workers is outwardly how true Jeffersonian democracy is restored to an ailing America.
How lengthy this chaos can go on is anybody’s guess. In some unspecified time in the future, Musk may cross one in all Trump’s different officers, or he may deliver sufficient dangerous press that Trump himself might find yourself throwing Musk off the ship of state, as he has achieved to so many different of his loyal subordinates. However regardless of the way it ends, Trump will nonetheless be president, and Musk will nonetheless be wealthy. The remainder of us, sadly, might be dwelling with the injury achieved.
