Shock, Awe, and Retreat
The 47th President is flooding the zone.
The last several episodes of the Ezra Klein Show podcast have been some of the most thoughtful analyses of the early days of the second Trump administration that I’ve come across. Two in particular.
The February 2 episode, “Don’t Believe Him,” sets the stage.
Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.
Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.
Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.
Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.
Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.
But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.
What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.
The February 5 discussion with Yuval Levin, “The Breaking of the Constitutional Order,” expands on this theme.
Over the weekend, Donald Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Markets reacted with shock. We were really doing this? Didn’t Trump’s Wall Street backers tell us those were just negotiating ploys?
But then Mexico announced that it was adding 10,000 troops to the border and Canada said it would appoint a fentanyl czar, and noted some efforts it was already making on the border; and Trump delayed the tariffs by a month in both cases. So did Trump back down in the face of market turmoil? Did he get what he wanted, even though it wasn’t much? Are we going to have this happen again in a month, and maybe every month after that? I don’t think anybody actually knows, including Trump.
What seems clear is that Trump likes tariffs, but he dislikes political pain. He wants to be seen as in control. He wants the world bending to his will. But the stock market plummeting does not make it look like the world is bending to his will. The stock market plummeting threatens his control. So when other countries see that, their strategy is going to become clearer. The more Trump bullies other nations, the more they are going to band together in retaliation, and the more that will batter markets. The world does not want to be endlessly pushed around by Donald Trump. So Trump has the power to impose tariffs, but he does not have the power to impose them without paying a price. And so far, at least, he does not seem to want to pay that price.
[…]
Trump does not have many of the powers he is asserting. So when he acts lawlessly and unconstitutionally, those acts should be treated as what they are: something in between power grabs and crimes. All of it right now is provisional. We have watched Trump back down on much already, from tariffs to spending freezes, and if the consequences become too painful, he will back down on yet more. And so the consequences should be painful. What he is doing should be described clearly, and other parts of the political system should respond.
[…]
I think that some of what Trump is doing will prove to be illegal. But courts work slowly. The way our political system is supposed to work is that the check is supposed to come from, first and foremost, Congress. Congress controls spending, even though Trump is trying to take that power for himself. Congress can impeach. Democrats don’t have much power in Congress now. But they have the power to disrupt and obstruct. And so they will. Trump will have to pay a price for his power grab. But how large a price does he want to pay?
Levin provides this perspective:
And one thing you learn over that time is that the first few weeks of a new administration are really surreal.
They’re very different from the rest of the time, because the administration controls the agenda. And that isn’t really the case most of the time. But in the first few weeks, they’ve made plans. And you don’t know those plans, generally. They do, and they’re rolling them out at a certain pace and in a certain way. And it just feels like they are in command of the world.
So I think that it’s natural in that period to think: Wow, these people are really in control. The opposition is totally on the ground. They don’t know how to respond to this.
That’s always what it feels like. That happened with Bush. It happened with Obama. It has happened with Trump. It even happened with Biden, if we can remember four years ago.
And it doesn’t take very long for that to break. The opposition is back and organized pretty quickly — that takes a couple of weeks, maybe. And the world comes back at you, too.
And the rest of the time, presidents spend a lot of their energy just responding to the world and what it throws at them. And they’re judged by how they do that. That’s definitely going on here. So it’s very hard, still, to judge what we’re looking at.
I think a lot of people have come in with a very strong prejudice — that this time, the Trump team is much more competent. They have a much better idea of not only what they want to do but how.
And a lot of what we’ve seen is actually a lot like what the first term’s first few weeks felt like. There’s a lot of ambition; there’s a lot of action. There’s more than there was the first time, but there’s also a kind of inclination to chaos that I think is actually intentional. That’s part of what they’re trying to do. It didn’t really work all that well the first time, and I’m not sure it’s working all that well this time.
Both episodes are worth listening to or reading in full but the main takeaway is the disconnect between perception and reality. That Elon Musk and his band of merry misfits are running rampant in the human resources and technical systems of the Federal government is doing real, permanent damage. Certainly, they’re creating a lot of anguish for those affected—Federal employees, undocumented immigrants, the transgender community, and others. But most of the declared actions are likely to be illusory.
For example, USAID and the Department of Education have been declared closed. A federal judge—a Trump appointee, no less—has already issued a restraining order to prevent the former and there hasn’t been time to react to the latter.
Most of the Day 1 Executive Orders are likely to be struck down or at least seriously curtailed. They simply fall outside of presidential authority.
It’s possible, I suppose, that Klein is wrong here. Maybe Trump will start defying court orders. But it’s worth noting that he didn’t do so in the first term and has not done so thus far in the second.
It’s also possible that the Supreme Court will back Trump, putting the Unitary Executive Theory into law. But the implications of that are so dire that it’s hard to see Chief Justice Roberts, in particular, going along with it. After all, the next Democratic President would have the same ability to ignore Acts of Congress, too.
Again, the pain in the interim is real. Administrators in the federal government, including the military, and in various institutions that rely heavily on federal money are already taking actions in accordance with Trump’s orders. It’s going to take time for the legal system to push back.
I have always shared my thoughts and opinions with my elected officials, whether Federal, State, or local. I always also wonder whether it makes a spits worth of difference. Does anyone have any studies or facts to back up these actions as effective or not? I’ll continue to do so but I’ll always be curious as to effectiveness.
And is it better to phone or write? Yell or be reasonable? Go in person to local office or not?
“The inclination to chaos” is intentional. Quite intentional. Trump has often said he likes chaos.
We cannot rely on the courts. Relying on the courts is a Maginot Line strategy. We need to anticipate and be ready. We need coherent, purposeful political action.
1) We should prop up a version of the UK’s ‘shadow government.’ Assign media-friendly shadow cabinet secretaries to respond immediately and knowledgeably to outrages. Show a competent, calm face. Create a visible alternative.
2) Local media strike teams. When a Mump action causes local distress, put up billboards, run ads on local radio and TV – they cost nothing out in the sticks. Start talking to local people who are hurt, and I mean everywhere, not just in purple states.
3) I’m thinking about it.
My daughter works immigration law. She tells us that USCIS is actively putting administrative sand in the gears of the process. Delays in processing, kicking back of documents, etc. I suspect we will be finding all the agencies of government working to be the most frustrating, least efficient organizations around. They want it to fail. And they won’t take responsibility for the failure. I just hope most of my federal business (social security, medicare, retirement) is on automatic so I feel the effects for a while. I feel for my children and grandchildren for the future they face.
I’m surprised at the lack of discussion of civil disobedience. Maybe it’s because the high point of civil disobedience in US history, the civil rights movement, is a faded memory (or, for many younger Americans, not a memory at all). Maybe it’s because our politically-minded organizations don’t have the inclination, experience, or organization to lead these efforts. Maybe Americans are now just fraidy cats. I don’t have a good explanation, but it seems like a logical next step, if you can’t rely on Congress, the courts, or other official agencies of power.
There are many differences between the first and second terms. No mass protests, no controversies. Look at the drama of the Kavanaugh hearings versus Pete Hegseth and his dozens of assaults and his mom saying he’s a piece of shit. Nobody cares even to the point of concocting defense.
The good thing is that Trump and co are lazy and pretty dumb. The bad thing is that the conservative movement is also lazy and dumb, and the legal argument relies on the conservative supreme court overruling Trump. These are people who have built a movement where it’s okay for everyone under 30 to be a Nazi. Being totally irresponsible is not a precursor to wisdom in the time of emergency.
@Scott:
You should always write a plain simple one-page letter indicating that this-or-that or such-and-such is happening and you don’t like it. Quote the politician you’re writing to – you want them to know that you’re paying attention to what they say and do. Make it clear that you want the government to do something else instead. Make sure you casually mention that you and your friends/family discuss this and you all feel the same way.
Don’t use obscenity or threats, don’t get sarcastic or insulting – people think they’re being terribly witty when they do that and 99.9% of the time they just make themselves look dumb. Don’t give the politician the chance to claim you’re just a nutjob and he doesn’t have to pay attention to you.
Don’t go to the office – unless it’s municipal government, the politician is not likely to be there. Ditto the phoning – phone calls don’t leave a record and again the politician isn’t likely to be there. If the politician holds a town hall meeting or public gathering or shows up at something official, approach them there and state your case. Don’t get emotional or raise your voice. Again, you don’t want to give them the opportunity to claim you’re nuts.
Don’t approach them at restaurants if it’s clear that they’re there with family. Don’t show up outside the church they attend. This will really anger them and you might get a visit from law enforcement asking polite but nosy questions.
Write regularly and let them know you pay attention. That’s the politician’s worst nightmare – a concerned, articulate citizenry.
And finally, if the politician says/does something you approve of, write and let them know you approve and you’re happy you voted for them. Positive reinforcement is a thing too. And a “good job” letter doesn’t cancel out the “not-good job” letters you sent.
@Kingdaddy:
As shocking as a lot of these actions are, I just don’t see anything that’s going to galvanize the public in the way that the Vietnam draft and Jim Crow laws did in that 1960s. There just aren’t that many people outside the Federal workforce who care about OPM, USAID, and the like. The trans issue is still too nascent and Trump is likely on the right side of extant public sentiment, especially since he’s targeting things like sports. And even a lot of Democrats dislike the “woke” agenda, so it’s going to take a while to understand that what’s happening to DEI goes way beyond pronouns and anti-racism classes.
@Kingdaddy: I take the point, but I think part of the problem is how civil disobedience would manifest here.
There is no lunch counter to sit at to protest attacks on USAID or Musk’s access to Treasury systems, for example.
Really, given that “foreign aid” is unpopular, protests to reinstate it are unlikely to have much practical effect. And a lot of the other damage is just so abstract that I am not sure what effective (or even ineffective) civil disobedience looks like at this point.
If the Crow & leo Court Inc. backs the unitary executive manifest idiocy, it will take a revolution to have a next Democratic President.
In regards to the OP: I listened to both episodes and agree they are worth listening to.
I did find Levin to be a bit too low-key for my tastes. I think he makes some interesting arguments, but he falls, in my view, for a mythological view of the constitutional order that ignores the way parties change the textbook version of checks and balances.
He also kept pointing out that both parties as “failing” because they can’t win “durable majorities.” But the last time we really had durable majorities was when the Democrats had the advantage of the southern states being anti-Republican. It wasn’t because the Dems were really good at coalition building (which is what he seems to want). That era is over.
Klein tried to make the case for parties as a key variable, but not as much as I would have liked,
@Kingdaddy:
No civil disobedience ? I’m not surprised at all.
The current memory of civil disobedience for many Americans are the seemingly endless Black Lives Matter protests/riots that resulted in sieges of Portland and Minneapolis, which Republicans used as more fuel for their backlash.
The civil disobedience brand is kind of damaged.
@Michael Reynolds: I like the idea of a shadow cabinet. But I honestly don’t see how that works in a presidential system. If I understand correctly how this works in a parliamentary system, the leader in parliament of the largest opposition party names other members as the shadow cabinet. In our weak party system there is effectively no leader of the opposition until the next presidential nominee.
In principle the Democratic Party could name a leader, maybe Hakeem Jeffries, but that gets to the root problem, there is no “the party” that can do that. One can blue sky all sorts of plans, but I expect they’d all require considerable strengthening of the Party structure to work.
I would add that the Republicans are much closer to having a shadow government structure than Democrats. We have the Center for American Progress and officially non-affiliated advocacy groups like SPLC and the Sierra Club. Like most of bothsides we have nothing like, for lack of a better blanket term, the Kochtopus. They have quietly built what amounts to a shadow shadow government (Bab5 reference intended). They’re planning Republican policy and strategy, but generally not publicly. They produced Project 2025 and for some reason made it better known than its series of predecessors. They can produce an ideologically vetted, but not officially Republican, speaker on any topic on short notice. And the Koch network quietly provided a lot of personnel to the Trump 1.0 administration. As the Project 2025 people are for 2.0.
I am not willing to give up on the courts quite yet.
I think that it’s possible that the sheer tsunami of sh!t we’ve witnessed might illustrate the stupidity of the unitary executive theory in ways that abstractly arguing about it never could.
You cannot legitimately argue your support for originalism and also support the unitary executive theory. We did not throw off the shackles of a king, just to set up the conditions for an American version.
Thomas is a lost cause. He lives with a spouse who is all in on Trump’s nutball ideas. The others, however, cannot be watching this without realizing that the legitimacy of the court is at stake.
@Kathy:
Trump did promise you won’t have to vote again. And in any case, the hypothetical next D prez won’t have the same powers and immunity. As long as Federalists hold a majority on the Court, all decisions have a secret footnote stating “IOKIYAR”.
@gVOR10: I like the idea of a shadow cabinet. But I honestly don’t see how that works in a presidential system.
This only requires that the Senate and House Dems get together and appoint such a cabinet by fiat. For most of the Cabinet, it could be done by the minority members of respective adjacent Committees nominating and voting. This isn’t an official position/organization, it doesn’t draw additional salary, but it should raise the profile of anyone named to that cabinet, so the groups would do well to vet extensively and look for more media-savvy names (and youth!)
The cabinet members need not be ideal for the parallel job in the cabinet, but they need to be competently versed in that topic. Transportation Shadow knows infrastructure issues and sets out to ID places that can be brought to the front of the conversation – for being unserved holes or underserved needs, or representing really important voting blocs you want to curry favor with. Raise the issue if the cabinet Secretary funds self-serving projects. Publicly demand answers if the cabinet Secretary cedes their theoretical expertise to someone else in the administration.
This is also a way to project strength and unity as a party. They don’t need all the answers, just a loud and consistent voice against bad governance.
@Kingdaddy:
As I pointed out a day or two ago, it’s not even “civil disobedience” if the law is on YOUR side. I do not understand why feds are taking direction from non-feds regarding putting employees on administrative leave — that’s not how the process works. Similarly with allowing unauthorized access to personal records and information systems. Trusk doesn’t have that many hands* to do the work; he needs cooperation from the cowed.
*And most of those have short fingers…
James, what have you seen or read from Chief Justice Roberts, in particular, that makes you think this? Roberts strikes me as less a partisan than SCOTUS fanboy vested in the High Court’s inherent inerrancy. So he’s not thinking ahead and wary of a future Democratic Unitary Executive. He’s high on his own reading of the law.
@gVOR10:
It works by Hakeem and Schumer, with supporting acts Barack and Nancy, saying it’s going to work. One becomes a leader by leading. L’audace, toujours l’audace.
It’s very important to know the enemy’s abilities, but it’s also important not to be paralyzed by them. You have to seize the initiative, and the only way to seize the initiative is by seizing it.
Something that has become obvious is just how ignorant Democrats are of military history. We’re a party of lawyers and teachers and ‘activists’ more likely to harm themselves than the enemy. When you are in a war there is really only one goal: to win. Military history teaches prioritization and focus, realism but also courage and innovation. A good reference is the Cold War, where we used both soft and hard power (and what might be called gray power) with the clear goal of thwarting the USSR.
Our goal in 2024 was very simple: beat Trump. Not solve Gaza. Not save trans athletes. Not DEI. Not even abortion. Every single thing, every single issue, every single constituency must focus on the goal of winning. If you lose you have no power and then none of your issues are worth a damn. Winning, not posturing, not virtue signaling, not manifesting, not writing a really compelling closing argument. Win. Nothing else matters. When you win, you ave power, and when you have power you can actually do things.
Democrats are great at being right, great at scolding, great at winning irrelevant arguments, but we suck balls when it comes to fighting.
Smash and grab. Trump’s default.
@ptfe:
Simultaneous brilliance. Could have written a shorter comment if I’d seen yours.
Joyner:
But isn’t the whole “you Christians will never have to vote again” telegraphing their aspirations to negate the possibility of another Democrat administration? If Trump can unleash Musk’s code monkeys all over the system’s jungle gym infrastructure, can we be sure these hackers won’t jack with the data rich parts of our election? That’s the part they’d do on the down low without the high drama of the USAID performance.
@ptfe:
@Michael Reynolds:
I don’t know that it would be politically savvy, but I would like to see a shadow cabinet with the Harris/Walz imprint on it. I could see that playing out well with, for example, TV whiz kid Pete Buttitgieg continuing to talk up all the great projects still taking shape from the Democrats’ Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 – taking credit for long lead time government success stories and not letting Trump put his name on anything without “Joe did that” coming out from the shadow cabinet.
“Imagine what we could have had if only 2% of the population hadn’t fallen for Trump’s con?”
It’s not enough for Trump to fail – that’s nearly a certainty with all the snake oil solutions he sold to his voters – rather the people have to see that of which they’ve been robbed.
@Jen:
There are two problems with the courts:
1) Thomas aside, the other five may rule on the calculation of how much money and wealth Crow, Leo, or other oligarchs will throw their way, vs how much danger will they put themselves and their families in by ruling against the rapist felon.
2) In the even that the courts rule against him, what happens when the tyrant goes and does as he wants, or as nazi president Xlon tells him to? Who enforces court rulings if they’re not obeyed? The tyrant’s fixer running the DOJ, or the tyrant’s attack dog running the FBI, or the spineless bunch in Congress who wouldn’t vote to convict him when it was safe to do so?
@Kingdaddy: Trump’s first administration was met with massive protests. From pussy hats to protests at airports over the travel ban.
Either BLM damaged the very idea of protest — Seattle had police just give up a chunk of the city after their attempts to attack peaceful protests failed — or J6 insurrectionists upped the ante or there’s something more ominous.
I think a lot of people are waiting on the courts. The level of protest they were comfortable with didn’t make any change last time, and now people are hoping someone else solves it.
People I know who went to protests last time are researching guns now. And emigration to friendlier countries.
@Kathy: I agree with your second point, and that is what the courts need to consider: will Trump–and those who surround him–recognize the authority of the courts, or will they defy the rule of law?
On your first point–I think this misses what motivates members of the Court, and to a lesser degree, what motivates people to run for Congress. I’ve worked closely with a lot of politicians and lawyers (and politicians who are lawyers). Most of them are not doing this because they are motivated by money–that’s a convenient side perk. What motivates most of them is ego, and more specifically, Making History. Their names in history books, for years to come. Thomas realizes what history books will say about him, so he no longer GAF, he’s going for the cash/perks. The rest…not so fast.
@ptfe:
All that has to happen is for 260 ambitious politicians (plus two independents) to voluntarily get together and selflessly decide on a list of people to represent the party. Then get the supposedly liberal MSM to notice and continue reporting on them. Absent existing structures and norms, I don’t see that as easy. Right off the top, which of Schumer and Jeffries defers to the other? And there is already a minority ranking member in each committee. Are they preparing policy papers? Is the MSM eagerly reporting on their positions?
If somthing is blinding obviously a good idea, ask why it hasn’t already happened.
@gVOR10: Yeah, unfortunately, I agree. See my note to Kathy re: egos.
I would HOPE that Democrats would zero in on the upside and potential efficacy of a shadow cabinet idea, but in reality I think it would rapidly devolve into “why is that Rep. being considered when MY district is x, y, z,” and “well, Sen. Sploodle might have the experience, but Jr. Sen. is younger and better in front of a camera” and then add in any other sharp elbows and snippy comments and nothing happens.
It is classic innovative development. Try a lot of things, keep what works, drop what doesn’t or gets to costly to do. It’s how Musk developed his factories to be more efficient than the Trad method of developing a mfr process.
As for USAID, where are the Dems coming with highlighted line items in the recent funding mandating Trans puppet shows, “family planning” in Gaza or are they discretionary specifics under US foreign policy which is now Trump’s to set.
@Jen: “The others, however, cannot be watching this without realizing that the legitimacy of the court is at stake.”
The question is, then, which of these justices will consider the legitimacy of the court more important than the stream of hundred thousand dollar vacations and other perks of being subservient to their overlords.
@JKB: “Try a lot of things, keep what works, drop what doesn’t or gets to costly to do. ”
Yeah, that’s gonna be really keen when Musk applies it to the government. Let’s stop all food inspections, end all pharmaceuticals trials, replace air traffic controllers with AI — just keep inventing. And if a couple dozen — or a couple dozen thousand — American citizens die, we’ll just change our approach!
@al Ameda:
I kinda agree but believe that, for the US and other places where people are generally comfortable, serious civil disobedience rarely starts before people feel affected personally by policy. Hearing about getting punched in the face is one thing, feeling it is a completely different ball game. “Branding” doesn’t apply to that.
@Steven L. Taylor: Agreed on Levin. I agree with him that the only way to create lasting change is to build broad consensus. But the nature of our modern parties, amplified by our modern media environment, makes that next to impossible.
I can argue that the Republican Party, which won every presidential election save one (and that one narrowly under the most difficult circumstances) between 1968 and 1988, had something like a stable majority. Several of those elections were landslides simply unimaginable today. But, as you say, that was in a very different party era, wherein many Southerners were die-hard Democrats even though they were conservative and the Northeastern Rockefeller Republicans had more in common with Democrats. I don’t see how we get back to that.
@JKB:
Except that the federal government isn’t a manufacturing facility, and the stupidity of move fast and break things is never a good idea–particularly when human lives are part of the equation.
Most of the stories surrounding the USAID line items have been proven false. Totally expected, since they have been pulled from right-wing “news” sites.
I’m frequently in awe of those ancient Greeks, they figured out so much with so little experience.
The phrase “Order From Chaos” is loosely based on the latin phrase, “Ordo Ab Chao”, translated as “Out of Chaos, Comes Order”. This is often regarded as a means to impose totalitarian control over society, first by creating chaos through various forms of subterfuge, then using this as an excuse to institute order.
@Jen: Aside from, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Brown Jackson (with Roberts as a “sometimes…maybe”), which justices are concerned about “the legitimacy of the court?” They seem to all be in the “it’s not the job of others to determine our legitimacy, we can decide that for ourselves” camp. The alternate response appears to be “of course we’re just calling balls and strikes, and we’re hurt that evil people who hate the rule of law are saying otherwise.”
@Michael Reynolds: In theory, an interesting idea. In practice, where are you going to find audacity (or l’audace, if you prefer to punch down at your audience) in a cohort where job one is “getting reelected”–as frequently as every other year?
I get it. I’m a child of the counterculture myself and appreciate how your junior criminal mastermind youth colors your worldview. But seriously, who are these audacious people for your shadow cabinet? Who are the forbearers on which we are going to model them? I would suggest, maybe Angela Davis, Tom Hayden. I’m sure there are others, but no one comes to mind. The congresscritter I suggest these names to is going to reply “You remember what happened to them, right? So do I. Thanks for the offer, but hard pass.”
The flaw in Klein’s argument – echoed by many others – is that Trump wants to avoid “paying a political price”; that he cares about public opinion. He’s already a lame duck. Any political price will be paid by others, not by him. And his narcissism is such that he believes he will end up on Mt Rushmore as the greatest president in history.
I expect he’ll ignore, work around or defy court orders he finds especially objectionable. Consider this hypothetical case:
1. Judge grants temporary injunction forbidding dissolution of USAID. Musk continues to wreck USAID. (This is where we’re at now.)
2. Judge makes injunction permanent. Trump appeals. Musk continues to wreck USAID.
3. Appeals bench upholds decision. Trump appeals to Supreme Court. Musk continues to wreck USAID.
4. Supreme Court upholds decision. Trump “regrets” he cannot comply, because the dissolution of USAID has gone past the point of no return and it cannot be reassembled.
Ah, you say, wouldn’t an offended judge somewhere along the line punish Musk for contempt of court? Well Musk already has form ignoring contempt of court threats, and that was before he enjoyed the protection of the White House. Does anyone really think Trump’s DoJ would take any action to enforce a contempt order against Musk?
No, the ultimate reason governments in a democracy abide by the rule of law is that powerful institutions can punish them if they don’t. In a textbook project to seize power, Trump has ensured all those institutions are either controlled by him or cowed into going along to get along. Consequently compliance with court orders will be voluntary, and he can ignore them with impunity.
@James Joyner:
To a degree. I was thinking more of the control of the House by Democrats from the Truman administration to the Clinton administration (with mostly Senate control as well). But you make an interersting observation about the presidency.
Regardless, we agree that the party system that produced those outcomes is gone, even if the party labels persist.
Maybe I’m missing something, but all the criticism seems to be about hypothetical issues, messaging etc.
The elephant in the room is that this outfit is exposing gross mishandling of taxpayer funds. I think that’s the real source of criticism.
As I read commentary I find it almost all arrant nonsense.
@Connor:
Well duh, you’re a bootlicker who defends everything Trump says or does. Goes without saying you’ll reflexiveky support Americans’ private data being illegally stolen by an unqualified, unvetted teenager who was once fired for his cybersecurity leaks.
Fortunately, the court system still has jurists who aren’t MAGA sheep:
Hopefully they can keep this case away from Aileen Cannon.
The mishandling of taxpayer funds is the $7 million already wasted on DOGE >Drugged-up Oligarch Grabbing Everything), the billions given to prop up Musk companies, and the money DUI hire Pete Hegseth just dumped on his government home remodel. If Republicans were serious about government waste (they ain’t), that’s where they start cutting. Especially since the near-trillion dollar budget of the department now led by wino Hegseth has struggled through audits.
They could also shut down Trump’s desire waste money on WW3 in Gaza or Greenland, and on a tarrif scheme that’ll send prices soaring worse than it’s already sent stocks falling. That money could be spent on upgrading aviation safety and containing bird flu and measles outbreaks.
Trump promised to fix such issues and to lower grocery prices on day one. Instead, reckless rightwing incompetence is making these problems worse.
No “maybe” about it.
Well, first, as DK has noted, this clown show has spent $7 million in ONE WEEK, so no pearl clutching about mishandling taxpayer funds. I maintain my position that what Musk is proposing to do, which is a massive overhaul of government systems, is going to cost many times over what is now being paid. How do I know this? Well, in part, from my time working for a state senator in a state that wanted to do exactly this–back in the 90s. It became very, very quickly apparent that when you build systems based on cost–particularly when you are frequently hemmed in by accepting the lowest bidder BECAUSE you are using taxpayer money–you end up with a patched-together system. If we’d been able to spend oodles of money, we absolutely could have updated systems. But the thing about using taxpayer funds is that when you encounter problems–and you will–when the funds run out (and they will), you have to wait until the next operating budget is passed.
The “gross mishandling” is, as I noted above, exaggerated. You have a few kids running around who think they know what is in a spreadsheet. Combine that with the fever dreams of a bunch of right wing websites, and what is spooling out from this is either outright lies or missing a ton of context.
Taking one aspect of this that I know a lot about: Musk hates PR, he always has. Trump doesn’t like the media. So these two are laser-focused on gutting the communications teams and eliminating payments to media outlets. All I can do is laugh at this. It’s not terribly smart to ignore news coverage when you’re the head of a corporation. It’s beyond stupid to ignore it when you’re a government agency, because one of government’s most important tasks is to communicate effectively with the public. You need to pay attention to coverage (even if you get hurt feelings when those awful reporters are MEAN to you).
@Jen: The context of the quote “move fast and break things” is the development of the Facebook website. There, I think it was a good idea, because the consequence of mistakes and broken things was that the (brand-new) Facebook website doesn’t work in some way. Which will be fixed very quickly, maybe in a few hours.
This very topic has been discussed within the software community, with the recognition that this is not a “one size fits all” strategy.
That is, this works well when the consequences of bugs – of defects – are not high. I think it also applies to unmanned space flight, such as SpaceX, with the exception of range safety. Otherwise, SpaceX is just burning its own money in a highly visible way.
Now people like Musk and Trump might think that applies here. Because there aren’t any consequences to them if the FAA has issues. They fly on private jets, remember? (Yeah, there are still consequences, of course, but it’s different.) Musk is so blinkered, he’s the guy saying, “some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”. Remember how he said this transformation was going to be painful? It isn’t going to be painful to him. Or to Trump.
Nevertheless, as much as I dislike what they are doing, I can’t agree with “move fast and break things” never being a good idea. It isn’t here, but sometimes it is.