Like many Individuals currently, I’m seized with curiosity about who is definitely working the federal government of the US. For that cause, I watched Sean Hannity’s Fox Information interview tonight with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
However I’m nonetheless undecided who’s in cost. If there’s a headline from the interview, it’s that the president of the US feels that he requires the companies of a multi-billionaire to implement his govt orders. Trump complained that he would write these “stunning” 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 identical as thwarting the need of the folks. Hannity, in fact, enthusiastically supported all of this whining about how onerous it’s to manipulate a superpower.
In different phrases, it was an hour of dialog amongst three males who do not know how American democracy works.
The purpose of the interview, I assume, was to calm a few of the waters round Trump’s relationship with Musk, and particularly to current Musk as simply one other patriotic American who is simply making an attempt 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 making an attempt to create applied sciences to “assist the blind to see.” Trump and Musk bemoaned how the world is making an attempt to drive them aside, however affirmed that they like one another very a lot. “I needed to seek out anyone smarter than him,” Trump mentioned in one in all his traditional insult-praise mixture punches, “however I couldn’t do it.”
They might 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 stage is insane,” he mentioned, after recounting that individuals 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 day by 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 cope with the president’s obvious incapacity to carry a single thought for very lengthy. Hannity, as common, tried to throw softballs; Trump, as common, missed each pitch. Hannity at one level famous that Trump has “develop into a scholar of historical past” after which requested how the Framers of the Structure would view his efforts to rein within the paperwork. Trump verbally wandered about earlier than returning to his speaking factors about Musk, who he mentioned is “wonderful” and “cares.” So say James Madison and the opposite Founders, apparently.
And so it went, with Trump digressing into varied riffs drawn from his rally speeches, starting from immigration to the cash he saved on contracts for Air Pressure One to hurricane harm in North Carolina. (He was making an attempt to reward Musk for offering Starlink entry to stricken areas, nevertheless it was evident that Trump has no concept what Starlink is or does.)
A number of different information flashes from the interview: The president of the US thinks that the federal government mustn’t pay its payments in full. It ought to lowball its contractors and drive them to simply accept half fee, he mentioned. Former President Joe Biden was going to go away two American astronauts marooned in area for “political causes” based on Musk. Additionally, Biden wrecked America in each attainable approach, however they’re fixing it. Musk mentioned he has by no means seen Trump do something “imply” or “mistaken,” 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 immediately, when requested why DOGE and SpaceX staff are working on the FAA and DoD, companies the place Musk has contracts or regulatory relationships, Trump mentioned: “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 typically behave himself, as an alternative of stealing the present as he did a number of days in the past within the Oval Workplace. When prompted by Trump, he mentioned he very a lot preferred “Bobby”—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. —who he mentioned was demonstrating the scientific methodology by questioning science. And in an attention-grabbing second of inadvertent candor, Musk additionally defended a few of the folks working for DOGE, noting that they have been taking a lot decrease pay to assist the federal government moderately than the salaries they might command in non-public trade—very similar to 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 happened amongst individuals who don’t perceive the essential 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 process 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 may 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 hundreds of 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 wise man like Musk is furthering his agenda—no matter it’s. Musk, who solutions to nobody, is stuffed with fervor to kill off authorities companies he doesn’t perceive, as a result of unelected wealthy males firing probationary federal staff is outwardly how true Jeffersonian democracy is restored to an ailing America.
How lengthy this chaos can go on is anybody’s guess. Sooner or later, Musk would possibly cross one in all Trump’s different officers, or he would possibly deliver sufficient dangerous press that Trump himself may find yourself throwing Musk off the ship of state, as he has executed 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, shall be dwelling with the harm executed.
