Donald Trump said a few Sundays ago, “I can’t guarantee anything.” Oh, but we can. We can guarantee blame shifting. We have seen Trump do it time and again and he’s pivoting into that very spot right now. We have Trump and his co-president, Elon Musk, on opposite sides of the government shutdown issue. Trump doesn’t want it to shutdown whereas Musk thinks it’s no biggy. So of course Trump has to play the blame card. Now the question becomes, how stupid is the electorate and from what we’ve seen, the answer is plenty. Do they not know that the House is in GOP hands? Do they not know that Mike Johnson is the Speaker because the Republicans have the majority? I guess we’ll find out.
Nice try, this is your boss's fault, Elon Musk.
— Bill Garland-I'm so blue the color is jealous (@billg18211) December 20, 2024
That's not the issue. The issue is who controls the House and that is the Republicans.
— Ursula Faw (@ursulafaw56) December 20, 2024
So you see where this is going. The truth of the matter is that paralysis of government might be the best case scenario we can hope for.
Biden will disappear on January 20, but we’ll still have Trump and Musk. And the same dynamic will apply: When you have two presidents, you have zero presidents.
Trump could push Musk aside. But why would he?
Trump is purely transactional, meaning that so long as Musk is on his team, he won’t ditch the weirdo. It isn’t like Trump values governing and will grow tired of Elon if Musk makes it impossible for Trump to pass the Endangered Widgets Act or whatever.
If anything, having Musk around making it harder for congressional Republicans to pass legislation might be useful to Trump, allowing him to triangulate and deflect voter dissatisfaction.
As for Musk, right now he’s a Trump fanboy. From his perspective, America is Twitter and he just purchased it. It’s his new toy and so it’s getting all of his attention.² It seems unlikely that Musk will tire of his new possession in the near future. The U.S. government is a big organization. There are a nearly infinite number of opportunities to tinker with it. More importantly: The opportunities to get into public Twitter fights about the U.S. government are literally infinite. And history suggests that this is the key to holding Musk’s attention.
So Musk isn’t going to dump Trump.
The key is to understand that neither Trump nor Musk has any real incentive to make the federal government “work.” It can shut down, or not. It can pass legislation, or not.
Trump’s primary interests are expanding executive power, seeding the bureaucracy with loyalists, and perpetuating his ownership of the Republican party and viability as a potential candidate.
Musk’s primary interests are accumulating money and lulz.
None of these goals are in tension with one another.
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Not a great scenario to look forward to, but it is a plausible one, considering the players. What worries me is that Trump has a massive right-wing media organ at his disposal to spin fables and the truth gets sporadically reported, if at all, to a dumbed down electorate. What needs to happen now is that the Democrats need to have perfect clarity in stories about the shutdown going out there. It is on the Republicans. They have the House. If they can’t get along, it’s on them.
A simple message, to be sure, but in this day and age of sabotage and chicanery, of media outlets rolling over for Trump, getting it across may not be simple.
Simple messages based on truth, can fail in a media stuffed full of simple messages based on lies.
Exhibit A. The last election.
Trump has two, (2), main problems now … His desire for infinite power of a King, and he is wondering how HE can have the infinite power of the money posseted in Musk’s over-filled pockets …
It will be a long time coming for Administration’s complete replacement of our flag and Constitution for a turd like Trump, who if he survives this term, will be certainly faced with total recall of any business values he may now claim, the fines, and the interest they are accumulating, will certainly balloon in 4 years, if brainless VP tries to take over, he will soon be relieved of that position by a large vote in Congress …
All the media sites and others should have a countdown clock running in a small corner box with three words … [TRUMP IN PRISON], that trick would be enough to rattle Trump to his final implosion …