File this under the single most predictable twist to the Musk-Trump saga. No one, and I mean no one, has benefitted more from a close association with the administration than Musk. Trump and his cronies are more than willing to skate through obvious, open, and express corruption, while also allowing anyone to see and scream, just not caring. So Musk gets all that benefit – and it’s substantial, and now faces absolutely none of the downside that one might expect from accountability that goes with so much power. Like so much with this administration, they have grabbed more power than any previous presidency, but when it comes to answering for themselves and their results, at that point they have no control over anything. Musk, you will understand, has no real power or position, he’s just there as a heads-up, a figure head, he can’t get anything done on his own – even though this is the exact opposite of what everyone has seen or heard.
If you were the judge who received this affidavit, I would think there is nothing wrong with you taking judicial notice (Having enough evidence just from watching the news and such from general society, not needing evidence to the contrary entered into the record) that this doesn’t pass the smell test. Per a report in Politico:
Elon Musk is not the leader of DOGE — the mysterious Trump administration operation overseeing an effort to break and remake the federal bureaucracy. In fact, he’s not even technically part of it at all, the White House said in court papers Monday night.
In a three-page declaration, a top White House personnel official revealed that Musk’s title is “senior adviser to the president,” a role in which he has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”
True. So why is Musk making actual decisions himself? And don’t tell us that Musk’s signature alone doesn’t get anything done, he has to communicate it to Trump for an executive order because that’s too technical if the signature is nothing but a formality. And it is, at least if one is to believe the Trump administration in any other context because it’s constantly hailing DOGE and Musk as saviors. They must be deciding something. Again, the judge has every right to take notice of this.
That explanation, provided to a federal court by Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House’s Office of Administration, seems to directly contradict the way President Donald Trump and Musk have spoken publicly about the so-called DOGE, widely seen as a Musk-driven project to shrink and dismantle key aspects of the federal government.
Yes, dismantle is exactly right and that makes this issue a key decision and not a formality. It is absolutely critical to hang something on Musk. He has done everything possible to insulate himself from all accountability. That needs to be pierced. Perhaps only when Musk is accountable – perhaps for delays in the nation’s air traffic due to Musk firing hundreds of new FAA air traffic control officers, put that on Musk, put passenger safety on Musk, perhaps he won’t be so cavalier in how many people he lets go.
When one gets right down to it, everyone in the executive branch is working on behalf of the president (With the possible exception of the Attorney General who is supposed to exercise some serious independence – and through him/her the FBI Director – but in this administration even that is dubious) and so this argument that it takes the president’s power to actually do anything Musk recommends makes no real sense and it undermines all accountability for his actions.
Total immunity for all that goes wrong is absolutely ruinous. And both Trump and Musk have it set up such that there is buffering from both sides due to the nature of their relationship. Trump can say that Musk is making the decisions. As we see here, Musk can say that he’s not actually in an official position to do anything. No one to pin with blame once a plane crashes or the government ceases to function in many ways.
Awful.
God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and on X at @JasonMiciak and follow me now on Bluesky.
Oh, come on, Jason! Sphincter Face has never even met his PetNazi or the Nazi’s snotty (literally) little kid. That guy is just the coffee boy at the Oval Office! 🤨
I see this a little differently. When Trump says that Musk has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself” he’s just blowing smoke to protect the operation. We are all perfectly aware that Musk has no formal authority to make government decisions himself. He wasn’t appointed, he certainly wasn’t elected, and even DOGE is not an actual department. But Musk is doing it all the same — and Trump is very heappy with that. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Basically he’s saying, No one is responsible for what Musk is doing. Not Musk, he doesn’t have the authority. Not DOGE, he has no formal connection with them. And not Trump, since nobody will ever find any formal orders from Trump telling Musk what to do. But it’s
obviously fine with him since he’s not doing anything about it. It’s just typical Trump bullshit.
Basically, this whole legal response is a case of the Drumpf lackeys telling the judges, “Who are you gonna believe? Us or your own stinking eyes and ears?” The Drumpf judges might be willing to believe Drumpf but, hopefully, even the majority of them will respond with “We’ll believe our own eyes and ears, thank you very much. Now, do you have a better argument to waste the Court’s time or will you slink away and accept our rulings?”
This was exactly what I said – or at least exactly what I meant to say. Yes, I agree. They get to have it both ways. No doubt that Musk has immense power and is making huge decisions. But equally no doubt he doesn’t have an official position and will be held completely out of the way of firing for accountability.
jason