Off to the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow, aaah, aaah ah. And I’m sure the Icelanders are groaning, “Why us? What did we do?” Well, it had to be somebody and maybe Iceland should be cheering on the fact that they got Billy Long and not Kimberly Guilfoyle as their new ambassador. At least Long has a marketable skill, he’s a trained auctioneer. The big question today is why did Trump decide to can Long? We know that Long has had several clashes with Scott Bessent, according to the New York Times, and he’s made false statements, the most alarming of which was that next year’s tax season would “start late.” That has been clarified. No, it will not start late, it will start when it always has started, and nobody knows why Long would say anything to the contrary. But that’s all history now and Long is making light of being IRS Commissioner number 6 in as many months.
We’re living through a bad SNL skit
— Alex Jewell 🧢 (@bestfoodalex) August 9, 2025
Politics is just one big har de har har with these guys. Today the Treasury Department thanked Long for his two months of service and said that his successor would be named “at an appropriate time.” Your guess is as good as anybody’s what Bessent means by that.
The I.R.S. is at the center of one of the Trump administration’s top priorities, carrying out the huge tax cut Republicans passed into law last month. The agency, along with the Treasury Department, is responsible for writing the rules for and disseminating information about several tricky issues in the law, including who can claim new tax breaks for tipped income and overtime pay.
That is a tall task that former I.R.S. officials said would only become more challenging amid the internal turbulence. More than 25,000 people have left the agency under Mr. Trump, roughly a quarter of the staff it had at the start of January, according to the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration. Congress is also eyeing steep budget cuts to the I.R.S.
“It has to have some impact on the agency’s ability to deliver this major piece of legislation,” said Terry Lemons, who led the I.R.S.’s communication efforts before retiring this year. “The people who are left, are they going to be able to handle this high volume with fewer staff and the potential for more budget cuts hanging over their heads?”
Mr. Trump had broken from recent precedent when he said would nominate Mr. Long last year. For decades, I.R.S. commissioners served five-year terms, an attempt to insulate the technocratic yet powerful position from partisan politics. Daniel Werfel, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice to lead the I.R.S., stepped down in January.
Bessent himself is now the acting IRS Commissioner. One of the previous acting commissioners, Gary Shapley, lasted only days before Billy Long was appointed, after Bessent complained to Trump that Elon Musk had installed the IRS leader without consulting him, The New York Times previously reported. So evidently Bessent was not happy with who got sent his way before and installed without his knowledge and doesn’t want for it to happen again. And it may not. Musk is pretty much last year’s flash in the pan show that got canceled after a few episodes.
Bessent canned Shapely and installed his own operative, Michael Faulkender, who served until Long was approved. But then Long ran afoul of Bessent. Maybe he was taking direction from Elon Musk or DOGE? Who knows? That’s exactly the point, that the Trump administration is in chaos right now and the IRS is only one agency which is displaying that fact loud and clear.
Maybe Karoline Leavitt knows what happened between Long and Bessent. After Shapley got canned Leavitt said, “Disagreements are a normal part of any healthy policy process, and ultimately everyone knows they serve at the pleasure of President Trump.” Ah yes. His pleasure, our pain.
