Summary
The White House confirmed that Elon Musk is working as a “special government employee” under Trump, granting him significant authority to cut federal spending.
Musk has a government email, office space, and access to sensitive Treasury systems. His team abruptly shut down USAID headquarters on Monday.
Musk is consolidating unchecked power, raising legal and ethical concerns, particularly given his federal contracts.
Musk is unpaid and may not be required to disclose financial interests.
No no, not a coup, a special government operation )))))l
As Jon Stewart said “it has been done within the confines of our legal system, therefore it’s not fascist”
Trump hires immigrant on welfare.
Also “special” sometimes used as a slur for the neurodivergent, so he’s also a DEI hire.
I heard the second amendment was made for special situations
Like… Like a super special employee? An S.S.?
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
“Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
Any bets on how long it will be until Elon does something so unpopular that there’s blowback on Trump and it becomes “Elon acted on this alone and I had nothing to do with it.”
I insist on only calling him President Musk because I know when he takes enough attention and credit from Trump, Trump will get mad and tell Elon to fuck off.
It will be glorious if it blows back so hard that Musk ends up in prison.
We can only hope. This morning, I saw multiple news articles with “President Musk” in the title. I suspect it’s intentional for that reason. But at minimum, I hope it’s starting.
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No no, violence is not the answer. Someone really needs to send him to Guantanamo Bay, outside of US jurisdiction, and introduce him to all the immigrants he’s illegally detained. They can each take a piece of him.
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It’s amazing how many guns we have, how pro 2A we are, how much pride we carry over things like the American Revolution, and we say dumb shit like violence is never the answer.
I’ve been telling people to prepare to resist for a bit now. The amount of “no the other team is the gun team!” is absurd. Most of these people will be useless and will happily rat out their gay neighbor when the time comes.
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Perfection
Where’s all the “But…but…Jack Smith wasn’t legally appointed” people at?
I imagine that as a formality Musk’s recommendations go past Trump, then to Russell Vought who is head of the OBM (office of management and business), and the actual official in charge of funding allocations.
I think congress is the actual official in charge of funding allocations.
Is that the appropriation bill that fills the annual budget? Would the OBM be more like, allocation of those funds? I don’t know much about this stuff.
Would dems even have the votes to “shut down the government” that way? Is that in June/July?
So is there no conflict of interest with the companies he runs getting federal contracts? Don’t politicians need to put their companies into some type of trust where they can’t run it and make decisions that would be in their favour? I mean I know it doesn’t work like that with stick trading (cough cough Pelosi).
I brought up the conflict of interest to a trump coworker and he deadass said, “I get the conflict of interest, but I just don’t care.” The mask is fully off.
Edit: not that I’m surprised, just depressed and somewhat bewildered
Company he runs? You really think he has time to run 5 companies while jerking off on twitter and now is spending his time jerking off in the treasury. The man just does what ever he feels. None of it is remotely called “work” he’s basically a walking jerk off
Fair point, I can’t disagree.
It’s still a massive conflict of interest.
Trump did away with the trust thing. And they let him because it wasn’t a law, it was just something that was understood to be done. No talk of him doing it this time either.
Does that mean his communications will be subject to FOIA?
Doubt it. I bet they’ll try to classify any of his communications as presidential advice, which would make them privileged communications not subject to foia
He failed background check.
The richest man on the planet who once joked about ending world hunger is cutting federal spending of the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. Let that sink in for a moment.
And they were in an awful hurry to kill USAID.
That’s probably just a trial run. They are floating the idea of killing the Department of Education now.
Not good enough.
Just because Trump declares him special doesn’t mean he is, or that he should have special privileges, anymore than his moronic cabinet picks can start moving their shit into their offices before being confirmed by the Senate.
And being special doesn’t excuse him from being a nazi.
He’s only special in the short bus sense of special.
Let’s be careful to not throw our differently abled friends under the bus by comparing them to Musk.
No, he’s special in that he’s an entitled narcissist bar any ethics or principles.
As long as we the people continue to allow it, he is indeed whatever they say he is.
What if donvict says “I HEREBY declare fElon as special” on his own stupid social media platform? Is that super duper Constitutional enough for everyone?
They’re proving that “act as if” really does work.
Oh no, this is one of those really fun powers we gave presidents a while back and forgot about. Presidents have a wide ranging authority to temporarily hire people and skip most of the ethics and oversight stuff that comes with normal federal hiring. The limitation is that it’s only good for certain positions, which DOGE, (formerly USDS) is a part of.
It’s legal because I said so
