All Of It: Mad King Stuff

Oof. The Trump/Musk "epic weekend bender" has wrought the "rapid tear-down of the nation’s constitutional structures" in a rampaging takeover of the machinery of government - treasury, health care, criminal justice, foreign aid - by an unhinged, unelected oligarch in the name of an idiot boss who (somehow still) has no clue. After years of dread, their coup has left we the people raging, reeling, with mere "tiny levers" to pull. Josh Marshall: "The calamity is upon us." Dig in.

Honestly, we're so gobsmacked by the relentless fascism reigning down we lack the stomach to revisit the nitty-gritty of every theft, abuse, baldly illegal outrage. Heather Cox Richardson does an admirable job of documenting it; so does Robert Reich, repeatedly, and Thom Hartmann. We'll settle for a brief, grim recap; by the time you read this, there'll probably be more. On Tyranny's Timothy Snyder likens today's "government" to a car falling prey to dodgy mechanics: "You might have thought the election was like getting the car serviced," he writes "Instead, when you come into the shop, the mechanics (tell) you they have taken the parts of your car that work and sold them and kept the money, (and) this was the most efficient thing to do."

As promised, the vengeful child-king's first lashed out at all the mean law-abiding public servants who did their jobs and exposed his crimes. In a mass purge at the Justice Department, he feverishly fired or shut out scores of Jan. 6 prosecutors, FBI directors and agents, and any of the 6,000 participants in "witch hunts" and thought-crimes against him. As they were warned their names would be released so MAGA goons could doxx them to death - and while Nazi grifter Ka$h Patel was telling Congress he wouldn’t politicize the FBI - remaining agents had to vow, Stalin-like, to root out "subversives." And all that was just to open the door to a mad muskrat to start rooting around in federal agencies to find and gut whatever he personally dislikes, which yes is a coup.

Thus did a weird rich nerd with no authority or experience get handed "the keys to the kingdom," specifically both the data and systems of a Treasury Department that disburses almost $6 trillion a year - almost 90% of all federal transactions - and the financial information of millions of Americans who get it in dribs and drabs through Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, loans, salaries, tax refunds etc. Musk and his DOGE goons illegally locked former workers out of the system, forced the highest-ranking official to resign when he refused to comply, vowed to unilaterally cancel hundreds of millions of dollars’ in "illegal" government grants, quickly boasted he had, and then moved on to storm and trash multiple other federal agencies.

He was accompanied, Wired eventually reported, by an upstart troop of juvenile former X staffers, arsonists and engineers "barely out of - and in at least one case, purportedly still in - college.” All 19-to-24 year old protégés of duel madmen Musk or Peter Thiel, they've been gleefully taking a wrecking ball to the computers of government agencies while understanding almost nothing of their government functions, surrounding laws or the repercussions of breaking them. In the supremely ironic name of security, his clueless little firestarters have only identified themselves with first names, but Wired did better: Their names are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. Cool, man: Gamers 'R Us!

With his little band of outlaws, then, Musk moved on from Treasury to the U.S. Agency for International Development, a global behemoth that disburses up to $70 billion a year in humanitarian aid to about 130 countries. They provide clean water, medical supplies, field hospitals, landmine clearance, anti-terrorism programs; they feed hungry babies in war zones, refugee camps, disaster areas. Though their budget is less than 1% of the federal budget, one of Trump's first acts was to freeze almost all foreign aid, 'cause America First! But USAID gets its foreign policy guidance from the State Department, which means any breaching of their security systems or classified information would in turn render national intelligence insecure.

But Musk knows best: USAID is "a criminal organization.. a viper's nest. Time for it to die." Last weekend his delinquents barged in and accessed its classified info and security systems; when two officials tried to stop them, they were put on leave. Then DOGE closed the agency: Staff were locked out or told not to report to work, USAID logos were stripped, website and social media accounts went dark. "Secretary of State" Marco Rubio declared himself acting head of the agency to "ensure spending is in line with the president's agenda"; after an outcry, he may or may have exempted some humanitarian aid from the purge. Musk is unmoved. "We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper," he brayed. "Could (sic) gone to some great parties."

This week, in our new Wild East, Dems tried to enter the USAID building and were denied entry. A furious Jamie Raskin told Musk he may have illegally seized power over U.S. financial systems but, "You don’t control the money of the American people. Congress does...We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk." Not yet. But he's busy: He "deleted" the IRS' Direct File system that let people file taxes free online; he scoped out General Services, Commerce, Education, Small Business and NOAA for his next purges; and by trashing USAID, expert say, he "sabotaged 80 years of U.S. goodwill." Even affable Canada is pissed: At an NBA basketball game, and at several NFL hockey games, fans booed America's National Anthem. Go Canada.

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While Elmo runs rampant, Orange Donald has mostly been golfing, watching Fox News, stubby-fingered-rage-posting and occasionally putting on his oompa-loompa make-up to flamboyantly, leeringly sign a blizzard of largely illegal executive orders for the cameras, often moronically holding them up in vengeful triumph like a deranged eight-year-old showing off his latest rambling crayoned manifesto ordering the Marxist lunch lady to put still more ketchup on his fries like he keeps asking her to dammit. But while a parade of his comic-book Cabinet nominees sidestep or decline the traditional pledge to refuse any illegal presidential orders, he's also been busy obliterating, with a mindless vindictive swoop of his sharpie, decades of social progress.

He shut down the CDC and NIH, effectively halting all cancer and other life-saving medical research vital to millions of people, though it's never done anything for him. He ordered all federal databases dedicated to public health - about 8,000 pages from a dozen websites - to go dark until they'd scrubbed any mention of nasty things like gender, drug use, mental health, sexual assault, disease, proclivities and their connections, from tracking/preventing HIV to treating STIs to prescribing contraception. In response, researchers have been scrambling to salvage information from Malignant Big Brother and archive it through the Wayback Machine. "Science is disappearing from US websites," they charge. "Hiding the facts puts lives at risk."

Then the King of Tariffs launched the “dumbest trade war in history” with Mexico, Canada, and China, slapping 10%-25% tariffs on goods for "virtually every sector of the American economy": produce from Mexico, cars China, energy, alcohol, lumber from Canada at the start of building season amidst a housing crisis. As Fox hosts burbled - "waste and fraud," "saving billions of dollars!" "fix the system so people can afford eggs and gas" - they endlessly scrolled through avocados, beef, bananas, tomatoes, Nissan, steel, beer, lumber - and the Stock Market plunged. "WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE," from the guy who said there wouldn't be, but it will ALL BE WORTH IT for a country RUN WITH COMMON SENSE - "THE RESULTS WILL BE SPECTACULAR!!!"

Spectactularly swiftly, it all backfired. Trudeau slapped $100 billion in retaliatory tariffs on everything - U.S. beer, wine, fruit, juice, produce, appliances, duh lumber - and warned Americans the tariffs would hurt them. Provincial leaders halted massive buys of alcohol, Irving Oil, which heats New England, hiked prices 20%, and abruptly a "pause" for Mexico, then Canada, was announced after Mr. Art of the Deal, who never does his homework, won a pyrrhic victory asboth countries agreeed to do what they'd already done. Mexico would put 10,000 National Guard at the border who are there now via a 2021 deal with Biden, Canada would spend $1.3 billion on border security they agreed to with Joe in December; they'll also appoint a "Fentanyl Czar" for the 0.2% of fentanyl that crosses that border. Chortling Trudeau: "Sure Donnie, whatev." The triumphant idiot king then declared a "flawless victory in a pointless trade war" and, having claimed Biden's achievements as his own, went home to gloat.

In some truly "mad king stuff," Little Donnie also told the Army Corps of Engineers to turn on his magic faucet, open two dams in Central California, and let 2.2 billion gallons of water rush into dry lakebeds, which he celebrated by posting pastoral water images - "Beautiful water is flowing!" - even though experts say it is virtually impossible to move that water several hundred miles to fire-ravaged southern California, and now the water, which is usually needed by farmers in the hot, dry summer, will likely be wasted. "There is absolutely.no connection between this water and the water needed for firefighting in L.A." said one. "There is no physical connection." California's Adam Schiff on Donnie Firefighter's act: "Stupid. Ridiculous. Dangerous. Wasteful.'

Even at "work" in the Oval Office, Donnie King is not quite with it. Staff say to keep him focused in briefings they resort to pictures, bullet points, map and strategic mentions of his name as often as possible "because then he keeps reading." His understanding of governance remains iffy: Asked if he thinks he needs Congress' approval to topple agencies or freeze funding, he said, “I don’t think so. Not when it comes to fraud. These people are lunatics." Speaking of: There is no actual goal or "agenda" at work here, Robert Reich reminds us,, on foreign aid, immigrants, tariffs, "all of it." For a sociopath, "The point is the show. So the world knows he's willing to inflict harm," and, like any chaos agent or abusive spouse, to rule by sadistic unpredictability.

Confoundingly, his grip on a supine GOP remains so strong they've literally turned away from the torrent of abuses. On Musk's boy-raid on USAID and "the tofu-eating 'wokerati' (at USAID) screaming like they're part of a prison riot," Sen. John Foghorn Kennedy says, “My attitude is, if you’re upset by that, call someone who cares. Because that’s why we’re elected - to review the spending.” He added a rant about omelets and sex that likely didn't help businesses scrambling with ransacked data, non-profits closing or people trying to pay rent or swipe a once-secure card for groceries. "It's a hostile takeover of the U.S. happening in full view of the world," writes Tom Sullivan - and of "Democrats down the street just waking up and smelling the accelerants."

Somnambulant Dems need to use the "tiny levers" of power they're left with in what is "fundamentally a battle over public opinion," argues Josh Marshall. The larger political message: "You're about to lose a lot of stuff," from health care to savings, so billionaires can get a tax cut. Very slow and late, Dems in Congress have begun heeding AOC's demand to "stop playing nice." They've demanded the spending freeze be "choked off" before they'll help a fractious GOP meet a March funding deadline to keep government open, passed a bill blocking "unlawful access" to Treasury, placed a "blanket hold" on Trump's State nominees until USAID reopens, refusing to use the Senate's traditional "unanimous consent" power to slow down confirmations.

They've pivoted to messaging that tariffs will just "rip off" taxpayers, joined a protest at Treasury to "stop the corporate coup" and proclaim, "We choose to fight. Nobody elected Elon," vowed to go into Musk-rampaged buildings and "dare them to stop (us)." Federal judges have shut down the spending freeze, unions and Public Citizen have sued Elon to block him from accessing Treasury data, others have sued him for identity theft, and many more legal challenges are reportedly, finally in the works. In L.A. last weekend, thousands of immigrants and advocates turned out to protest ICE deportations and shut down the freeway; they waved Mexican flags and chanted the United Farm Workers' "Si Se Puede" - Yes, you can. Chicago and other citiesheld a day without immigrants, closing businessiness to show, "We’re united, we’re together, we’re strong."

In this loopy dystopia, far behind the Looking Glass, even the FBi is pushing back. Top officials and the FBI Agents Association have told members, “Do NOT resign or offer to resign." They've urged agents to not take McCarthyesque vows to name "subversives," refused to participate in Musk'a gang firings, and sued DOJ to stop the release of names from the Jan. 6/ Trump criminal cases. An assistant director in New York emailed his staff to say he's not quitting, and neither should they. In his impassioned plea, he recalled a time in combat in the Marines when he had to laboriously dig a foxhole with a two-foot folding shovel. "It sucked, but it worked when the bullets flew," he wrote, adding he had a similar feeling in this chaos. "I’m sticking around to defend you, your work, your families, and this team. Time for me to dig in."

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