Pro-trump propaganda: A rebuttal (Long)

Posted on March 7, 2025 by The Old Wolf

Warning! Wall of Text!

This post crossed my screen a couple of weeks ago, and after a bit of research I discovered it’s being shared across multiple channels on Facebook and elsewhere. It’s so outrageous in its content that I couldn’t sleep much last night, so I was compelled in the name of decency to offer a fact-based rebuttal. I won’t name and shame the author, because that’s not my privilege, but it’s out there if you want to search for it. Original text in italics, my responses follow.

𝐼’𝑚 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑘𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑝 𝑎𝑑𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛. 𝑆𝑜 𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐼’𝑑 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠.

“Whining” about the Trump administration is, more properly stated, resisting autocracy, oligarchy, and a rising tide of fascism that needs to be fought at every turn. Consider these points:

𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑒 (𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑗𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓) 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔, 𝑚𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑠 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑. 𝑊𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑐 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑒.

Donald Trump has absolutely no mandate, given that 75,019,230 Americans voted for reason, sanity, and compassion instead of madness and oligarchy. Trump’s 77,303,568 votes constitute a razor-thin margin of 1.48%, or 2,284,338 people – less than the population of Houston, Texas.¹

In our nation, Republican-leaning states take more in federal dollars than they contribute, where Democratic-leaning states provide more tax revenue to the nation than they get back, so please don’t tell us that Republicans are “pulling the economic weight in this country.”²

𝐼𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛’𝑡 𝑎𝑙𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑦, 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑎 𝑗𝑜𝑏. 𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑖𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑑𝑣𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛. 𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑚𝑎𝑧𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡.

More than 1/3 of Americans have a second job or side-hustle just to survive.³ In 2020, 4.1% of our nation was classified as “working poor,” people who have jobs but still fall below the poverty line.⁴ The old GOP line about “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is a cruel philosophy that leads to things like opposing the cancellation of student debt. “I had to pay off mine, why should other [implied: undeserving] people sponge off my taxes?” In Romanian, they say “să moară și capra vecinului” (may the neighbor’s goat die too), expressing a desire for others to suffer if you cannot thrive yourself, a feeling that is inherently worse than Schadenfreude.⁵ “Wage theft is a costly and pervasive problem that affects millions of workers across the country. For example, Cooper and Kroeger (2017) investigated just one type of wage theft (minimum wage violations) and found that in the 10 most populous states in the country, 17% of eligible low-wage workers reported being paid less than the minimum wage, amounting to 2.4 million workers losing $8 billion annually. Extrapolating from these 10 states, Cooper and Kroeger estimated that workers throughout the country lose $15 billion annually from minimum wage violations alone.”⁶ “According to the Economic Policy Institute, wage theft costs U.S. workers as much as $50 billion per year — a number far higher than all robberies, burglaries and motor vehicle thefts combined.”⁷

𝑈𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎 𝑈.𝑆. 𝐶𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑛, 𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑦 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎 𝑈.𝑆. 𝐶𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑑! 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑙 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑠.

The fact that you don’t care what “liberal media channels” say doesn’t change reality. American citizens are being caught up in Donald Trump’s sweep for undocumented immigrants. It’s happening, it will continue to happen as long as ICE is given carte blanche by the current administration and MAGA-dominated Congress.⁸

𝑇𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎 𝑏𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑝. 𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑙. 𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑟𝑒.

International trade is not a zero-sum game. You don’t have to have a winner and a loser – the best deals are made when everyone wins. Sadly, Donald Trump – and hence MAGA – believe something entirely different: “You hear lots of people say that a great deal is when both sides win,” he writes in Think Big and Kick Ass, co-authored with Bill Zanker of the Learning Annex. “That is a bunch of crap. In a great deal you win — not the other side. You crush the opponent and come away with something better for yourself.” To “crush the other side and take the benefits,” he declares, is “better than sex — and I love sex.”⁹ In other words, it’s not enough for Donald Trump to win – 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒. Treat business collaborations or international relations in this cruel and narcissistic manner and you will only generate one thing – massive resentment and a decreased desire to do any business in the future. That’s not winning – it’s self-sabotage in the long run.

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑙 𝑅𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠 𝐴𝑐𝑡 𝑜𝑓 1964 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑦 𝑎𝑔𝑒, 𝑠𝑒𝑥, 𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑒, 𝑒𝑡𝑐. 𝐷𝐸𝐼 𝑜𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑣𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠. 𝐷𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑞𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒.

If you think the Civil Rights Act has eliminated racism in America, you are living on your veranda, sipping mint juleps while the “darkies” work happily in the fields. The Brookings Institute, writing about systemic racism in America, said “The reality of this history has been on stark display in recent weeks. From the terrible killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, to the countless, untold acts of racism that take place every day across America, these are the issues that are defining the moment—just as our response will define who we are and will be in the 21st century and beyond. Truly, the very nature of our “national soul” is at stake, and we all have a deep responsibility to be a part of the solution.”¹⁰

“At this point, it’s evident that DEI has become interchangeable with a less socially acceptable racial slur” – specifically, the “N-word.”¹¹ And sadly, discrimination across the board which remains endemic in our society and which Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity, and DEI attempt to combat includes not just people of color but women and all sorts of minorities as well.

𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡’𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦, 𝑖𝑡’𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑏𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝑑𝑎𝑚𝑛 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑡.

This is 100% true – and it’s why Trump and Company want to eliminate all financial oversight, such as the elimination of organizations like Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.¹²

𝑊𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝐵𝑎𝑛𝑘. 𝐼𝑓 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠. 𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑒𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑦 ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑓 𝑚𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐼𝑛𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝑜𝑟 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑎.

Despite the fact that Colin Turnbull’s analysis of the Ik in his book 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 has widely been discredited, Lewis Thomas in his seminal work 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝐶𝑒𝑙𝑙 wrote: “For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation. Nations, by law, are solitary, self-centred, withdrawn into themselves…. They bawl insults from their doorsteps, defecate into whole oceans, snatch all the food, survive by detestation, take joy in the bad luck of others, celebrate the death of others, live for the death of others.”¹³

America is not an island, and as the world’s wealthiest nation we have done more than our fair share to assist the global community in many ways, which is only right and proper. The Brookings institute soundly refutes many myths about foreign aid, including “America spends too much on foreign aid,”(foreign assistance is less than 1 percent of the federal budget), “Others don’t do their fair share,” (There is a broad international commitment that wealthy countries should provide annually 0.7 percent of GNP to assist poor countries. Five countries (Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark, and the U.K.) exceed that benchmark. The average for all wealthy nations is around 0.4 percent. The U.S. ranks near the bottom at below 0.2 percent), and “U.S. foreign aid is mainly backed by Democrats” (Foreign aid historically has been viewed more as a Democratic than Republican program. The Marshall Plan was initiated by the Truman administration, and in the 1990s, when votes in the Congress on foreign aid spending were close, the appropriations bill garnered more Democratic than Republican votes. But every president, Democratic and Republican, until the current occupant of the White House, has been a strong proponent of foreign assistance. In fact, some of the most rapid increases in foreign aid have come during Republican presidencies)¹⁴

The shuttering of USAID will literally kill people, and it’s unbelievably cruel and xenophobic. “The Roman Catholic Church’s worldwide charity arm sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s cuts to U.S. foreign aid on Monday, saying his plans to end funding for relief agency USAID will have a “catastrophic” impact in the developing world. ‘The ruthless and chaotic way this callous decision is being implemented threatens the lives and dignity of millions,” Caritas Internationalis, a Vatican-based confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social services organisations working in more than 200 countries, said in a statement.'”¹⁵

𝐷𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦, 𝑑𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑙. 𝑊𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑦? 𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑤𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑡. 𝐴𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑢𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒? 𝑁𝑜𝑡 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚. 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑜𝑖𝑙 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑙𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑢𝑚, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠? 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑎. 𝑊𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛? 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑖𝑙, 𝑔𝑎𝑠, 𝑐𝑜𝑎𝑙, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑛𝑢𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟. 𝑈𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑛 𝑓𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑙𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑐𝑎𝑟!

First of all, your data is incorrect. The world’s leader in lithium production is Australia, followed by Chile. China is only third.¹⁶ Your quote about unicorn farts and liberal tears sounds like something you’d hear on Breitbart or OAN or Fox News, and is petty and childish. Europe is the world’s leader in replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, and is on track to reach a target of a 42.5% share of renewables by 2030.¹⁷ It can be done if the social and political will is there, but in the USA the fossil-fuel lobby is immensely wealthy and powerful, and our legislators receive massive amounts of money to ensure that renewable energy is consistently sidelined in favor of more drilling and coal digging.¹⁸

For what it’s worth, it’s worth mentioning in the service of full disclosure:

    O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O
     THIS POST MOVED STICKY BLACK FILTH FROM THE BOWELS
        OF THE EARTH, AND SET IT ON FIRE IN YOUR AIR
    O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O O=c=O

On the other hand, 15% of my energy consumption comes from a solar farm in Maine, and similarly did for many years in Utah thanks to their Blue Sky program. It can be done, and people who care about our environment will continue to fight the fossil fuel industries’ dominance.

One point on which we agree: Nuclear power has been given a bad rap, and we need more of it – along with increased research and development on how to reduce or treat nuclear ash.

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠, 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑡.

R. Buckminster Fuller, one of the world’s greatest forward thinkers and the inventor of the geodesic dome, had a philosophy that came to be known as the “World Game” – “Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”¹⁹ Historically, progressives have aligned themselves with this concept in various ways, while regressives – those in favor of preserving a world where only the wealthy and influential have rights – have sought to accumulate power and build walls to keep the “unworthy” out.

A big subset of MAGA today are evangelical Christians who wear their religion on their sleeves, who in the words of Paul the Apostle are “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” (New Testament, 2 Timothy 3:5)

Russell Moore, long one of the top officials in the Southern Baptist Convention, said “Well, it was the result of having multiple pastors tell me essentially the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount parenthetically in their preaching – turn the other cheek – to have someone come up after and to say, where did you get those liberal talking points? And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ, the response would not be, I apologize. The response would be, yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak. And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”²⁰

It is only the feelings of people – whether from doing their best to follow the teachings of Jesus, or from a humanistic sense of wanting the best for the greatest number of people – that will help humanity crawl out of the mud and reach for the stars, by building a world that works for everyone, with no one left out. And we will never “get over” that.

𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑚𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛. 𝑆𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡.

Sure, if you want to base your opinions solely on the Bible or what you’re hearing over the pulpit instead of science. In reality, it’s not simple at all.

“Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD. When genetics is taken into consideration, the boundary between the sexes becomes even blurrier. Scientists have identified many of the genes involved in the main forms of DSD, and have uncovered variations in these genes that have subtle effects on a person’s anatomical or physiological sex.”²¹

Even if you want to discount the science, which is a terrible thing to do²², people need to understand that LGBTQIA+ people have always existed, they will always exist, and no amount of oppression or erasure will stop them from existing. Gay rights are human rights. Trans rights are human rights. There’s no question that inclusion and respect for non-binary people brings social challenges and demands difficult adjustments, but to do anything else – especially to work to strip rights from your fellow sojourners in mortality – is in direct opposition to the teachings that most MAGA adherents claim to honor: “That which is distasteful unto yourself, do not unto others – this is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary.” (Rabbi Hillel).

𝐸𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑎 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑎 𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑑 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙, 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑. 𝐴𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔.

“The modern education system was designed to teach future factory workers to be “punctual, docile, and sober.”²³ 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 is what’s wrong, and utterly so. In 1928, Margaret Mead, an American Cultural Anthropologist, was famously reported saying, “Children should be taught how to think, and not what to think.” It turns out she was way ahead of her time and was already tapping into a theory that educational psychologists would later term ‘Metacognition’.²⁴ For societal progression to occur, children need to be taught more than reading, writing, and arithmetic – they need to learn critical thinking, social consciousness, and life skills as well, and they need music, literature, world history, and the arts.²⁵ And they definitely don’t need religious indoctrination, as specified in the Establishment Clause of our nation’s Constitution. Public funds must be used for public education, not private religious institutions. If people want their children to attend such schools, they should pay for them out of their own pockets, not via tax-supported vouchers.

𝐷𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑑 𝐽. 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑝 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑛 𝑏𝑦 𝑎 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑑𝑒 — 𝑏𝑜𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟 𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒. 𝐺𝑒𝑡 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑖𝑡.

In 2020, Joseph Biden won the popular vote by a margin of 4.45%, and for 4 years MAGA screamed “Not my President!” in 2024, Trump won the popular vote by a margin of 1.48%. In 1972, Richard Nixon’s margin over George McGovern was 23.15%; 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 was a landslide, despite Nixon’s later disgrace and resignation. Trump has no mandate for anything despite what you might hear on Fox News. It’s worth mentioning that the “electorial” (sic) college has long been recognized as an outdated construct designed to preserve the power of white landowners²⁶ and deserves to be replaced by a one-person, one vote Presidential election. Yes, even if this had been the case in 2024, Donald Trump would have won the election, but the results would have been entirely different in 2000 (Bush/Gore) and 2016 (Trump/Clinton) and Trump would never have ascended to the presidency at all.²⁷

¹ https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024
² https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2023/07/red-states-feed-at-the-federal-trough-blue-states-supply-the-feed.html
³ https://www.newsweek.com/americans-side-hustles-survey-1930416
https://www.newsweek.com/vault/banking/savings/gen-z-money-habits-bank-of-america-survey/
⁴ https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/working-poor/2020/
⁵ https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/06/we-must-banish-bootstraps-mythology-from-american-life
⁶ https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-2021/
⁷ https://inthesetimes.com/article/wage-theft-union-labor-biden-iupat
⁸ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-immigration-raids-citizens-profiling-accusations-native-american-rcna189203
⁹ https://www.vox.com/a/donald-trump-books
¹⁰ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/systemic-racism-and-america-today/
¹¹ https://archive.ph/5TPDb (archived from http://readcultured.com/how-white-people-quickly-turned-dei-into-a-racist-slur-1866e4e3dedd)
¹² https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-senator-vows-to-fight-back-against-trumps-plan-to-dismantle-financial-watchdog/3478108
¹³ https://www.goodnews.ie/betweenourselvesjune2005.shtml
¹⁴ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-every-american-should-know-about-u-s-foreign-aid/
¹⁵ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-foreign-aid-cuts-catastrophic-says-global-catholic-charity-arm-2025-02-10/
¹⁶ https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles
¹⁷ https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/share-of-energy-consumption-from
¹⁸ https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=all&ind=E01&mem=Y&recipdetail=S
¹⁹ https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/world-game/
²⁰ https://www.npr.org/2023/08/05/1192374014/russell-moore-on-altar-call-for-evangelical-america
²¹ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/
²² https://aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf The salient quote here from Isaac Asimov is this: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
²³ https://qz.com/1314814/universal-education-was-first-promoted-by-industrialists-who-wanted-docile-factory-workers
²⁴ https://coachbit.com/the-parent-bit/metacognition-reflective-learning-can-help-kids-perform-better/
²⁵ https://artomicparticles.tumblr.com/post/95126208009/no-child-left-behind-cartoon-by-david-horsey
²⁶ https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins
²⁷ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin

Elon Musk Launches Into American Politics

Posted on February 10, 2025 by The Old Wolf

This is a transcript of a New York Times podcast from December 13, 2024. All rights belong to the originator and owner.

The world’s richest man may now be the single most influential figure in the emerging White House of Donald Trump.

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.

rachel abrams
From “The New York Times,” I’m Rachel Abrams, and this is “The Daily.”

[THEME MUSIC]

After single-handedly remaking the auto industry, social media, and the global space race, Elon Musk is now turning his attention and personal fortune to politics. Over the past few months, he became the single most influential figure in the race for president and now the emerging White House of Donald Trump. Today, my colleagues Kirsten Grind and Eric Lipton on what exactly Musk wants from the new president and why he’s so well-poised to get it.

It’s Wednesday, November 13.

Kirsten, we spent the last few months watching as Elon Musk really became kind of the face of Donald Trump’s campaign for president. And in the days since he won, Musk has only increased his proximity to President-elect Trump. And last night, of course, Trump announced that Musk would lead a new government agency. What will Musk’s specific role in the Trump administration be?

kristen grind
Late Tuesday evening, Donald Trump announced a bunch of new appointments to his new administration. And included in that was this role for Elon Musk. And what Donald Trump said is that Elon Musk will be leading up this completely new government department focused on efficiency. Efficiency is something that Elon Musk has been obsessed with for years. And basically, it’s just showing how much power Elon Musk is going to have in this administration and how much Donald Trump respects his opinion.

rachel abrams
Kirsten, you’ve covered Musk for years. Did any of this surprise you?

kristen grind
So I’m an investigative reporter who has written a lot about Elon Musk. And I have to say, I could have never predicted this political transformation that has happened over the last year. For him to become so involved in politics after really staying out of it for most of his life and career and being in the room with Donald Trump on election night is a metamorphosis I definitely was not prepared for.

rachel abrams
How did we get from a guy you would never have expected to get into politics to someone who’s about to potentially serve the White House?

kristen grind
The thing to understand about Elon Musk is that he really believes his goal in life and his mission is to save humanity. He has made it his focus and the focus of all of his companies to save the world. For example, he started SpaceX more than two decades ago with the goal of getting humanity to Mars in case something happened to Earth. He was an early investor in Tesla and became its CEO because he was worried about fossil fuels.

rachel abrams
And he’s become the world’s richest man by doing all of these ventures. But how do we go from that and from him wanting to save humanity, possibly by colonizing Mars, to basically becoming a key supporter and really a surrogate for Trump?

kristen grind
It’s a very unusual and unconventional transformation. For most of his early career, he had leaned Democratic, but really he just wasn’t into politics at all. And for the most part, he stayed out of it. But there’s a few things that happened in the last four years that really started to shift his outlook.

[QUIRKY MUSIC]

So let’s start in 2020, the pandemic.

archived recording 1
All of California this morning now under a shelter-in-place order.

archived recording 2
Governor Newsom’s order, an unprecedented action, calls for —

kristen grind
California had tons of stay-at-home restrictions on residents and businesses. And most of Elon Musk’s company operations were in California. And Musk speaks out against what’s happening.

archived recording (elon musk)
Is it right to infringe upon people’s rights, as what is happening right now?

kristen grind
He is extremely antiregulation, hates to have the government or really anyone tell him what to do.

archived recording (elon musk)
This is fascist.

kritsten grind
And so the fact that he was going to have to close his Tesla factories because of the pandemic made him so angry.

archived recording (elon musk)
This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom.

kristen grind
And finally, he threatened and then ultimately did move factories out of the state.

rachel abrams
Wow, so this really pushed him over the edge what happened in California.

kristen grind
It really did. But then something happened the next year in 2021 that was even more angering to him, and which seems like a small thing, but has been something that he’s like never been able to get over.

[APPLAUSE]

archived recording (joe biden)
Please, everybody sit down. Please, please, please.

kristen grind
The Biden administration held this electric vehicle summit.

archived recording (joe biden)
And I also want to thank the leaders of the big three companies for being here today.

kristen grind
And they invited all the big carmakers from all over the country to go.

archived recording (joe biden)
— when they make the first electric Corvette, I get to drive it.

[chuckles]
Right, Mary?

kristen grind
Except for Tesla and Elon Musk.

archived recording (elon musk)
Biden held this EV summit.

kristen grind
Elon was furious.

archived recording (elon musk)
He didn’t mention Tesla once and praised GM and Ford for leading the EV revolution.

archived recording 3
So you were a pissed.

archived recording (elon musk)
Does this is sound maybe a little biased?

kristen grind
And he has never been able to let this go, the snub from the Biden administration.

archived recording (elon musk)
It’s not the friendliest administration.

It seems to be controlled by the unions, as far as I can tell.

kristen grind
And basically, it created so much tension between Tesla and the administration that that also kind of set him on his political journey.

rachel abrams
So it sounds like the Biden administration is on notice at this point that Musk is really upset. And it’s not just for business reasons. It’s really becoming kind of personal.

kristen grind
That’s right. But it also becomes ideological, too, because remember, around 2022, he buys Twitter, renames it X. And he basically says he buys it to make it a free speech platform. He especially thinks that conservatives had been censored on Twitter. Remember, at this point, Donald Trump had been kicked off Twitter and other conservative voices.

And he wants it to be this sort of place for free speech of all kinds. And around this time, he really start to see a shift in what he is posting about on X. And it becomes way more focused on what he’s called the woke mind virus. What this basically means is, for example, diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, transgender rights, pronoun use, all of that seems to be angering Elon Musk significantly on X. And he starts posting about it more and more.

[TENSE MUSIC]

archived recording (elon musk)
So it’s very possible for adults to manipulate children who are having a natural identity crisis into believing that they are the wrong gender.

kristen grind
And I want to bring up this other thing that, to me, really shows how far down this rabbit hole he had gone —

archived recording 4
Why are you willing to make this an issue, do you think?

archived recording (elon musk)
Well, it’s happened to one of my —

kristen grind
— which is that his daughter, Vivian, who’s one of his older children, had come out as transgender.

archived recording (elon musk)
I was essentially tricked into signing documents.

kristen grind
And Musk claimed in an interview that he was tricked into signing these medical forms for Vivian and allowing her to do her transition when she was 16.

archived recording (elon musk)
This is before I had really any understanding of what was going on. And we had COVID going on. And so there was a lot of confusion.

kristen grind
That he had not been aware of this basically.

archived recording (elon musk)
They call it “deadnaming” for a reason.

archived recording 4
Yeah.

kristen grind
And he said in this interview that she had been killed.

archived recording (elon musk)
Killed by the woke mind virus. So I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that. And we’re making some progress.

kristen grind
She had some choice words back to him and also said that he was not tricked into signing those forms. But the whole incident just really showed how his thinking has changed and been radicalized over these last few years.

Another example of his ideological transformation is immigration. And that’s kind of ironic because Elon Musk, himself, is from South Africa. But over the last couple years, he starts really focusing on illegal immigrants. And he keeps talking about how he feels the Democratic Party is allowing in these illegal immigrants so that they can get a majority and win the election.

rachel abrams
So he’s just espousing this conspiratorial rhetoric right out in the open on his own platform.

kristen grind
That’s right. And it’s really this ideology that is so different from what you saw from him even just a couple years earlier.

rachel abrams
OK, so all of that helps me understand how by 2024, Musk is increasingly aligned with right-wing ideology. But when do he and Donald Trump actually get together in some meaningful way?

kristen grind
So it’s a little hard to tell because Musk’s world is very insular. But you can kind see why, at this point, he and Trump are so aligned. So the two people are so similar.

rachel abrams
Really? Like how?

kristen grind
I mean, they both have immense wealth and power, but they both act like outsiders and victims. I think this one is maybe the most important, which is that they both think the system is broken and they both really think that they are the ones to fix it and they kind of refuse to stick with the status quo.

And so we know at one point earlier this year, Musk met with some billionaire friends his, one of whom was encouraging him to get involved in the campaign and to donate, which would be pretty normal for someone of his stature and wealth. And then we know at some point earlier this year, he did also meet with Trump. And then by June, he had established a super PAC ready to invest in Trump’s campaign.

rachel abrams
So can you just break down for a second? What does that support actually look like?

kristen grind
It is above and beyond what a normal donor would do, that’s for sure. So his Super PAC has donated more than a hundred million. That would be kind of normal for a billionaire or another donor, perhaps. But what has been unusual is the Super PAC, which is called America PAC, was in Pennsylvania knocking on doors. They knocked on 11 million doors in battleground states. [CHEERING]

archived recording (donald trump)
Come on up here, Elon.

kristen grind
But the most amazing thing to me has been watching him at these rallies.

archived recording (elon musk)
The energy in this room is incredible.

kristen grind
Right up on stage, he was with Trump.

archived recording (elon musk)
America is just not not going to be great, America is going to reach heights that it has never seen before. The future is going to be amazing!

[CHEERING]

kristen grind
He was just right out there with him, almost like he was running for president.

[crowd chanting, “elon”]
archived recording (elon musk)
You guys are awesome. Honestly, this is like ah. Wow.

rachel abrams
But wasn’t this man trying to run like six companies and colonize Mars? How did he have time for all of this?

kristen grind
[LAUGHS]: Yes, well, that’s a very good question. He has a lot of good people running his companies. But meanwhile, to take it back to his whole life’s goal, which is to save humanity, that’s actually exactly what he thinks he is doing here. And, in fact, he has said recently that he still really did not want to get into politics, but that he had to because civilization was on the line. So that, again, is why he is out there.

And on election night, there’s this big family photo with Trump, and Melania, their kids, their grandkids, and there’s Elon Musk just right beside them. And in the few days since the election, he’s basically been camped out at Mar-a-Lago.

He was reportedly on this phone call with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump. He’s been advising Trump on cabinet positions. And then, as we know on Tuesday night, he got his own position appointed.

[INQUISITIVE MUSIC]

And we’ve just never seen anything like this, this super billionaire, Elon Musk, suddenly with all this potential power in the federal government.

rachel abrams
After the break, I talked to my colleague Eric Lipton about what Musk stands to gain from a Trump White House.

So, Eric, we just heard from our colleague Kirsten Grind that it has not taken Elon Musk very long to insert himself into this emerging Trump presidency in a way that feels without precedent, frankly. And you’ve been looking into exactly what Musk could stand to gain from access to a Trump White House. But first, can you just remind us, what is Elon Musk’s current relationship with the federal government?

eric lipton
I think it’s underappreciated the extent to which Elon Musk has relied on the federal government to help build his own wealth and the size of his companies. He has at least a hundred different contracts pending with the federal government with 17 different agencies. The majority of that work is with SpaceX, which has really owed its existence, largely, to the federal government. NASA kicked it off by giving SpaceX the money that it needed to build the Falcon 9 rocket, which now puts almost all of the world’s cargo into orbit each year. More than every other nation in the world combined.

rachel abrams
Oh, wow.

eric lipton
And SpaceX alone has gotten $10 billion worth of contracts from the federal government over the last five years to deliver stuff to space. That includes cargo to the Space Station, astronauts to the Space Station, spy satellites, missile defense systems, and dozens of other items for the federal government. And it’s unlike any other commercial space company in the history of the United States, in terms of the extent of its dominance and the money that’s going to it to provide those services to the federal government.

rachel abrams
So government contracts really made Musk in a way. Like, he’s clearly been very successful under the status quo. So that sort of begs the question of, what more is there for him to gain?

eric lipton
I mean, since Musk created SpaceX back in 2002, he’s been completely fixated with getting humans to Mars. And one of the things that incredibly frustrates him is when he encounters paperwork requirements and regulatory slowdowns. He often comments about how he can build his rockets faster than federal bureaucrats can move paper from one side of their desk to the other. It just totally burns him up.

And that’s, in part, what has motivated him to get more involved in politics. He thinks it might give him the power to help defang them, and to limit their power, and to reduce what he considers to be redundant or ridiculous requirements to help wipe away some of this slowness that really frustrates him. And Musk was clear during the presidential campaign that he wanted to be named to a position in the future Trump government that would give him the power to help oversee significantly cutting back on federal regulations, federal employees, and federal spending.

He liked to jokingly call this the “Department of Government Efficiency,” nicknamed DOGE, which is the same name of one of his favorite crypto coins. Musk has a tendency to love little names like that he can repeat that are insider jokes. And he would be this superpowered czar overseeing the reach of federal government operations and looking for ways to eliminate what he considers redundant federal regulations and cutting as much as $2 trillion in federal spending, which is a crazy and really unachievable goal, but that’s what he says he wants to do.

rachel abrams
Which is basically the position that Trump just announced for him with this new government department that’s in charge of making all kinds of cuts across the government, kind of spiritually similar to what Musk did with Twitter.

eric lipton
Yeah, Trump likes to tell Musk that he’s super impressed with what Musk was able to do at Twitter. He jokingly calls him Cutter In Chief. He sees Musk as having an incredible capacity to find ways to reduce costs and get rid of waste. And, in fact, at Twitter, when he bought it, Musk, of course, cut something like 2/3 of its staff. And it’s a bit bumpy, but X does function without more than 2/3 of the people that it had when he purchased the company. So Trump has confidence that Musk is the guy that he needs to actually really significantly cut federal regulations and spending.

rachel abrams
But a tech company works a lot differently, obviously, than a government agency. Like it doesn’t really seem feasible that he could just go in, slash a bunch of jobs overnight, like what he did with Twitter, and have that work the same way.

eric lipton
Yeah, and a level of reduction in spending and regulations, that has never been achieved before in the history of the United States. And when it comes to actually cutting federal regulations, and laying off federal employees, and cutting federal spending, this is a process that obviously Congress participates in and it is a very hard thing to do. There’s a constituency for every little agency out there. And so it is a lot harder than simply announcing one day they are laying off thousands of people at a private company that you own.

rachel abrams
How do you think all of this is actually going to play out?

eric lipton
We don’t know what Elon Musk’s first targets would be. But there’s a couple of examples that frustrate him in terms of conflicts that he’s had with federal regulators. Probably the best example is with SpaceX and what he’s trying to do down in Boca Chica, Texas, near the Mexican border, where they’re testing out the Starship rocket.

And they have repeatedly caused some environmental damage in that area. And it’s right on the edge of a national wildlife refuge and a state park. And as they were developing the rocket, they were repeatedly disregarding what the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Interior Department said was the limits on their operations.

rachel abrams
What exactly were those limits?

eric lipton
I mean, for example, recently on one of their launches, there’s so much power that comes out of these rockets, it sent sand and rocks flying into the nearby state park, and it destroyed a bunch of nesting areas for the local bird population, and ripped open the eggs and destroyed the nests of the birds that were there.

I saw that right after the launch. I walked out into the area once they’d cleared it for the public. And the egg yolk was there staining the ground. And that’s another matter that’s being investigated by Fish and Wildlife Service for potentially harming migratory birds. It’s something that frustrates him. And he thought that our coverage of it was so offensive, he said he would restrain from having omelets for several days.

rachel abrams
Oh, my god.

eric lipton
He thought it was so ridiculous that we were even worried about these nests that were destroyed by his launch.

rachel abrams
So you can imagine that the EPA would be the first target on his efficiency to-do list.

eric lipton
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s one of the first places that he goes and he looks to try to roll back some of the regulatory powers that it has. But that certainly would not be the only agency that he would go after. I mean, all you have to do is look at Tesla.

And he is being currently or recently investigated or sued by really an acronym soup of federal agencies — the Equal Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Securities Exchange Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Department of Justice, of course, the EPA. All of them are looking at Tesla and suggesting that it has overstepped the law. I mean, most importantly, there’s concern about the autonomous driving tools on his cars and whether or not they’ve been involved in fatal accidents.

But everything having to do with disrupting union activities, who he hires at his auto factories and whether or not he’s properly treating refugees and people who have asylum. I mean, he is the subject of so many different simultaneous investigations. It really frustrates him. And that’s another part of the reason that he’s active with Trump is he wants to crush those investigations. And it’s likely that many of them will now be shut down.

rachel abrams
So everything you’ve laid out so far, Eric, it helps us understand why Musk’s own personal business interests could benefit from the regulatory environment that he’s potentially going to be reshaping. But is this all legal? It seems to me that what you’ve outlined could be a major conflict of interest.

eric lipton
It’s going to create a conflict of interest that really has few precedents in American history. Here’s a guy who has $10 billion or more of ongoing federal contracts. He has a couple dozen pending federal investigations and lawsuits that he’s targeted in. And, of course, there are federal conflict of interest laws that prohibit just this kind of mixing of duties, and violating them could be a federal offense.

So how is it possible that Elon Musk could simultaneously play the role of trying to cut back on federal regulations if he is, himself, being regulated? And the announcement we saw from Trump on Tuesday night actually sort of hints that they recognize that there’s this clash. And they’re attempting to sidestep it by suggesting that Musk would somehow be the leader of this new federal department of government efficiency, but he would do it while remaining, quote, “outside of the government.”

rachel abrams
So basically, he can have the ear of the president, but not have the formal government position and all the conflict-of-interest headaches that come with it.

eric lipton
Yeah, it’s a lot more attractive. But this is a very murky arrangement. And all of this assumes that Trump and Musk are going to stay on good terms. There are two personalities that have a history of exploding with people that they’ve been close with, with business partners, and even some of their most trusted employees. And so they’re guys that also hold grudges and are a bit impulsive. So there’s no guarantee that this is a relationship that’s going to last.

rachel abrams
So after all of this, your investigation and how it revealed the various ways that Musk’s potential reshaping of the government could benefit him, what is your big takeaway?

eric lipton
I think the thing that’s really fascinating and that we, at “The New York Times” are going to be watching closely, is the extent to which this new administration is one that’s going to be defined by the desires of billionaires. And the first Trump administration was really more focused on things like the oil and gas industry and the Christian right wanting to see more appointments to the Supreme Court.

But the array of economic interests being pushed by billionaire donors to Trump in this second term is much broader and their buddy-buddy relationship with Trump is much tighter. I mean, it’s the crypto industry. It’s artificial intelligence. It’s the tech industry and the antitrust approach that the government has to the tech industry.

[TENSE MUSIC]

There’s a bunch of players that have surrounded Trump, and Elon Musk is at the center of this crew. Many of these folks are friends of Musk. And he is the ringleader of the whole group. And I think that they are going to have much more influence in what happens in the White House and across the federal government in the next four years.

rachel abrams
Right. I mean, billionaires have always had some sort of influence in government, but we just haven’t really seen the proximity that you’ve outlined between this incredibly rich and powerful man, the world’s richest man, and the president of the United States.

eric lipton
Yeah, I think that it’s just a different set of players at the table this time around, who have such vested interest in so many sectors of the economy that reach really across the playing field. “Oligarchs” is too strong of a word. But we are entering a period where people with immense wealth are interacting with a president, who is known and has a history of being extremely transactional. And these are folks that now helped Trump get a second term and are expecting to see a return on that investment.

rachel abrams
Eric, thank you very much.

eric lipton
Thank you.

rachel abrams
We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated military veteran and FOX News host, Pete Hegseth, as his defense secretary, but his lack of relevant experience has already generated pushback. Hegseth is one of several political appointees Trump has picked in recent days, including South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem for secretary of Homeland Security and House Representative Elise Stefanik for ambassador to the United Nations. Trump is expected to meet with President Biden at the White House later today. It’s part of a long-standing tradition of the outgoing president greeting the new one.

[THEME MUSIC]

Today’s episode was produced by Rikki Novetsky, Olivia Natt, Rob Szypko and Luke Vander Ploeg. It was edited by MJ Davis Lin, Brendan Klinkenberg, with help from Chris Haxel. It contains original music by Dan Powell and Rowan Niemisto, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

A rant against racism

Posted on July 11, 2024 by The Old Wolf

A Twitter Thread by VoteHeaux™; A creole banjee bitch from ⚜.

In the interest of keeping my blog relatively family-friendly, I have lightly bowdlerized (and edited for readability) the thread below, with full respect to the author, but if you are not offended by salty language, the effect is much more powerful. The full thread is here, with lots of additional images and links: https://x.com/voteheaux/status/1809893232416825675

Also, she has read her entire thread in a YouTube video, which brings the full impact of her outrage and disgust with the crusty, old, white guys in our government who are all hot and bothered by the fact that maybe another Black person might actually be in charge of our government. View it here: https://youtu.be/l1xP-qBf-C4

Transcript begins:

“How insane is the hate for Black people, that non-Blacks would sacrifice their daughters and sisters in order to keep power over the country out of Black hands? Sacrificing *women* isn’t that surprising, but risking fascism just to avoid a Black woman as president? My God.

A lot of these political pundits cannot be trusted to have unbiased, community or country-minded motivations nor opinions when it comes to our legislature. Neither can men of other races who clamor to be white-adjacent.

The punditry during this presidential election cycle is proof positive. White men have taken a 3 year age gap between 2 old-azz men – which has NEVER CONCERNED THEM LIKE THIS BEFORE (i.e.: Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell) and exacerbated the issue into something akin to a nuclear war threat.

(NEVER MIND THAT THE “YOUNGER” ONE OF THE 2 OLD-🤬 MEN IS AN *ACTUAL* *FACTUAL* *PROVEN* NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT, THAT SHOULD NEVER BE WITHIN 1000 FT OF THE NATION’S CAPITOL AGAIN)

The whole entire reason we have a VICE PRESIDENT is to have someone capable to step into the role of President if something, God forbid, happens to the President, or if they decide they’re done with dealing with the duties of the executive branch and wanna leave the job.

That’s the thing: IT’S A 🤬 JOB. Not a knighthood, not a coronation, not a canonization; A 🤬🤬 JOB. Experience should count A LOT. And Joe Biden has worked in this field his entire life, through every trial life tossed his way. But here’s where Joe messed up:

After all his years on the hill, and actually applying for the top job a few times himself, he helped a Black dude get it. They punished him by being uncooperative, but he was retiring anyway and leaving public service on a high in 2016.

*sigh*

No good deed goes unpunished.

Allow me a tangent here to tell you what I know about grief: it can break you like nothing else in this world and, concurrently, it can put a battery in your back. It can make you hyper-focus and get 🤬 DONE on the days you aren’t inconsolable or in a useless crippling fog.

I have never lost my spouse. I’ve never lost a living child, let alone two. I have lost people I loved though. And when those people leave, if they ever expressed potential they see in you, it replays in your mind over and over. It compels you to want to live up to their vision.

I honestly believe that’s why Joe Biden came back to politics. His son Beau believed he could help keep the country from falling to fascism. The country he fought for, quite possibly contracted brain cancer protecting, and died for.

Grief isn’t exclusive to death.

Biden’s living son, Hunter, has had his personal addiction struggles and bad decisions paraded across the country by bad political actors and is facing jail time all because Joe decided to take this job. NO ONE would give a flying 🤬 about Hunter’s gallivanting if Joe wasn’t Pres.

That is a grief he carries too, along with the caskets of his wife, daughter, and son. So it irks my last nerve when people harp on his age, because I have never had anything half as important to do as Joe Biden, but I know how grief has had me in a bed ridden chokehold before.

Joe Biden was born the same year as my daddy, who died in 2017. The fact that he gets up every day to run this dumpster fire; deal with idiot press; deal with insolent former coworkers on the hill; deal with the machinations of SCOTUS; deal with foreign leaders; deal with 🤬’s criticizing him, thinking he has powers he DOESN’T; deal with the damn dog-biting people, like—YOU’RE CRAZY IF YOU THINK THAT MAN IS COMPLETELY SENILE. Slower? Sure. But incapable of running the country? 🤬, get BENT. Your 🤬 couldn’t even do it WITHOUT the grief.

I’m half Joe Biden’s age and in my grief would have probably sent drones to nuke various states by now, ON G.P. *stares at FL, MS, TX, KY, TN*

Or at the very least, I’d be punching Senators and House members who played in my face daily *stares at Joe Manchin and Lindsey Graham*

All that to say: if you think Joe Biden is incapable of doing the job, your opinion is misguided, unintelligent, not comprehensive, and quite frankly, INVALID. You are not taking the full extent of what this man deals with and has accomplished so far, into consideration. Therefore and thereto, it would behoove you to either reevaluate your opinion, or SHUT YOUR STUPID 🤬 THE ENTIRE 🤬 UP BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW WTH YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT 🤬.

But back to the point: hatred of Black people and refusing them power.

These white dudes and trash pandas have decided that Joe Biden runs the country on an island. That he couldn’t POSSIBLY have a competent staff and cabinet, let alone a whole-azz highly qualified and capable VP, so now it’s time to PANIC AND REPLACE HIM WITH ANOTHER WHITE DUDE, STAT.🙄

Because 🤬 the Black woman who is his literal, rightful successor. They would rather roll the dice on Gavin Newsom, who is hated by half his state…which would then make California, the most weighty state in the Electoral College-a swing state.

Then, they trotted out Pete Buttigieg, even though Ohio—a current swing state—incorrectly blames him for the East Palestine train derailment. Then they threw out Big Gretch from Michigan—which wouldn’t fly, but ESPECIALLY NOT OVER Kamala Harris w/the base of the party.

Pundits are supposed to take all this into consideration when forming their political opinions and offering them to the voting public, no? They’re supposed to be so dialed-in and well-informed that they consider angles laypeople don’t, right? So how’d they miss Kamala Harris?

Here’s how: They know that if Joe Biden is reelected and retires, Kamala Harris gets a chance at 10 years in the oval. They know if he stays and the Biden-Harris admin has another successful 4 years, it’s harder to hide their racism/sexism and justify not supporting her in 2028.

So it all boils down to the thought of Black people having power in this country SO MUCH, that they’d WILLINGLY sacrifice their own daughters’ and sisters’ health/safety to a fascist regime to stop it from happening again—ESPECIALLY w/A BLACK *WOMAN*. Vote Heaux!

My God.”

Transcript ends.

The Old Wolf has nothing else to say, she has said it all.

What has President Biden done, anyway?

Posted on May 30, 2024 by The Old Wolf

In case you were wondering. Courtesy of redditor u/backpackwayne, here is a master list of four years of astonishing accomplishments, (broken down by year) as opposed to a GOP congress’ virtually nothing except obstruction and denial. This probably won’t affect a single MAGA voter, but it’s a fascinating read anyway.

Year One

Year Two

Year Three

Year Four (updated regularly)

Get out and vote. Democrats and progressives need to turn out in Massive Numbers in November. Overwhelmingly massive numbers. Because the MAGA crowd will be voting for the Orange Catastrophe despite everything good President Biden has done, and despite everything horrific and destructive that the other guy did (and has promised more of.) Sixty years of GOP propaganda, amplified by Russian and Chinese disinformation, have turned their hatred for “weakness” into a white-hot firestorm.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

A Twitter thread from a year ago, more relevant than ever

Posted on August 16, 2023 by The Old Wolf

With Dildo Braggins now facing over 91 criminal counts, this thread from @OfficeBob helps to understand the “classified documents” issue. I thought it deserved wider exposure.

A Twitter Thread by @OfficeBob from Aug. 15, 2022

A friend with classified document experience has given me permission to post her comments here, and so…a thread:

“This week in Trumpland has been wild. So I thought I’d put my FSO hat back on and talk about document classification. This is a long one. A sitting president cannot wave his magic wand and declare something declassified.”

“He has the authority to read someone into classified programs whenever he wishes, but the documents themselves must go through a review process before being officially declassified.”

“Certain topics, like nuclear programs (including some communication programs that support nuclear deployment), cannot be declassified by anyone. The president included.”

“There was a lot of brouhaha when Trump included blatantly untrustworthy individuals in his planning. It was stupid of him, but also his prerogative as president.”

“When a president leaves office, they leave their security classification at the door of the White House. Some presidents may continue to receive national security briefs but that is at the discretion of their successor.”

“Those that receive briefs are read in under the authority of the sitting president. They do not have a security clearance of their own that entitles them to classified information.”

“A former president cannot declassify anything. Once they leave office, they are civilians in the eyes of the law. It doesn’t matter if the documents were generated when they were president or if they know the contents. NARA will not give them access.”

“No former president can just go to the archives an open a classified file generated during his presidency.”

“He certainly cannot talk about sensitive information that he is aware of once out of office. This goes for any government employee. There are topics that I am not allowed to discuss with anyone.”

“Most of them are mundane, but they are still classified. Others could put me away for a few decades if I talk about them. Therefore, zipped lip.”

“Top Secret/SCI documents cannot be secured by a simple padlock. The National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual, or NISPOM, has strict guidelines on securing classified documents that must be followed.”

“Including the construction of the room that TS/SCI documents are stored in. From the door frame to the thickness of the walls to the lighting fixtures.”

“Inside, the documents must be contained within an accredited safe/file cabinet that declares the classification of its contents. Each cabinet must be secured with a unique combination or reinforced lock.”

“TS/SCI cannot be stored with Secret, which cannot be stored with Confidential. Each classification must be stored only with similarly classified documents. Some SCI documents are so sensitive that they must be stored separately from all others.”

“Storing documents in a room locked with a padlock in cardboard boxes isn’t even sufficient for Confidential. Removing any document from storage requires that it be checked out and then back in by the FSO.”

“Entering certain parts of a building that stores classified documents requires an FSO escort.”

“Every facility that stores classified documents or works on classified projects falls under the aegis of a civilian Facility Security Officer. By law the FSO “owns” the documents. They are solely responsible for their safekeeping.”

” Go into a government office and look for a picture somewhere near the entrance. It will be a photo of the FSO along with their contact information.”

“DoD/DoE security audits are anal retentive to the extreme. You better believe the auditor will measure the width of your door frame and remove screws to make sure they meet minimum standards.”

“They’ll test the drywall. Run fiber optics through the HVAC ducts to make sure no one could overhear something through them. God help you if a measurement is off by less than a quarter of an inch.”

“If you facility ONLY meets minimum standards, chances are good it’s not going to be your facility anymore.”

“I have had people jailed for far, far less than what the FBI recovered at Mar-a-Lago. I’ve fired employees for taking a single Confidential document out of my facility by accident. Because at the end of the day, it’s MY document and MY ass on the line in an audit.”

“Put Trump in prison.”

Yes, for the health of our nation and our democracy, the crimes of this evil, sick person need substantial consequences, along with everyone who supported his lunacy. May the RICO indictment spread far and wide.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

You are not a militia. You have no constitutional right to a gun.

Posted on April 26, 2023 by The Old Wolf

“The gun lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have seen in my lifetime”
Retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, PBS Interview in 1991.

“The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies, the militia, would be maintained for the defense of the state.”
Warren Burger, AP article, 1991

“The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires”
Warren Burger, AP article, 1991

America has a problem with guns. Yes, with guns. Over 45,000 gun deaths in 2020, more than victims of automobile accidents. The right wing wants to blame everything other than the weapons themselves, things like mental illness; other countries have people with mental illness as well, and they have nowhere near the number of firearm deaths that our country racks up every year. It’s the guns, around 400 million of them, more than one for each and every citizen of our nation.

The fact that the 2nd Amendment has been so thoroughly weaponized by the gun lobby and the NRA pretty much means that there is little to no chance it will ever be repealed.

Legislators, particularly Republicans, receive obscene amounts of cash from the gun lobby. According to Market Watch,

Notice the difference in donations to Republicans as compared to Democrats. Looking at the chart above (from 2017), it’s clear that the NRA and associated groups are paying senators to do virtually nothing about gun legislation except sending thoughts and prayers, even when children are slaughtered by the dozen in school shootings.

When cornered about the deaths, Republicans will deflect and delay:

And in the end, nothing gets done, despite the fact that the majority of Americans want stricter gun laws.

The poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows 71% of Americans say gun laws should be stricter, including about half of Republicans, the vast majority of Democrats and a majority of those in gun-owning households.
AP-NORC poll

But something has to give, and this is what I require from our legislators ¹

It’s time. Because doing nothing means that we all agree dead children are an acceptable price to pay for unlimited access to firearms. And it’s not.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Footnotes

¹ There are more things that could be done, but these are an absolute minimum. Things like a ban on assault-style weapons and large magazines, outlawing bump stocks, mandatory background checks and waiting period, among others. Even if you went for the whole enchilada, people would still be able to “exercise their second amendment rights” as they have come to understand them.

Playing in the World Game

As One

Category Archives: Politics

Pro-trump propaganda: A rebuttal (Long)

Elon Musk Launches Into American Politics

A rant against racism

What has President Biden done, anyway?