President Musk Will See You Now (If You're Bearing Money or Power)

In this so-called holiday season, welcome to America's "Mump regime," governance of, by and for the oligarchs in which an erratic unelected white supremacist gazillionaire whose new hobby is buying presidents is cosplaying as shadow president to cash in - and fuck kids with cancer - alongside a senile grifter selling everything in sight: Bibles, sneakers, perfume, hotels, cabinet seats, diplomatic posts and democracy itself. Beware: Just to be clear, "We now have a criminal enterprise, not a government."

With the tsunami of dark money and corporate coercion engulfing our politics, it's unsurprising that ever-mercenary-president-elect-in-name-only Trump is assembling the richest administration in history, or what Jeff Tiedrich calls "a fucktangle of oligarchs (named) to his Confederacy of Sewer Clowns." So far, there are 13 billionaires; of course they include Space Nazi Musk, the richest man in the world, and biotech kingpin Vivek Ramaswamy, who've been tasked with "improving the efficiency of government" by running it like a pitiless business and gutting vital services for millions of non-billionaires - food, heat, health care, education - in the name of brutal profit and an imaginary mandate to launch "a hostile takeover" of government “on behalf of the American people.” So much for Trump's garbled "voice" of a working class - the rent is too damn high! - struggling to buy gas, eggs, bacon, butter, and other basics (let's get real) foreign to a guy who's likely never stepped foot in a grocery store.

Because all he really wants to do is help rich fat cats get richer and fatter, they're flocking to gilded Mar-A- Hell-Go to kiss his gaudy ring, homage (albeit fake) the thin-skinned, unloved son of a tyrant is relishing: "Everyone wants to be my friend." The latest is Jeff Bezos, whose flagrant fawning so mirrors Musk's thatJimmy Fallon posited, “To settle who he loves more, Elon and Bezos are going to put Trump down in the middle of the room and see who he goes to first: ‘All right, here boy!’" But Musk is clearly more central, and in many ways more scary: A likely illegal alien and white supremacist who grew up in apartheid South Africa, made a fortune from a car that kills twice as many people as the industry average, and though foreign-born found a way to power by giving a useful idiot $277 million to become his puppet master. A good investment: Since the election, Musk has made $170 billion, most from Tesla and SpaceX investors eager to see him end all those pesky safety and labor rules that cut into profits.

Buying Trump was so profitable Never-Elected Pres. Musk is already malevolently branching out. He's threatening people in Congress, including "jackass" moderates of both parties, with unseating them by throwing money at potential primary opponents if they dare to disagree with him. Governing by threat, tweet and financial heft comes so easily to the guy who quickly turned Twitter into a bigot-invested haven for hate akin to "a Munich beer hall hall in 1933" that he's even telling Germans how to vote - for Nazis. "Only the AFD can save Germany," he posted in defense of anti-immigrant fascists who want to purify Europe by casting out people it considers lesser, if not subhuman. Weirdly, he did it on the same day 100 years ago Hitler was released from a Bavarian prison, and the New York Times declared him a "tamed...sadder and wiser man" than when he'd tried to overthrow the government. "No longer to be feared," they added, "it is believed he will retire to private life and return to Austria, the country of his birth."

Cartoon by Mike Lukovich for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Of course the Space Nazi isn't just meddling in Germany's politics. Last week, utilizing what Adam Kinzinger called "all President Musk's vast government experience," he tried to kill a painstakingly forged bipartisan spending bill to keep the federal government running, something he admitted he has zero interest in 'cause how cool to just blow up everything and see what happens? Slamming the spending package as "one of the worst bills ever written" while offering no reason for the claim, he offered up his Very Important Opinion in over 100 posts, seemingly oblivious to its possible impact: hundreds of thousands of federal employees working without pay at Christmas, and oh yeah potentially eliminating funding for pediatric cancer research. Scott Fitzgerald on The Great Gatsby's Tom and Daisy: "They were careless people. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness (and) let other people clean up the mess they had made."

In the end, relative if desperate reason prevailed, Congress cobbled together a stopgap compromise bill, and Shadow President Musk outmaneuvered Trump, who likely never knew it. Trump, who had mostly just demanded the debt ceiling be raised (again) so he could fund tax cuts for his plutocrat pals, got nothing. The world's richest economic vampire, having been given "free rein to clownfuck America's government," got much of what he wanted, including killing reforms to bring down drug prices and restrictions on U.S. investments in China, where he has massive investments and his sordid bottom line "depends on staying in China’s good graces." The idea of making him pay his fair share of taxes out of his billions to help with a soaring debt somehow never came up, and funding for kids with cancer still got stripped, because fuck kids with cancer. The online response from a righteous father whose daughter is a Stage 4 liver cancer survivor: "Fuck these ghouls to the lowest depths of hell."

The messy tussle over the usually straightforward task of keeping Congress running serves as both a harbinger of the mayhem awaiting us as a GOP clown car of fools and hacks try to run the government, and a reflection of a surreal historic moment when, for instance, we kinda have three presidents, and will for a while: In a recent poll asking voters who, in authority if not title, will be president starting Jan. 20, Musk got 57%, Putin got 30%, and Trump got 8%. "How to call this thing that is coming to America in a month?" asks Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny. Snyder came up with the "Mump regime" - apt because it hints of illness - also "Trumpomuskovia" and "the pro-polio party." And while Trump aides are furiously insisting to media he's still the boss, many others have noticed "what Musk thinks tends to eventually be what Trump thinks" and argue, "If you have to explain, you're losing." Thus did the Lincoln Project, deciding "the (First) lady doth protest too much," salute "Vice-President Trump."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

To be clear: Vice President Trump is no more coherent than convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and candidate Trump; aka, "Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is deteriorating by the day." In his hallucinatory first post-election interview with Meet the Press, he raved, babbled, lied, made up stuff: "We're going to do something with the border, very strong, very powerful...Our country is a crime pod....I saved Obamacare" (Welker: You tried to kill it, sir)...(After harassing the president of Mexico) I called the border and said, ‘How’s the border looking?’ They said, ‘There’s nobody here.’ They couldn’t believe it..." His 2nd grade report on watching one of Elno Skum's rockets: "It's coming down so fast...Then all of a sudden the jets go on....Then it's almost stopped it...I said, what the hell's going on? Nobody ever saw this before." In a Sunday speech on smoke backstage: "I said, Hey, are there any steps in front of me? I don't want to go. I go down. That would not be good. We don't want to do nice and slow. But I just want to thank you."

But demented or no, grifters gotta grift - especially with a half-billion bucks in legal debts - so he's still hawking crap. Some are hefty gigs: Loathsome spawn Eric was just in Abu Dhabi at a Bitcoin confab to peddle their new crypto venture, en route to two $7.5 billion luxury hotel deals in Saudi Arabia, bone-saws notwithstanding. Following a long tawdry trail of failed Trump steaks, water, vodka, casinos, digital trading cards - "It’s your favorite president with some exciting news" - $1,500 guitars, $900 to $100,000 watches, $400 "Never Surrender" gold sneakers, "Fight Fight Fight" cologne - "It's not just a scent, it's a statement" - he's returned to flogging his sticky-paged, made-in-China God Bless the USA and Lee Greenwood Bible - with Jesus' words in red! - like the 3 a.m. shift at Home Shopping Network to celebrate his own miraculous election. "Faith is coming back to America, and FAST!" he proclaims. "The perfect gift for this Christmas." Just $59.99, autographed for $1,000. Get yours today!

And if not a Bible, how about Panama? Or Greenland? Having threatened to turn Canada into our 51st state, Trump just randomly decreed Panama reduce its "ridiculous" fees for the Canal or the U.S. will reclaim it "in full, and without question." In a post clearly written by someone else - it used "magnanimous" - he charged Jimmy Carter "foolishly gave it away for One Dollar" (wrong again) and the U.S. can't let it "fall into the wrong hands," like China's. When Panama's president insisted the Canal belongs to them, Trump turned middle-school bully with, "We'll see about that!" and a picture of a U.S. flag over the Canal. Like King Kong beating his chest, then he abruptly returned his feeble attention to Greenland, demanding Denmark sell it to America because "ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity" for "National Security and Freedom throughout the World." So a fragile "President Juice-Box" goes all Imperialist tantrum and vows to annex other countries to prove his manliness: Haven't we seen this before?

White House staff bring dinner to President MuskImage from meme on Bluesky

To many, the preternaturally thin-skinned Trump's flailing and posing seem inspired by his crush on and insecurity before a younger, richer, thinner, brasher, crueler, more articulate, more government-subsidized, more skillfully manipulative, more viciously cost-cutting, better-dancing and did we say way richer diva and alpha dog with even more staggering conflicts of interest who sure seems to be calling the dubious shots. And he has rockets! Oh no, are people laughing at him, his most dreaded nightmare? Social media is on it with a flood of memes, mash-ups, cartoons, titles. Trump is President Musk's First Lady, vice-president, chief-of-staff, mascot, fan-boy, dupe on bended knee. None of that tearful groveling, "Sir, sir, how do you do it, sir?" Rumor has it the richest oligarch in the world might even buy Mar-A-Lago, at a fire-sale-price from the aging Art of the Deal buffoon, so he can launch freebie rockets from there while fueling bigotry online. One sage: "We were all afraid Trump was the next Hitler, but it's Musk."

Crash dummies in Musk's TeslaCartoon by Mike Lukovich for The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionT

There's so much speculation about who's running the malevolent circus that a tweet circulated last week of Trump clarifying, "I am the president-elect"; he's grateful for Musk's help, but "time to stay in your lane." It was fake, but he's rattled enough by Musk's soaring profile he did speak up Sunday at Turning Point's lunatic Gathering of the MAGAlos. Monotonically drugged, he lauded Musk for his future efficient cutting of pediatric cancer research before adding, "No, he's not taking the president" (sic). Whipping out his imaginary accordion, he cited the "new hoax" he'd ceded the presidency to Musk. "No-o, that's not happening...I can tell you," he said to silence from the crowd. "And I'm safe. You know why? He can't - he wasn't born in this country. Ha ha ha!" Yeah, totally normal. To confirm that, it seems we're to call Mar-A-Lago at 561-832-2600 and ask to speak to President Musk. Another good, normal action: Write to Vice President Donald Trump at 1100 S. Ocean Blvd, Palm Beach, FL 33480 asking him how to get tickets to President Musk’s inauguration. It'll be America's shining hour.

President Musk and his pet dog in the Oval Office.Image from meme on Bluesky