Just six weeks ago, voters elected Donald Trump by the slimmest of margins in hopes that he would lower the cost of living. But Trump quickly walked back that promise, saying “it’s very hard” to reduce prices.
Instead, he has already returned the country to the unrelenting chaos, and the government to the ludicrous dysfunction, that dominated his first term. And he hasn’t even taken office yet. This week alone, Trump:
- Announced, in a 3:23 a.m. social media post, his interest in annexing Canada.
- Spread unfounded paranoia about UFOs invading the East Coast. (“The government knows what is happening. … Something strange is going on.”)
- Signaled, in another middle-of-the-night post, his desire to have the FBI probe prominent Trump critic Liz Cheney for violating “numerous federal laws” in the congressional investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
- Declared that he was suing the Des Moines Register— because the Iowa newspaper’s election poll was wrong.
- Suggested, via Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that he would limit access to abortion medication.
And then, the pièce de résistance: Trump, and the man he tapped to police government spending, Elon Musk, killed a painstakingly negotiated, bipartisan spending package at the 11th hour, sending the federal government hurtling toward a Christmas shutdown — which would be the first time the government is forced to turn out the lights since, well, the last time Trump was in charge.
Musk, with an extended tantrum on his social media site X, successfully sabotaged the spending bill, which would have provided aid to farmers and disaster relief for storm-ravaged North Carolina, Florida and other parts of the country. “‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” proclaimed the richest man in the world, who also posted “YES” in response to the sentiment “Just close down the govt. until January 20th. Defund everything.” The man who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help elect Trump also threatened to defeat those Republicans who didn’t do as he commanded.
Musk and those like him stood to save untold billions in taxes — while securing green lights to move jobs to China. That’s a sizable return on the $277 million Musk spent on Trump’s campaign. MAGA!
Let us at least give Trump credit for transparency. For decades, corporations and billionaires shaped Republican policies from the back rooms of the Capitol. Now, they control the Republican Party right out in the open, for all to see. This kind of naked power grab is straight out of the Gilded Age.
If the government shuts down after midnight Friday, 1.3 million active-duty troops will go without pay, as will hundreds of thousands of civilian workers. National parks will close, air traffic and airports will be snarled over the holidays, food-safety inspection will be curtailed, tax refunds and operations at Social Security offices will be delayed, and millions of poor and working-class people will lose access to other government services. The shutdown will add billions of dollars to the debt. But Musk (net worth: $440 billion) will be just fine — and he is now the one directing the Republican agenda in Congress.
As the world’s wealthiest man killed the spending bill, Republicans marveled at their own dysfunction.
But this is just the first act of what promises to be a four-year circus. Already, a dozen or so House Republicans, angered by Speaker Mike Johnson’s inept handling of the spending bill, are now making noises about blocking his reelection as speaker Jan. 3 — and the defection of even two or three Republicans could doom him. This, in turn, could delay Congress’s certification of Trump’s election victory and possibly create a constitutional crisis over the transfer of power. Even if Johnson (R-Louisiana) gets out of that mess, a few House Republicans are already lining up in opposition to extending Trump’s tax cuts, a core component of his 2025 agenda.
For those too young to remember the last go-round, this is what governing looks like under Trump. Musk’s destruction of the spending bill was particularly ugly, for it showed that, with Trump in charge, an unelected megabillionaire can bring the U.S. government to a halt by employing MAGA’s trademark mixture of vitriol, threat and disinformation.
The short-term, three-month spending bill had been negotiated at Republicans’ request so that Trump would have the chance to reset spending for the rest of fiscal year 2025, given that Republicans will have unified control of the federal government early in the new year. Johnson didn’t have enough GOP votes to pass the bill (or any spending bill), so he had to negotiate a bipartisan package with Democrats — and, as of early this week, the bill was on its way to passage.
Enter “President Musk” (as Democrats have taken to calling him), who in his social media campaign of destruction on Wednesday called the legislation not just “criminal” but “an insane crime.” He flooded the Twitterverse with disinformation, including claims that the bill included a 40 percent pay increase for Congress (in actuality, a cost-of-living adjustment of no more than 3.8 percent); a $3 billion giveaway for an NFL stadium in D.C. (it included no money for the stadium); an “outrageous” provision blocking a probe of the Jan. 6 investigative committee; and another provision “funding bioweapon labs” (both false).
With less than 24 hours to go until a shutdown, the House Republican majority, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Elon Musk, couldn’t come up with the votes to keep the government opened. “There is no plan,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina) told the Hill’s Emily Brooks after the vote. “Trump wants the thing to shut down.”
Shutting down the government because of the rants and threats of an erratic billionaire is no way to run a country. But this is where we are. Welcome (back) to the Trump administration.