The Plot Against Elon
Someone in the White House has to realize by now that Musk is a liability.
Today’s our annual all-staff meeting at The Bulwark, where we’ll get together to plot and gameplan how we hope to keep growing and rising to the challenge of the current moment. Which means if you’ve got feedback about how we’re doing, there’s no better time than the present to drop it in the comments!
Thank you all for coming along with us—and nobody break any news while we’re brainstorming. Happy Thursday.
A Conversation in the White House Mess
by William Kristol
When I woke up this morning, I’d had a dream. A dinner guest in the White House mess last night was seated not far from a corner table consisting of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and OMB Director Russell Vought. He’d surreptitiously recorded their conversation, as one does. And he’d provided the recording to The Bulwark, as one should. Here it is.
Wiles: Thanks for staying late, but this is important. I think it’s time to move against Elon.
Miller [interrupting]: Our very own purge! Our Night of the Long Knives! Great! Elon’s been so bad on the H1B visas. And he doesn’t really get that The Greatest Mass Deportation in American History will be the keystone, the jewel in the crown, the . . .
Wiles: Hey, Stephen. Calm down.
Yes, Elon has to go. Tony just came out of the field, and he says the CNN poll is basically right. Our numbers are sinking. The boss is down to 45 percent approval and Elon’s at 35 percent. He’s killing us. Thirty percent of our own supporters don’t like him.
Vought [interrupting]: And neither do I, Susie. I was praying on this the other day . . .
Wiles: Right, Russ, thanks. Anyway, as Tony put it, Elon’s our problem, not the Democrats.
He told the boss this, and luckily the last couple of days had already driven the boss over the edge. The boss has always been careful about not touching Social Security, and suddenly Elon’s popping off about cutting entitlements and shutting down Social Security phone services. Jesus!—Oh, sorry, no offense Russ. But I mean, Holy Christ!—Oops, sorry again, Russ. Anyway, those are our voters who call Social Security on the phone. I went to the boss to get his OK to overturn that idiotic idea. The boss signed off, and that’s when I figured I could sell him on the bigger plan. And he did.
Vought [interrupting]: The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh . . .
Wiles: Thanks, Russ. Anyway, the boss gave us the green light. It’s funny, you know what he hates the most about Musk? That he brings his little kid everywhere. We did that ridiculous Tesla promotion for Elon, in return for the pledge of $100 million, and the boss is making remarks, it’s going fine—and that kid is standing five feet away stealing the show. What’s that about? Elon wants to upstage the boss. And the boss is sick of it. I’m a mom, and I’m sick of that kid, too . . .
Vought [interrupting]: Well of course every child is a child of God, Susie, as you know, from conception to . . .
Wiles: Got it, Russ.
Vought: But it was smart of you to give him that piece a few weeks back by that lunatic Jonathan Last, about how Musk’s working to have DOGE to replace MAGA as the #1 brand. I know the boss stewed on that for a while. He brought it up to me when I was trying to get him to focus on OMB memo #372, which was really an important one . . .
Wiles: Thanks, Russ. Anyway, the boss knows you had it all worked out, taking control of the power agencies and purging the civil service—and that Elon’s shock-and-awe bullshit has made it more difficult. We’ll still get there, but Elon’s a loose cannon. And there’s only room for one loose cannon on our deck. So we’re ready to go with our little purge.
Miller [interrupting]: A purge! Wonderful. Ah, die Nacht der langen Messer! My fondest dream, my . . .
Wiles: Thanks, Stephen.
OK, so I need your help, guys. I’ll handle leaks to the press about how DOGE is screwing up. But what I need from you, Russ, is examples of how we had plans all worked out and then DOGE barged in and has gotten everything tied up in the courts and is creating a backlash.
Stephen, your lovely bride Katie is doing a great job as a double agent over there at DOGE. She needs to leak more embarrassing stuff about those insane 25-year-olds Elon’s brought in.
And we need lots of “spontaneous” expressions from MAGA world about how Musk is trying to upstage the boss and how DOGE is putting immigration on the back burner and all that. Bannon’s working this. And I’ve got Kash taking a look at creating some legal problems for Elon.
God damn it—sorry, Russ!—we worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for four years to get here. And this guy barges in, boasts about how he won Pennsylvania for us—total bullshit, we won all the swing —then he talks the boss into this DOGE insanity. The tariff stuff is bad enough. I have to spend hours every day calming the Wall Street guys down. But at least that’s the boss’s own insanity. We’ll get him to back off on that eventually. But Elon’s gotta go.
Vought [interrupting]: It’s going to be messy to get rid of him. “God is not mocked. A man reaps what he sows . . .”
Wiles: Thanks, Russ.
Yeah, it’s gonna be complicated. But I think I’ve got it figured out. Gotta go. I’ve got calls with Bannon, Kash, and Roger Stone in the next hour. You don’t even want to know about this part. But help me out, guys. And not a word, especially to JD. He’s just Elon’s puppy. Pathetic. Anyway, mum’s the word. The plot’s the thing, wherein we’ll act to save our MAGA king.
Exeunt, stage right.
AROUND THE BULWARK
A lot of righteous anger on the site today!
Pete Hegseth’s Climate Change ‘Crap’ . . . General Mark Hertling writes: The secretary of defense chooses to ignore a major national security threat.
Mahmoud Khalil Has Rights, Dammit . . . Mona Charen can’t defend what he said, but she’ll defend his right to say it.
Trump Doubles Down on the Forever Drug War . . . If people thought Iraq and Afghanistan were drawn-out quagmires, just wait until the military takes on the cartels, argues Will Selber.
Democrats Want to Break Elon by Making Him Poorer . . . Lauren Egan reports: “The Tesla Takedown movement has been a success. Dems want it to grow even bigger.”
Quick Hits
SHUTDOWN CHICKEN: The next 36 hours will demonstrate whether the Senate Democrats have a bit of fight in them after all. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed Wednesday that Senate Democrats will oppose the government-funding bill House Republicans passed on a party-line basis earlier this week. It’s either the first act in show of force, setting up the third-act capitulation, or a genuine harbinger of a government shutdown.
The Senate’s filibuster rules require 60 votes to pass most legislation, meaning the Republicans-only package that squeaked through the House will now need some bipartisan buy-in. Yet House Republicans still froze Democrats out of the continuing-resolution process, betting Senate Dems would submit rather than risk being blamed for a shutdown.
A critical mass still may submit. But Schumer struck an unexpectedly defiant tone on the Senate floor, decrying the arrogance of Republicans demanding Democratic support without soliciting Democratic input on the bill. Because of that, he said, “Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate” to overcome the filibuster.
You can understand a certain level of Democratic anxiety here. As Trump and Elon Musk run around with cans of gasoline, setting random parts of the government on fire, they may very well welcome a shutdown process under which federal workers are furloughed and they can determine who is deemed “essential.” A dramatic reduction of the government is Trump’s current objective. So why help him achieve it? Moreover, any move that risks a shutdown is inherently high-risk: The politics of blame are messy and unpredictable.
But Democrats are facing the possibility of a gargantuan surge of anger from their own base should they surrender the one small institutional check they still have on Trump in Congress. Beyond that, it didn’t help that the bill contains a number of provisions Democrats see as poison pills—an effective $1 billion cut to the D.C. city budget, for one. And that’s to say nothing of the White House’s open intention to use the spending bill as a set of guidelines more than a set of commands, simply declining to spend any appropriated money they don’t want to spend.1 JD Vance even brought this up in meetings this week to convince House Republican hardliners—who were incensed that the bill didn’t contain more spending cuts—that they could support the package with a clean conscience, since the White House would just discard more of it later. How do you negotiate with a team that can decide tomorrow to ignore whatever concessions they give you today?
Grassroots pressure on Dems to stand firm is intensifying.
“This GOP strategy is just a gun to the head of the American people and we should not follow along with it,” former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told The Bulwark yesterday. “I don’t plan to support any Democrat who does. We can primary incumbents too.”
– With reporting by Sam Stein
NIPPED IN THE BUD: Another day, another half-baked potential DOGE cut hastily reversed after public outcry. On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that the Social Security Administration was considering eliminating phone services for Americans needing to process retirement and disability claims, “instead directing elderly and disabled people to the internet and in-person field offices”:
The change would disrupt Social Security’s internal operations and threaten its ability to serve the public, current and former officials warned, just as DOGE is targeting the agency for across-the-board staff cuts of more than 12 percent. They also noted that the agency’s toll-free number is a mainstay for older customers who do not have online access or who have trouble navigating the internet.
The news sparked a wave of incredulity. “Well, that should be fine as long as nobody on Social Security has mobility issues or visual impairment or difficulty navigating online forms,” posted the libertarian writer Julian Sanchez.
After the Post report was published, the White House said it would move forward with a scaled-back version of the proposal that would merely prevent beneficiaries from changing their bank information by phone. A spokesman told the paper that “preventing fraud should be celebrated, not criticized.”
LET PEOPLE LEARN: The phone-service boondoggle at SSA may be just the tip of the iceberg, to hear acting commissioner Leland Dudek tell it.
Dudek is a bizarre creature. A former mid-level bureaucrat, he was nearly fired back in February when he was discovered secretly passing agency information to DOGE. Then he was suddenly hoisted up by the White House to run the entire SSA. Thank you, Mr. President, very based!
But now, it’s not clear how thrilled Dudek is with the post. Yesterday, ProPublica’s Eli Hager got hold of some remarkable surreptitious recordings of Dudek taken during SSA meetings:
“I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said in a closed-door meeting last week, according to a recording obtained by ProPublica. He also said that it “would be catastrophic for the people in our country” if DOGE were to make changes at his agency that were as sweeping as those at USAID, the Treasury Department and elsewhere. . . .
Throughout the meeting, Dudek made alarming statements about the perils facing the Social Security system, but he did so in an oddly informal, discursive manner. It left several participants baffled as to the ultimate fate of the nation’s largest and most popular social program, one that serves 73 million Americans. “Are we going to break something?” Dudek asked at one point, referring to what DOGE has been doing with Social Security data. “I don’t know.”
But then he said, in a more reassuring tone: “They’re learning. Let people learn. They’re going to make mistakes.”
There’s so much more in the piece, including alarming reports of delays already piling up due to DOGE-related meddling: “Under DOGE, several Social Security IT contracts have been canceled or scaled back. Now, five employees told ProPublica, their tech systems seem to be crashing nearly every day, leading to more delays in serving beneficiaries.” Read the whole thing.
Cheap Shots
This concept, known as “impoundment,” is flatly illegal under current law—withholding congressionally appropriated funds for political purposes, in fact, is what led to Trump’s first impeachment. But the Trump administration has promised to challenge that law; some Republicans think they have a good shot of the Supreme Court declaring impoundment constitutional.
Let's make some general observations here.
First, it's not 2010 anymore. Part of the reason that the GOP was punished and blamed for the shutdowns under Obama was that Obama was popular and they were not. This created a situation where they were blamed for the problems of the shutdown.
Second, Trump is very unpopular and what he's doing is even more unpopular. And more than that, especially among Democrats, it's practically radioactive. Even when the GOP was blamed by voters overall during Biden's term, for example, this did not actually affect them in the long term.
Third, this is a bit of a litmus test for Democratic senators moving forward. Much has been made about a Democratic style tea party, but the general vibe I think is that at this point, if you're facilitating Trump or the GOP, you're going to get primaried, and possibly have to deal with being Eric Cantor'd.
If Democratic politicians cannot read the mood of their voters, then they're not going to be politicians much longer.
How bout we get loud? Worked for Congressman Larson.
Sent this to my reps today.
I am so relieved and, dare I say, slightly optimistic. Yesterday, I listened to the speech of Social Security Subcommittee Ranking Member, Congressman John Larson. In his ringing, impassioned voice, Congressman Larson brought home, resoundingly, the facts. His co-members heard the truth. They could no longer feign otherwise.
Social Security is not a scam. 115 year olds are not collecting checks. It is not a ponzi scheme. Elon Musk needs to be brought before the full House for a vote.
Senator, where are you on this? I hear nothing from you close to Congressman Larsons resolve. It is time for you to move on this….or leave.