They Like The Chaos. They Want The Chaos.
This week gave us a preview of the coming Trump presidency. It felt like a horrible rerun of the first.
In the past 24 hours, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and many familiar characters from the 118th Congress effectively killed a continuing resolution that was needed to keep the government’s lights on for another three months. As a result, the government’s Friday funding deadline could very likely result in Trump’s second presidency opening with a government shutdown. The entire ordeal serves as a preview of what Americans should expect from their government for at least the next two years: A pathetic and ineffective legislature will limp along, waiting every moment for its next command from the president and his rich friends.
None of this should be shocking to anyone who reads this newsletter. The 118th Congress was chaotic enough thanks to infighting within the Republican House majority, but that dysfunction hardly registers in comparison with how things went during the first Trump presidency. Chaos was visited on anything unfortunate enough to elicit the interest of the administration. There were sudden changes, ego-driven showdowns, and more backstabbing than you’d see in a Real Housewives episode. There were also multiple government shutdowns, including the longest one in U.S. history.
And now, the decision by a re-empowered Trump to appoint Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to be his terminally online enforcers adds a completely new vector of chaos. Also, Vice President-elect JD Vance is there, too. Somewhere.
Back to the CR imbroglio. Wednesday started with typical Republican grumbling about the bill’s delayed introduction and how it is too many pages to read (at 1,500 pages, that’s slightly longer than the Lord of the Rings). But that grumbling started to turn into something more when Musk started posting on X about the bill. And he posted a lot. Just yesterday, the world’s richest and apparently least-busy man posted or reposted more than 100 times, mostly about the CR.