Is there any choice but to check out for the next 4 years? Is there any hope it will actually get better in 4 years? Or is this the "continuing resolution" of America's Death Star future? Lord almighty The Good and Great Orange godking is NOT EVEN GODKING YET!! WTAF!!
If the debt ceiling was eliminated then taxes could be cut yet again without concern for the debt. Probably the bond rate on US T-notes would have to rise in order to be able to sell them to China thereby raising the debt even further ....
But no worries. We will soon have a Wharton School graduate back at the helm. A worldwide pandemic managed to slow this sociopath from plundering everything the last time. Which of the four horsemen will act this time?
Considerable commentary is being written about the political ineptness of Elon Musk and the MAGA-led House. While Elon has little experience in Washington, he didn't become the world's richest man by being stupid. Indeed, a month-long Washington shutdown may be deliberate and well-serve his and MAGA's best interests.
Typically, regulation enactment spikes during the transition period of every outgoing administration. Most of these rules have been in the works for many months and are finalized at the 11th hour before the clock runs out. Thus, a shutdown 30 days before Trump's inauguration could kill many Biden administration regulations in utero. Of course, Trump has already announced plans to overturn a large number of Biden's regulations, but killing as many as possible before birth is so much easier.
Also, the Senate is in the process of confirming a large number of Biden's judicial nominations. The more that can be done to divert Senators' attention to other matters, the fewer the nominations that they can approve. Plus, staff work is required to make confirmations run smoothly, and the furloughing of Senate staffers will surely bog down the confirmation process.
No doubt, there are still other benefits that accrue to Republicans if they paralyze the functioning of the outgoing Democratic administration. It would be good to hear commentary about the cleverness of this political strategy, and not just critiques of its stupidity and cruelty.
I've read suggestions that Trump will soon tire of sharing the spotlight with Elon Musk, but maybe those who suggest this are missing the real reason Trump tolerates being upstaged by Musk. Maybe he bows down to Musk for the same reason he bows to Putin.
I have long believed that Trump sucks up to Putin in the hope of building Trump hotels or towers or golf courses in Russia. Maybe he wants access to Musk’s vast wealth to support building Trump hotels or towers or golf courses.
I’ve known people who view the world through the lens of hierarchy, bowing to those above them, and expecting supplication from those below. Maybe Trump is one of those people and sees people like Putin and Musk as above him in the hierarchy.
First of all a very Happy Holidays to all of you at Bulwark. Love spending my morning reading your letters. And the next year portends to be very much of an upheaval of our traditions and established norms for governing that I hope you will digest for us. The Trump bromance with Elon will have all the earmarks of a wrestling match for dominance and the incoming Congress a rambunctious circus.
President Musk is not protected by immunity. So, he needs President Trump to take actions that might be considered crimes. That makes Trump a Patsy. A Musk Patsy.
Musk is an avatar for all the MAGAts who never served in the military, yet use a "hand-to-forehead" salute to the flag in their dire need to prove patriotism.
There is nothing more condescending to active military and veterans that non-military persons use such an action.
I was taught by my WW2 combat veteran father that civilians place their hand on their heart when reverencing the American flag.
Trump and his play actors, like the illegal immigrant Musk, love the Kabukki Theatre of playing up the pretend America in their fantasies.
Having worked for similar multi-millionaire/billionaire, entrepreneurial, "disruptor" types over my career, I am completely unsurprised by this.
We give far too much credit to these types that have money and ideas, and successfully build a business/empire. Yes, many are hardworking; yes, many are highly intelligent; yes, many are very accomplished and experts at their specific types of subject-matter, and I'm not discounting their work and the risks they take on as Owners. But, in most cases, it took a village of highly accomplished, hardworking, intelligent people to build (and fund) their empires.
At a certain point in a business's growth/lifecycle, entrepreneurial disruptor-type executives often get in the way of the long-term, day-to-day success of their businesses. I've experienced this firsthand. This type is great at abstract ideas, securing funding, the initial building up of the company etc., but they're usually horrible at the operations, personnel issues, and various specialized expertise needed to make their company thrive day-to-day, year-over-year. Sometimes there are even basic bottom line issues that they don't understand, don't care about, and want to ignore in favor of their personal interests and expertise, much to the pain of everyone else working for the company.
Governing is not the same as building and managing a business; and, the United States is a much older institution than any organization Elon has ever had any responsibility over. Musk, Trump, their entourage, and a huge part of the American public thinking the country can and should be run like a corporation shows their ignorance and their arrogance.
I read somewhere else, don’t ask me where, that Johnson was looking for a 2/3 yes vote. Is that because they need a veto proof bill? I don’t really see Joe Biden signing a bill that eliminates the debt ceiling and cuts cancer research for children.
Last night's vote was on a procedural matter that required two thirds majority to pass. But it's failure effectively killed the underlying legislation.
The Republican base, a twitching hive mind of contradictions, has always managed to paper over its fractures with cheap glue and sheer denial. But the alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is no ordinary fault line; it’s a seismic event waiting to detonate. This grotesque coupling—masquerading as a partnership—isn’t about shared vision or revolutionary principles. No, this is greed in its purest, snarling form: a parasitic pact between two men who see each other not as allies but as tools, temporary instruments of ambition to be discarded the moment they lose utility.
Trump, the bloated sun-king of grievance politics, sees Musk as a bright, shiny object—a techie chaos agent who keeps his name alive in the algorithmic stew. Musk, the eternal arsonist armed with memes and a messiah complex, views Trump as a relic to exploit—a living symbol of the crude, reptilian id he needs to hijack the levers of power. Together, they form a bizarre spectacle, a grotesque tango of opportunism where the music is discordant, and neither man knows the steps.
This is no grand alliance. It’s a high-wire act over a pit of vipers, a precarious balancing act of mutual disdain where each man circles the other with barely concealed contempt. Trump needs Musk to keep his ego-fed populist machine from sputtering into irrelevance. Musk tolerates Trump only as long as his MAGA base remains a usable battering ram against the establishment. Their shared contempt for institutions pales in comparison to their deeper, darker loathing of sharing power. Two egos this bloated cannot occupy the same space without a collision, and the crackling tension between them is palpable—a live wire sparking in a gasoline-soaked room.
We saw the first real fissure when Musk, with no official title, no electoral mandate, and no accountability beyond his Twitter feed, single-handedly hijacked the Republican Party’s legislative agenda. With a few well-placed provocations and a digital flex, he bent Speaker Mike Johnson into submission, leaving Trump fumbling to catch up. It was a calculated move, a power grab cloaked in chaos, and it worked. Musk didn’t just outmaneuver Trump—he exposed him. For the first time, Trump was no longer driving the chaos; he was reacting to it. Musk, with his Cheshire-cat grin and meme-laden trolling, tossed a bone of faux-deference to the flailing God-King: “Credit to Trump,” he tweeted, like a cat patting a mouse it has already decided to eat.
Musk’s provocations—the cryptic tweets, the pseudo-libertarian rhetoric, the unending stream of incendiary memes—aren’t acts of solidarity. They’re experiments, stress tests to measure just how far he can push Trump before the fragile ego snaps. And snap it will, because Musk isn’t content to play second fiddle in anyone’s orchestra. He doesn’t join movements; he co-opts them, dismantling their structure piece by piece until only his vision remains. Trump, I assume, knows this, even if he can’t admit it. Musk’s chaos is an existential threat to Trump’s authoritarian order—a wildfire threatening to consume the gilded tower of grievance Trump has spent years building.
The Republican base, meanwhile, teeters on the edge of a reckoning it cannot avoid. Trump’s loyalists, clinging to the sepia-toned delusion of a mythic America that never existed, find themselves at odds with Musk’s faction of meme-fueled techno-libertarians who dream of a decentralized, algorithmic utopia. These factions aren’t allies; they’re kindling and spark. One longs for a past that never was, while the other lunges toward a future that can’t exist. The collision is inevitable, and when it happens, the fallout will be biblical in its chaos.
What’s holding this fragile coalition together? Greed, pure and simple—a shared hunger for dominance over the fractured carcass of the Republican Party. But greed is brittle glue, and the weight of these contradictions cannot hold. The moment one man steps too far into the other’s spotlight, the knives will come out. Musk will not remain in Trump’s shadow, and Trump cannot abide a rival. Their mutual disdain for limits—of law, of norms, of decency—ensures that when the explosion comes, it will leave nothing but rubble in its wake.
This isn’t a partnership; it’s a countdown. Musk and Trump are locked in a slow-motion duel disguised as a dance, each man biding his time while sharpening his blade. Their shared greed binds them for now, but it is only a matter of time before the thin veneer of cooperation shatters, revealing the true nature of their alliance: a parasitic transaction masquerading as unity, doomed to collapse under the weight of their bloated egos.
The reckoning is coming. It will be messy. It will be spectacular. And it will leave both men—and the movement they claim to lead—irreparably divided.
I think the debt ceiling raise is a ploy by Trump to allow continuation of the massive tax cuts he doled out to his billionaire friends. I believe they expire this year.
Exactly and obviously. I don't know how this point was glossed over by Bill and Andrew today. The debt ceiling cacophony is about the gigantic tax cuts that will drive this country into deep, deep debt. End of story. Which is not being properly covered in too many places that should know better.
Is there any choice but to check out for the next 4 years? Is there any hope it will actually get better in 4 years? Or is this the "continuing resolution" of America's Death Star future? Lord almighty The Good and Great Orange godking is NOT EVEN GODKING YET!! WTAF!!
Elon is a bully. Ask anyone who has worked for the guy. Bullies are no good at building... (see 45).
If the debt ceiling was eliminated then taxes could be cut yet again without concern for the debt. Probably the bond rate on US T-notes would have to rise in order to be able to sell them to China thereby raising the debt even further ....
But no worries. We will soon have a Wharton School graduate back at the helm. A worldwide pandemic managed to slow this sociopath from plundering everything the last time. Which of the four horsemen will act this time?
Considerable commentary is being written about the political ineptness of Elon Musk and the MAGA-led House. While Elon has little experience in Washington, he didn't become the world's richest man by being stupid. Indeed, a month-long Washington shutdown may be deliberate and well-serve his and MAGA's best interests.
Typically, regulation enactment spikes during the transition period of every outgoing administration. Most of these rules have been in the works for many months and are finalized at the 11th hour before the clock runs out. Thus, a shutdown 30 days before Trump's inauguration could kill many Biden administration regulations in utero. Of course, Trump has already announced plans to overturn a large number of Biden's regulations, but killing as many as possible before birth is so much easier.
Also, the Senate is in the process of confirming a large number of Biden's judicial nominations. The more that can be done to divert Senators' attention to other matters, the fewer the nominations that they can approve. Plus, staff work is required to make confirmations run smoothly, and the furloughing of Senate staffers will surely bog down the confirmation process.
No doubt, there are still other benefits that accrue to Republicans if they paralyze the functioning of the outgoing Democratic administration. It would be good to hear commentary about the cleverness of this political strategy, and not just critiques of its stupidity and cruelty.
I've read suggestions that Trump will soon tire of sharing the spotlight with Elon Musk, but maybe those who suggest this are missing the real reason Trump tolerates being upstaged by Musk. Maybe he bows down to Musk for the same reason he bows to Putin.
I have long believed that Trump sucks up to Putin in the hope of building Trump hotels or towers or golf courses in Russia. Maybe he wants access to Musk’s vast wealth to support building Trump hotels or towers or golf courses.
I’ve known people who view the world through the lens of hierarchy, bowing to those above them, and expecting supplication from those below. Maybe Trump is one of those people and sees people like Putin and Musk as above him in the hierarchy.
First of all a very Happy Holidays to all of you at Bulwark. Love spending my morning reading your letters. And the next year portends to be very much of an upheaval of our traditions and established norms for governing that I hope you will digest for us. The Trump bromance with Elon will have all the earmarks of a wrestling match for dominance and the incoming Congress a rambunctious circus.
Bill: I love your comment about Trump being Lenin with Musk as Stalin waiting (rather impatiently) in the wings. Happy Hanukkah!
President Musk is not protected by immunity. So, he needs President Trump to take actions that might be considered crimes. That makes Trump a Patsy. A Musk Patsy.
RamaMuskaPatsy.
MuskaPatsyRama.
MuskaRamaPatsy.
That's it!
Long live President Vivelonald Muskaramapatsy
Next year Meridee.
BTW - what an extremely cool name!
Congrats to your parents!
We're gonna need more popcorn folks.
Musk is an avatar for all the MAGAts who never served in the military, yet use a "hand-to-forehead" salute to the flag in their dire need to prove patriotism.
There is nothing more condescending to active military and veterans that non-military persons use such an action.
I was taught by my WW2 combat veteran father that civilians place their hand on their heart when reverencing the American flag.
Trump and his play actors, like the illegal immigrant Musk, love the Kabukki Theatre of playing up the pretend America in their fantasies.
Disgusting!
Having worked for similar multi-millionaire/billionaire, entrepreneurial, "disruptor" types over my career, I am completely unsurprised by this.
We give far too much credit to these types that have money and ideas, and successfully build a business/empire. Yes, many are hardworking; yes, many are highly intelligent; yes, many are very accomplished and experts at their specific types of subject-matter, and I'm not discounting their work and the risks they take on as Owners. But, in most cases, it took a village of highly accomplished, hardworking, intelligent people to build (and fund) their empires.
At a certain point in a business's growth/lifecycle, entrepreneurial disruptor-type executives often get in the way of the long-term, day-to-day success of their businesses. I've experienced this firsthand. This type is great at abstract ideas, securing funding, the initial building up of the company etc., but they're usually horrible at the operations, personnel issues, and various specialized expertise needed to make their company thrive day-to-day, year-over-year. Sometimes there are even basic bottom line issues that they don't understand, don't care about, and want to ignore in favor of their personal interests and expertise, much to the pain of everyone else working for the company.
Governing is not the same as building and managing a business; and, the United States is a much older institution than any organization Elon has ever had any responsibility over. Musk, Trump, their entourage, and a huge part of the American public thinking the country can and should be run like a corporation shows their ignorance and their arrogance.
I read somewhere else, don’t ask me where, that Johnson was looking for a 2/3 yes vote. Is that because they need a veto proof bill? I don’t really see Joe Biden signing a bill that eliminates the debt ceiling and cuts cancer research for children.
Last night's vote was on a procedural matter that required two thirds majority to pass. But it's failure effectively killed the underlying legislation.
The Republican base, a twitching hive mind of contradictions, has always managed to paper over its fractures with cheap glue and sheer denial. But the alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is no ordinary fault line; it’s a seismic event waiting to detonate. This grotesque coupling—masquerading as a partnership—isn’t about shared vision or revolutionary principles. No, this is greed in its purest, snarling form: a parasitic pact between two men who see each other not as allies but as tools, temporary instruments of ambition to be discarded the moment they lose utility.
Trump, the bloated sun-king of grievance politics, sees Musk as a bright, shiny object—a techie chaos agent who keeps his name alive in the algorithmic stew. Musk, the eternal arsonist armed with memes and a messiah complex, views Trump as a relic to exploit—a living symbol of the crude, reptilian id he needs to hijack the levers of power. Together, they form a bizarre spectacle, a grotesque tango of opportunism where the music is discordant, and neither man knows the steps.
This is no grand alliance. It’s a high-wire act over a pit of vipers, a precarious balancing act of mutual disdain where each man circles the other with barely concealed contempt. Trump needs Musk to keep his ego-fed populist machine from sputtering into irrelevance. Musk tolerates Trump only as long as his MAGA base remains a usable battering ram against the establishment. Their shared contempt for institutions pales in comparison to their deeper, darker loathing of sharing power. Two egos this bloated cannot occupy the same space without a collision, and the crackling tension between them is palpable—a live wire sparking in a gasoline-soaked room.
We saw the first real fissure when Musk, with no official title, no electoral mandate, and no accountability beyond his Twitter feed, single-handedly hijacked the Republican Party’s legislative agenda. With a few well-placed provocations and a digital flex, he bent Speaker Mike Johnson into submission, leaving Trump fumbling to catch up. It was a calculated move, a power grab cloaked in chaos, and it worked. Musk didn’t just outmaneuver Trump—he exposed him. For the first time, Trump was no longer driving the chaos; he was reacting to it. Musk, with his Cheshire-cat grin and meme-laden trolling, tossed a bone of faux-deference to the flailing God-King: “Credit to Trump,” he tweeted, like a cat patting a mouse it has already decided to eat.
Musk’s provocations—the cryptic tweets, the pseudo-libertarian rhetoric, the unending stream of incendiary memes—aren’t acts of solidarity. They’re experiments, stress tests to measure just how far he can push Trump before the fragile ego snaps. And snap it will, because Musk isn’t content to play second fiddle in anyone’s orchestra. He doesn’t join movements; he co-opts them, dismantling their structure piece by piece until only his vision remains. Trump, I assume, knows this, even if he can’t admit it. Musk’s chaos is an existential threat to Trump’s authoritarian order—a wildfire threatening to consume the gilded tower of grievance Trump has spent years building.
The Republican base, meanwhile, teeters on the edge of a reckoning it cannot avoid. Trump’s loyalists, clinging to the sepia-toned delusion of a mythic America that never existed, find themselves at odds with Musk’s faction of meme-fueled techno-libertarians who dream of a decentralized, algorithmic utopia. These factions aren’t allies; they’re kindling and spark. One longs for a past that never was, while the other lunges toward a future that can’t exist. The collision is inevitable, and when it happens, the fallout will be biblical in its chaos.
What’s holding this fragile coalition together? Greed, pure and simple—a shared hunger for dominance over the fractured carcass of the Republican Party. But greed is brittle glue, and the weight of these contradictions cannot hold. The moment one man steps too far into the other’s spotlight, the knives will come out. Musk will not remain in Trump’s shadow, and Trump cannot abide a rival. Their mutual disdain for limits—of law, of norms, of decency—ensures that when the explosion comes, it will leave nothing but rubble in its wake.
This isn’t a partnership; it’s a countdown. Musk and Trump are locked in a slow-motion duel disguised as a dance, each man biding his time while sharpening his blade. Their shared greed binds them for now, but it is only a matter of time before the thin veneer of cooperation shatters, revealing the true nature of their alliance: a parasitic transaction masquerading as unity, doomed to collapse under the weight of their bloated egos.
The reckoning is coming. It will be messy. It will be spectacular. And it will leave both men—and the movement they claim to lead—irreparably divided.
I think the debt ceiling raise is a ploy by Trump to allow continuation of the massive tax cuts he doled out to his billionaire friends. I believe they expire this year.
Exactly and obviously. I don't know how this point was glossed over by Bill and Andrew today. The debt ceiling cacophony is about the gigantic tax cuts that will drive this country into deep, deep debt. End of story. Which is not being properly covered in too many places that should know better.
Oh yeah, I am almost forgot to say this. Hell must have frozen over, because I finally agree with Chip Roy on something.