Tag: Federal

Liberation Day

Posted on by documentingdescent

So today is Liberation Day, as Trump calls it. The Terrible Day of the Tariff. No PDF links to articles about this because it’s happening in real time and most publications are either just announcing the tariffs or they’re doing minute by minute updates I won’t keep up with because when do I stop and post this? I’ll have to add some stuff later if it’s pertinent.

Trump’s tariffed the fuck out of pretty much everybody in the most idiotic way possible: he’s looked at the percentage trade deficit with any given nation, halved that percentage, and announced that’s a new tariff. For countries like Canada, China, Mexico, this is on top of other tariffs already levied.

This is not an intelligent way to add tariffs. Not that they’re too smart to begin with. For instance, he tariffed the Indian Ocean and Associated Territories (or whatever it’s called). The only thing there that’s inhabited and has contact with the outside world (the Andaman Island natives, for instance, do not have contact) is Diego Garcia Island. Home to a joint US/UK military base.

We tariffed our own fucking military base, because Trump and his cabinet are fundamentally unserious people.

It is hard to overstate how much this is gonna fuck the average consumer in the USA. Certain businesses – board games, for instance – may be rendered entirely unable to make a profit for the forseeable future, for instance; one designer estimated their board game would have to sell for $225 to make the same profit as before, due to being printed in China.

The Senate Democrats managed to convince four republicans – Collins, Murkowski, Paul, and McConnell – to break with their party and vote to repeal Trump’s emergency powers to levy tariffs. It’ll still need to be voted on in the House, so good luck there. Democrats are going to try to force a vote, but if they can’t, we likely won’t see an end to this bullshit before 2026.

Why? Well, on March 17 or 18, the House Republicans decided to have a vote to say a “calendar day” is not a real day that passes for purposes of expiring Trump’s “national emergencies” that grant him tariff power. They did this explicitly, by their own admission, to prevent such a vote.

Good job, jackasses.

In better news, Musk failed to get Schimel elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, despite his $20 million in donations to sway voting. Good job, Wisconsin!

Roundup: March Madness

Posted on by documentingdescent

I’ve been a bit busy to keep up day by day, dealing with a rather impressive volume of bureaucratic paperwork. As such, I didn’t have much time to deal with any of this moment to moment over the last week. So you get a round-up of what’s been happening instead!

First off, Trump signed the Executive Order known as “Preserving and Protecting American Elections“. This EO essentially attempts to usurp the role of individual states in how elections are administered and run, moving everything under review of the federal government – namely the Department of Homeland Security, the Secretary of State, and DOGE.

Obviously, there is no reason for DOGE to be involved in elections for any legitimate reason. What’s more, the Executive Branch cannot set election law under any circumstances, and this is a transparent power grab by the president. Lest we forget, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators.”

This EO relies on two things to enforce its’ bullshit: the willing compliance of States, and the threat of federal funding being withheld. We’ll see how callow individual states are soon, I suppose.

Trump also told automakers in the United States not to increase prices due to his tariffs. I don’t know how he expects that to go; no corporation is gonna eat a massive loss on every item sold just because they want to appease his ego – at least not for long. If they can’t make money selling cars, it won’t matter if he’s mad at them or not. Obviously, this signals he knows his tariffs are shit that will hurt consumers in the United States, but we already knew he didn’t give a shit about them.

Still, seeing it in the open is good, just so there’s some kind of public acknowledgement of this rank insanity.

There was also a Trump EO that basically orders the Smithsonian and other federal museums/monuments to enforce white supremacist history, re-erect confederate monuments, strip anything uncomfortable (i.e. accurate) from their displays, and re-write the history of the USA to be pro white people. Among the more offensive things in the EO is the demand that race be identified as a quantifiable, genetic reality, rather than something socially constructed and understood. Note: this isn’t ‘some people have dark skin’ type of race, but the notion that there are identifiable, distinct ‘races’ of human beings.

The EO also risks shutting down any museum dedicated to non-white history, under the guise of ‘protecting’ us from “racially divisive exhibits.”

JD Vance addressed Greenland while there with his wife, saying both that Greenland hadn’t been treated very well by Denmark and that only the United States will respect their rights. Funny way to show it, by simultaneously threatening them by (essentially) saying “The United States will get Greenland no matter what.” That’ll be a shitshow of epic proportions if it happens. I’m not wasting any more time on JD Vance, though.

ICE is disappearing students around the United States for political speech. We’re up to 8 at least now, and in each case these students were targeted for things like writing Op-Eds in their student newspaper, engaging in protest or other protected speech, or generally saying stuff the Trump administration doesn’t agree with. They’re being taken while on the streets by ICE agents who are usually out of uniform, masked, and who only identify themselves as ‘police’ – which, I should note, is fucking terrifying.

ICE is trying to deny all of these students their day in court before an immigration judge, and Rubio is trying to deport them without due process, all because they said some uncomfortable truths about the United States and Israel.

Elon Musk is in hot water with Wisconsin after deciding to hand out several million dollars to select voters, in return for them voting. While federal law prohibits payment in exchange for voting for a particular candidate, Musk isn’t doing that. It’s Wisconsin state law he’s run afoul of.

In Wisconsin, paying for voter turnout is explicitly against state law, and it seems Wisconsin isn’t having any of his shit. He deleted his tweet advertising this, but many people captured it before it vanished. I doubt anything will happen legally, but I sure hope Wisconsin tries. We don’t need any centibillionaires messing around with out already broken political system.

I suppose we shall see what horrors next week brings. Stay safe out there.

The Signal Leaks, Part 2

Posted on by documentingdescent

My apologies for some incorrect information on the previous post. I had said that Gabbard and others would have had to have been using a private phone rather than government issued because Signal couldn’t be loaded onto their phones. That was the policy of the previous admin (though the military has been using Signal on their phones plenty). The current admin pre-loads Signal on their official phones. I have corrected this in the previous post.

When questioned by the Senate, Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe said there was no classified information in the chats. When addressing the Senate, they agreed with Secretary of Defense Hegseth (who had not addressed the Senate) and said there was no discussion of military operations, descriptions of targets, specifics of military platforms or ordnance to be used. Trump himself said the chat contained no classified information. Hegseth accused Goldberg of making the whole thing up. They essentially said, “Pshaw, can’t trust this guy, he’s a big fucking liar.”

So Goldberg and The Atlantic released the full transcript of the Signal chat.

In summation, there was specific information about what targets were to be struck, what aircraft, drones, and cruise missiles were to be used and when, and against whom.

Ratcliffe and Gabbard perjured themselves in front of the Senate, and it was shown to be provably so less than 24 hours later.

I didn’t expect anything else from this admin. They will blatantly lie to our faces and the faces of Congress because they have seen there are no repercussions for doing so. They did not expect The Atlantic to call their bluff. I have no doubt they will somehow try to punish both Goldberg and The Atlantic for backing them into a corner over their mistakes. What’s more, none of them as yet has admitted wrongdoing, owned up to anything, or even suggested they could do things differently and/or better in the future. They are seemingly incapable of it.

Mike Waltz is even suggesting that Goldberg “hacked” his way into the Signal group. You sure about that, chief?

A screenshot of the Houthi PC small group, organized by Michael Waltz, having invited Jeffrey Goldberg to the group

Cuz that sure looks like one Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor, directly added Goldberg to the group.

Even if that’s not true, and Goldberg – the editor of a goddamn newspaper, not a superhacker – hacked his way into a meeting attended by the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the CIA, and the National Security Advisor…

Chidi from the TV show The Good Place, admonishing Eleanor Shellstrop by saying, "Okay, but that's worse. You see how that's worse, right?"

Gabbard, for her part, is claiming total amnesia about the entire affair, despite the fact that it only happened on March 15. Hasn’t even bothered to address the perjury. Evidently she may need to start tattooing her own body as in Memento to remember her day to day tasks in the office.

Hegseth has opted to double down:

“So, let’s [sic] me get this straight. The Atlantic released the so-called ‘war plans’ and those ‘plans’ include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.”

No names – except easily identifiable information based on someone’s position within the Houthis and the time at which he entered his girlfriend’s apartment. No locations – except the aforementioned apartment, easily identifiable via deductive reasoning. No units – except for the specific types of aircraft and drones to be used, whose initial positions can be pretty well inferred from their known prior locations. No routes – except those that could be inferred via the times and types of aircraft by anyone with a basic understanding of the US disposition of forces in the region. No methods – except obviously being fucking airstrikes. Even aside from all of that, the Secretary of Defense acting like a petulant, alcoholic child rather than owning his own stupidity is remarkably on brand.

To quote Jim Himes, Democratic Congressman: “It’s by the awesome grace of God that we’re not mourning dead pilots right now.”

Some icing on the top of all of this: the federal judge who drew the straw to investigate this whole Signal affair is Judge James Boasberg, who recently issued the injunction against ICE kidnapping and removing people to El Salvador without due process. The same Judge Boasberg who has been targeted for impeachment by Speaker Mike Johnson for having the temerity to do his job, and who also lead Speaker Johnson to suggest congress can just eliminate any federal court they like, so that the Executive Branch can do whatever the hell it wants without pesky shit like the law getting in the way.

On a personal note, I was reminded of my reasons for starting this blog. I accidentally got into a discussion about this with a relative with whom I do not see eye to eye with, re: politics. Despite not meaning to, she attempted quite solidly to convince me the things I have seen unfold over the last three days were not, in fact, what I had seen. That this wasn’t a big deal. That this happens all the time. That Goldberg probably was a hacker. That he did release the full transcripts before today. And that nothing specific was discussed in the Signal chat.

All this despite her not having read either transcript, or knowing standard military protocol, or how OPSEC works, or even the contents of the Senate testimony yesterday. Because the tiktoks and instagram reels and youtube shorts she’d seen told her what to think. Certain things that she knows about, she’s capable of calling bullshit on. But things she doesn’t? She takes these influencers words on, from start to finish. And she even told me (in essence) that no news organizations can really be trusted, because they want views and clicks… as if the influencers don’t.

Don’t let them gaslight you or fog your memory. Don’t let them minimize what you see happening.

Keep your ability to analyze sharp – and know when to admit you’re wrong or fucked up.

National Idiocy Advisor

Posted on by documentingdescent

In a stunning breach of protocol, law, and good sense, a plethora of high ranking individuals from the White House, National Security, and Department of Defense conducted a conversation about the upcoming bombing of Yemen over an unauthorized and non-secure Signal group chat…

…And apparently invited the chief editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the group. Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor, is the one who invited Goldberg to the Signal chat.

Before I go further, let’s be clear on a few things. First, this whole shitshow should have taken place in a SCIF. Signal is not secure, and is known to have been compromised by GRU hackers in the past. All of these idiots were using private non-secured phones for this conversation, because government-secured phones cannot have Signal loaded onto them – due to the aforementioned security vulnerabilities. (Edit: I was incorrect about this. This was true in the previous admin, though they did reccommend Signal for non-classified commuinications. Tulsi Gabbard admitted that under Trump, government phones come pre-loaded with Signal.) One of these idiots, Tulsi Gabbard, refused to answer congress if her phone was private or government issued because “it’s under review”. Motherfucker, how is it under review if it is your own phone or a phone issued to you?

On to the meat, here.

The chat included:

  • JD Vance, Vice President of the United States of America
  • Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense
  • Stephen Miller, Senior Advisor to the President, seditionist, and white nationalist
  • Michael Waltz, National Security Advisor
  • Marco Rubio, Secretary of State
  • John Ratcliffe, Director of the CIA
  • Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence
  • Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy to the Middle East
  • Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury
  • Brian McCormack, Chief of Staff for the National Security Council
  • Susie Wiles, White House Chief of Staff
  • Joe Kent, Acting Chief of Staff for Tulsi Gabbard
  • Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic – invited by accident, possibly because they assumed “JG” in Signal was Jamieson Greer, a trade representative.

The conversation between these individuals (and others unnamed because they’re not in a decision making capacity) revolved around how and when to strike Houthi targets in Yemen, the disposition of forces and targets to be hit, courtesy of Hegseth, and further planning for operations in and around Yemen.

As of the time of this posting Goldberg has not revealed much of the content of the meeting, because he did not wish to put American security or lives at risk. He did share certain choice statements by the Vice President, Hegseth, and others, concerning if Europe was pulling its weight with regards to securing the Suez Canal against the Houthis, and breaking with Trump over certain matters of policy. The main thrust of what he has revealed is that the meeting would involve planning strikes. Goldberg has said the texts he captured while in the meeting provided plenty of sensitive information, though the volume of those texts is deliberately unclear at the moment.

What is absolutely clear from this Signal meeting, especially since at least one member (Steve Witkoff) was in Russia when he was added to the chat and the discussion took place, is that none of these buffoons has any business being in the positions they are. I’ve seen World of Warcraft and EVE Online guilds practice better security than them. I know college students that understand security risks better.

We already knew they were selected for loyalty and not competence, but this drives the point home: these people are completely incompetent. It’s only by absolute blind luck that no American forces have been killed, and it’s only by that same dint of luck that (as far as we know) no other information has been captured by Russia or others who have exploited Signal’s known vulnerabilities.

Had this group been anyone else but a pack of MAGA loyalists – anyone – they would already be thrown in jail, under threat of all manner of heinous shit. Hillary Clinton was hounded for years over her private email server, and all we learned from that is that she shared recipes on her unsecured devices. This is infinitely worse.

This is a carnival of absolute idiocy.

When questioned about Goldberg’s article, the NSC revealed that yes, it was indeed true, and verified the information contained therein. Trump, when asked, called The Atlantic a failing paper with no readers – a typical deflection by the asshole in chief. Hegseth was questioned about it just after he had landed in Hawaii – he was in transit when the story broke. He said Goldberg was a liar, no meeting took place, and Goldberg certainly wouldn’t have been part of it.

A little embarrassing given that the NSC had confirmed everything hours earlier.

Gabbard, as of around two hours ago, doubled down on that confirmation, suggesting it’s not that bad because nothing classified was discussed. We must take them at their word, apparently.

In response, Goldberg has said he’d be happy to release all of the texts from the conversation to the public, if there’s nothing classified in there.

We shall see where it goes from here.

Trump Orders Military to Plan Invasion of Panama

Posted on by documentingdescent

Trump has ordered US SOUTHCOM to draw up plans for the invasion of Panama and capture of the Panama Canal. Articles – and Trump’s own White House releases – are dressing this up as “taking back” the canal, as if the United States were somehow owed this.

Make no mistake, this is planning an invasion of a foreign country. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time the United States has done this, but it’s important to be clear about what this plan entails: boots on the ground, conquering their territory, for the financial gain of the United States. I’m posting this here as tracking for ‘first steps toward some bullshit’, basically.

Hundreds of protestors have also stormed Trump Tower in NYC today, demanding the release of Mahmoud Khalil from ICE custody. I would have an article link for this normally, but all of the reportage I’m seeing so far is video based and hard to extract. As of this writing, 90+ people have been arrested by the NYPD.

Purge of Military Leadership Has Begun

Posted on by documentingdescent

Trump today fired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q Brown Jr. and had him replaced with John D Caine, a retired 3-star Lt. General. Brown is an incredibly decorated and experienced member of the United States Air Force. Caine is a not-so-decorated former member of the CIA whose only Air Force commands were the Special Access Programs Central Office, and the 113th Maintenance Group.

By all accounts, Caine was chosen for donning a red MAGA hat at a rally, and for “making the claim “eradicating” ISIS in 4 weeks during Trump’s first term. I don’t know if they can count or use maps, but ISIS is still getting bombed and shot across Africa. Even with the most charitable reading of “eradicated” possible, Operation Inherent Resolve had been ongoing since before Trump’s inauguration in 2017, and lasted at least until 2019. Which is a hell of a lot more than 4 weeks.

Secretary Hegseth also removed Chief of the Navy Lisa Franchetti, calling her a “DEI hire”, and Vice Chair of the Air Force, James Slife. He also unveiled plans to fire all JAG officers across the armed forces, and was soliciting suggestions for their replacements.

Kash Patel Confirmed as FBI Director

Posted on by documentingdescent

In a 48-45 vote in the Senate, Kash Patel has been confirmed as Director of the FBI. Only Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins defected from Republican ranks to vote against his confirmation.

Kash Patel is, to put it mildly, a wildly bad choice for director, and is also a conspiracy theorist. He has openly threatened independent journalists with prosecutions for doing their job, regularly appears on far right conspiracy podcasts and talk shows (often talking about how January 6th was an inside job by the FBI), and supported QAnon madness.

On the subject of his enemies list: “I have no interest, no desire, and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel said. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken… should I be confirmed as the FBI director.” He later said, “It’s not an enemies list – that is a total mischaracterization.”

My man, you called it an enemies list yourself – or near enough as it makes no difference. You referred to your list of 60 people as “government gangsters” and claimed they were the most immoral, unethical people in government.

Hope y’all are ready for some politically motivated bullshit arrests and prosecutions, because buckle up, here they come.

Only I Can Interpret the Law

Posted on by documentingdescent

Welp, there we have it. An Executive Order indicating only the President has the authority to interpret laws relating to Executive Branch activities.

I’m sure this is totally fine with all of the people shrieking that Obama and Biden were tyrants, abusing their authority.

I guess we’re gonna see if the Supreme Court values their own power more than they desire to kneel before their king.

Weekend Roundup: Incompetence and Idiocy

Posted on by documentingdescent

My weekend’s been busy, so it’s time for a weekend roundup of all of the dumb stuff that happened while I was busy with my day job and with other things over the weekend. Nothing major that isn’t a continuation of earlier bullshit, but oh what a fucking continuation it’s been.

Nuclear Security No More

One of Musk’s DOGE cadre of hatchetmen – or maybe hatchetchildren – has been feeding names and positions into their AI black box to figure out who to fire. This has been going on since they started, but it’s blatantly obvious that they don’t know what they’re doing, because they keep firing people you really don’t want to fire if you’re interested in national security.

One of the most recent firings has been the staff of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is a rather important department. It was founded in 1999 after the Wen Ho Lee spying scandal. The NNSA maintains security over the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, as well as providing the US Navy with nuclear propulsion, and also responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad.

They fired all but around 50 people from the agency, cutting around 300 jobs, because the responsible individual just didn’t know what the agency did. And now they’re scrambling to re-hire these former employees, but they can’t, because they don’t know how to contact most of them.

The individual responsible is reported to be Luke Farritor, a 23 year old also responsible for a lot of the AI-powered job cuts in the federal government.

Who Needs Air Safety?

Next up on the federal job chopping block is the FAA. Around 400 workers were fired over the weekend from across the FAA – air traffic controllers, maintenance technicians, policy setters, et cetera. Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Secretary of Transportation, has provided DOGE “special access” to the FAA and its systems in order to upgrade the system.

It’s worth noting that the FAA has been complaining about being understaffed for at least a decade, and they’re already overworked. Firing 400 people is manifestly a bad idea for air safety, given this fact. Part of the idiocy of these firings is that they just shoved “probationary” members into the woodchipper, assuming these were new hires. In many cases, they were not – they were people like a 26 year veteran radar maintenance technician, whose current promotion was probationary, despite his long history of service. But they’re too stupid to realize that, so tons of institutional knowledge have been lost. I’m sure they want to replace a lot of the ATC staff with AI, which will only result in more air accidents.

Now, another point I want to make is that so far, of the air accidents this year, none of them are due to Trump’s administration. Why? Because he’d made no changes at the time of the accidents, or the changes he made would not have affected the outcome. For instance, the Delta flight that rolled over in Toronto is the result of Canadian ATC, and the pilot likely overestimating their abilities to land. The Blackhawk impact in DC was the result of pilot error by the Blackhawk crew. Some of these are due to understaffing at the FAA but that’s a longer running problem than just Trump.

That said, these firings will only result in more accidents and less safe air travel, which is a hell of a thing for the safest national airspace in the world, by number of travelers.

Texas Loves Disease

Measles is running rampant in parts of Texas, because vaccinations are a conspiracy against health.

Great.

Elon Musk Threatens to Imprison 60 Minutes

The thin-skinned emperor has suggested the staff of 60 Minutes be imprisoned for their interview with Kamala Harris. For editing a TV program. Because it’s ‘election interference’. He argues it was deceptive editing, but they released the full transcript, showing nothing untoward and totally normal.

Meanwhile, of course, his electoral activities are totally normal and above reproach.

What a whiny bitch of a Nazi.

DOGE In the IRS, and Their Idiotic Website

There’s no reason for DOGE to have access to tax filings by normal citizens, yet they’re looking for access to all that data to train their AI systems. Or maybe to blackmail ordinary people and frighten them into subervience. Or maybe just mundane surveillance. While they’re claiming it’s about finding waste in how tax dollars are spent, there’s no way they can find that by looking at our personal tax filings. Like always, they’re lying.

These people couldn’t find fraud if it ran up and said “Hey, wanna join a Ponzi scheme?” They published a website with such poor security anyone over the internet could push updates to it. And they expect us to believe they’re capable of securing our data? Give me a fucking break. They have no idea how these systems work, and really don’t have any desire to, either, because the goal is to break government, not improve it.

In response to the mass pushback by citizens against DOGE and their grasping little minions, the White House has announced Elon Musk has no official position and is not a government employee. He’s just a personal advisor, or something. Again, give me a break. DOGE is taking their marching orders from him, he’s giving press conferences in the Oval Office, he’s making threats to government bureaus and announcing what DOGE is doing. This is the kind of bullshit gaslighting that I made this blog to remember, and to be able to show people when they vomit the party line back at us later.

So if he’s not a government employee and he has access to our data – which he most certainly does – time to haul his ass off to ADX Florence for the foreseeable future. Of course, that won’t happen, but it should.

Protecting the Sex Trafficking Influencers

In the latest bullshit loyalty move by the current administration, it seems that Trump’s White House has decided Andrew and Tristan Tate should be allowed out of Romania while their criminal trials and proceedings are ongoing. Which of course means they’d go free because they’d run and never return. The Tates were arrested on charges of sex trafficking, kidnapping, rape (including of minors). They, of course, say that they were arrested because they’re against ‘woke’ politics. Ahh yes, Romania, famous bastion of woke politics.

If Romania caves to this, it will be an incredible stain on them. Keep those shits in prison.

File Under “Not Knowing How Things Work” – 150 Year old SSA recipients

The last big update is the ostensible fraud in the Social Security Administration, namely that Social Security is being paid to 150 year old recipients. This is a prime case of not knowing how things work: the engineering ‘geniuses’ in DOGE don’t have any clue how COBOL works, and are so confident in what they expect to find they never questioned if their methods were faulty. Several retired COBOL engineers have gone on record to correct their assumptions.

The whole issue stems from COBOL not having a date type, so it’s all in reference to 1875 due to an agreement upon creation of the system. So certain birthdays wrap around, showing 150 years of age, because it’s a quirk of the programming language.

When you don’t know how anything works, everything is a conspiracy.

Hope You Liked Vaccines

Posted on by documentingdescent

RFK Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services

RFK Jr. has been confirmed as the head of Health and Human Services. You know, Mr. Drinks Raw Milk, Mr. Vaccines Cause Autism, Mr. Exercise Will Cure Your COVID and probably some other diseases. While he says he’s got no plans to roll back vaccine authorizations or stifle their development, I trust that statement about as much as a rattlesnake on mescaline. One thing that’s been proven time and again with the people in this administration is that they’ll say whatever it takes to get confirmed, and then just do… whatever they intended to do before.

That’s just the truth of what has been proven, time and again, with the people Trump surrounds himself with. It’s not some clairvoyant skill on my part, just past evidence informing me. Also, as one quip put it, RFK Jr. is just as crazy as the rest of them, and is “Alex Jones in a nice suit” when it comes to health and medical decisions. Hope y’all enjoyed not having preventable diseases, because I’m expecting a big spike in them in coming months and years.

President Musk’s Press Conference

I don’t think I’ve seen many federal spectacles as pathetic and telling as the press conference in the Oval Office the other day, run by Elon Musk, talking about DOGE. Musk, standing, giving a press conference while Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, occasionally throwing in a comment here and there. All the while, Musk’s 4 year old son picked his nose (wiping it on the desk), climbed Musk, and told Trump “You’re not the President, you need to go away.” I’m not 100% sold that he said that, because I hear “Mr. President, you need to go away.” Either way the message is “Daddy is talking and you’re not important enough to be here.” He also told Trump “I want you to shush your mouth” at another point in the briefing.

Talk about a goddamn embarrassment.

Let’s be clear about a few things:

  • The Oval Office is for the office of the President, not somebody he hired, to give briefings in. At worst, it’s for the VP if the President is incapacitated.
  • Four year old children should not be in national briefings, even if the President is giving them.
  • The President was not giving this briefing. Musk was.

The contents of the briefing isn’t really important – it was Musk touting DOGE’s successes and how much fraud they’ve uncovered, with absolutely no proof other than “trust me, bro”, and repeating absolute bullshit about shit he doesn’t understand. Mike Masnick of TechDirt had some pretty good thoughts on it. But the presence of Musk’s son, as well as Musk’s level of formality in his clothing, suggests two things. One is that Musk is devoted to trying to humanize his image and make himself seem like a relatable family man. This seems to have worked somewhat, as today there are headlines from CNN and other outlets suggesting exactly that.

The second message is: “I can do whatever I want, and nobody can stop me.”

Armored Cybertrucks

The State Department is set to spend $400 million dollars on “armored Tesla Cybertrucks”, in a move that should surprise no one that understands the adage one hand washes the other. Or, more commonly, tit-for-tat. They walked this back to $400 million for ‘armored electric vehicles’, but we all know they’ll be Teslas. Nobody has pushed back on why there’s a need for this, or why Cybertrucks (in the initial procurement order) rather than just about any, more practical electric vehicle.

It’s worth noting that time and again, it’s been proven that despite Tesla’s claims to the contrary, they do store and collate all of the camera and audio data from Tesla vehicles. Meaning Musk will have a direct line to review footage and audio from all of these State Department vehicles, without oversight. So essentially all of them are bugged, and answerable to a non-governmental individual.

Edit: The State Department put out a press release today noting that they have not, in fact, awarded Tesla a contract for $400 million for armored vehicles. In this context, awarded is doing some very heavy lifting. Yes, of course they haven’t awarded it. It doesn’t change the fact that their own released budgetary info was soliciting a desire for these vehicles yesterday.