Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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nycfan said:

Trump administration orders Pentagon to plan for sweeping budget cuts​

The directive, detailed in a memo dated Tuesday, exempts a handful of programs, including the president’s expanded military mission along the U.S.-Mexico border.


"
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military to develop plans for cutting 8 percent from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post and officials familiar with the matter — a striking proposal certain to face internal resistance and strident bipartisan opposition in Congress.

Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by Feb. 24, according to the memo, which is dated Tuesday and includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern U.S. border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of submarines, one-way attack drones and other munitions.

The Pentagon budget for 2025 is about $850 billion, with broad consensus on Capitol Hill that extensive spending is necessary to deter threats posed by China and Russia, in particular. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.

Hegseth’s budget directive follows a separate order from the Trump administration seeking lists of thousands of probationary Defense Department employees expected to be fired this week. That effort is being overseen by billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service as part of his broader dismantling of the federal bureaucracy. ..."
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Good. Now the cost cutting becomes serious instead of a publicity campaign.
 




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Musk has been accused of carrying his young son X around on his shoulders as a human shield since the healthcare CEO was assassinated, which is a mean-spirited allegation. But it has been widely reported that he is increasingly paranoid (or reasonably in fear of?) being assassinated. The drug use probably doesn’t help him manage those fears.
 
nycfan said:




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Musk has been accused of carrying his young son X around on his shoulders as a human shield since the healthcare CEO was assassinated, which is a mean-spirited allegation. But it has been widely reported that he is increasingly paranoid (or reasonably in fear of?) being assassinated. The drug use probably doesn’t help him manage those fears.
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I think he has good reason to be fearful and that reason grows by the day. If you abruptly screw over tens of thousands of people, you’re going to have some loons in that mix.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Good. Now the cost cutting becomes serious instead of a publicity campaign.
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Hegseth said last night that these aren’t budget cuts. Rather redistribution of funding priorities. They are planning to cut some things and move the money around. They are still expecting a budget increase for DOD for next year. So still just a publicity campaign to try and extend their tax cut.
 
nycfan said:




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Musk has been accused of carrying his young son X around on his shoulders as a human shield since the healthcare CEO was assassinated, which is a mean-spirited allegation. But it has been widely reported that he is increasingly paranoid (or reasonably in fear of?) being assassinated. The drug use probably doesn’t help him manage those fears.
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It's pretty impossible to make a mean spirited accusation against Elon Musk. He's likely actively engaged in things far wrose than any accusation that could be levied.
 
wmheel1287 said:
It's pretty impossible to make a mean spirited accusation against Elon Musk. He's likely actively engaged in things far wrose than any accusation that could be levied.
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Concur. Using a child as a human shield is a mild logical leap stemming from the abundance of musk's well documented anti-social behavior. God only knows what's going down behind the scenes, given what's paraded out in public.

ETA: I think the likeliest explanation is musk's PR people have inserted his kids into the public image to cover for the destruction and grift. I have no doubt he sees a shield as a secondary benefit, at minimum.
 
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Healing said:
Concur. Using a child as a human shield is a mild logical leap stemming from the abundance of musk's well documented anti-social behavior. God only knows what's going down behind the scenes, given what's paraded out in public.
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Not to mention his relationships, or more specifically his lack thereof, with his other children.

Anyone who throws up Nazi salutes loses any right to the benefit of any doubt. Forever and ever amen.
 


“A quarter-century ago, as a young foreign correspondent for the Washington Post based in Moscow, I reported on Putin’s takeover of Russia, a process of crushing the country’s nascent, flawed democracy. Targets included any possible rival power centers that did not owe their authority to Putin, from independent media and wealthy oligarchs to elected governors.

Within a few years, the Kremlin had dismantled or defanged them all. At the same time, Putin empowered former K.G.B. colleagues from the security services, who created a modern-day dictatorship for him from their stronghold in what Russians call the “power ministries.”

This playbook is the same one being followed now by Trump. It’s important to be clear-eyed about this. I don’t know where it will end, or how far Trump will take it. America, thank goodness, is still a vastly different country from Russia, with a long tradition of democratic freedoms, decentralized power in the states, and constitutional governance. But tally up the damage from one month, and it is considerable. And no, I’m not just talking about ominous theatrics like Trump openly musing about staying in office for an unconstitutional third term or, just one day ago, proclaiming himself a “king” on social media and having his White House circulate a fake image of him wearing a crown on the cover of a Time-like magazine.

Washington today echoes with so many uncomfortable reminders of that transitional moment in Moscow—the sudden, fearful silence of critics who had previously spoken out, the business tycoons rushing to kiss the President’s ring, the lying and reality distortions to fit the official narrative. Trump’s consolidation of power this time has been fast and consequential.

In a slew of executive orders, he has asserted the right to unilaterally revoke the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, cancel billions of dollars in federal funding, and assume executive control over independent federal agencies. He has empowered the world’s richest man to fire tens of thousands of government employees and eliminate long-established, statutorily authorized programs, ranging from America’s famed Epidemic Intelligence Service to its entire foreign-aid program.

Although some of the cuts are being fought in the courts, the G.O.P.-controlled Congress has allowed this unprecedented usurpation of its prerogatives with hardly more than a few isolated bleats of concern. In the Senate, Republicans have rolled over on even his most controversial, unfit nominees, including, most ominously, voting on Thursday to confirm Kash Patel as director of the F.B.I., despite (or perhaps because of) the prospect that Patel will use the agency to go after Trump’s enemies—a list of whom Patel helpfully itemized in a book published last year.

In some ways, Trump seems to believe he’s already a dictator with unchecked power. That certainly was the message of his social-media post over the weekend, channelling his inner Napoleon with a quote often attributed to the nineteenth-century French emperor: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

Just this week alone, Trump has ordered New York to stop charging cars extra for driving into Manhattan, has mused out loud about bringing the District of Columbia under federal rule, and has confirmed that he banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool for refusing to go along with his personal whim—codified in yet another executive order—to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

In a federal courtroom on Wednesday, Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, personally argued to drop the corruption prosecution of New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, so that he could help advance Trump’s anti-immigration policy agenda—a quid pro quo so obviously crooked that it led to multiple prosecutors quitting in protest.

Coming soon, according to multiple news reports on Thursday, is a loyalty purge of top generals at the Pentagon, including possibly the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This time, Trump wants to insure that the power ministries are fully in his control. …”
 
nycfan said:


“A quarter-century ago, as a young foreign correspondent for the Washington Post based in Moscow, I reported on Putin’s takeover of Russia, a process of crushing the country’s nascent, flawed democracy. Targets included any possible rival power centers that did not owe their authority to Putin, from independent media and wealthy oligarchs to elected governors.

Within a few years, the Kremlin had dismantled or defanged them all. At the same time, Putin empowered former K.G.B. colleagues from the security services, who created a modern-day dictatorship for him from their stronghold in what Russians call the “power ministries.”

This playbook is the same one being followed now by Trump. It’s important to be clear-eyed about this. I don’t know where it will end, or how far Trump will take it. America, thank goodness, is still a vastly different country from Russia, with a long tradition of democratic freedoms, decentralized power in the states, and constitutional governance. But tally up the damage from one month, and it is considerable. And no, I’m not just talking about ominous theatrics like Trump openly musing about staying in office for an unconstitutional third term or, just one day ago, proclaiming himself a “king” on social media and having his White House circulate a fake image of him wearing a crown on the cover of a Time-like magazine.

Washington today echoes with so many uncomfortable reminders of that transitional moment in Moscow—the sudden, fearful silence of critics who had previously spoken out, the business tycoons rushing to kiss the President’s ring, the lying and reality distortions to fit the official narrative. Trump’s consolidation of power this time has been fast and consequential.

In a slew of executive orders, he has asserted the right to unilaterally revoke the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, cancel billions of dollars in federal funding, and assume executive control over independent federal agencies. He has empowered the world’s richest man to fire tens of thousands of government employees and eliminate long-established, statutorily authorized programs, ranging from America’s famed Epidemic Intelligence Service to its entire foreign-aid program.

Although some of the cuts are being fought in the courts, the G.O.P.-controlled Congress has allowed this unprecedented usurpation of its prerogatives with hardly more than a few isolated bleats of concern. In the Senate, Republicans have rolled over on even his most controversial, unfit nominees, including, most ominously, voting on Thursday to confirm Kash Patel as director of the F.B.I., despite (or perhaps because of) the prospect that Patel will use the agency to go after Trump’s enemies—a list of whom Patel helpfully itemized in a book published last year.

In some ways, Trump seems to believe he’s already a dictator with unchecked power. That certainly was the message of his social-media post over the weekend, channelling his inner Napoleon with a quote often attributed to the nineteenth-century French emperor: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

Just this week alone, Trump has ordered New York to stop charging cars extra for driving into Manhattan, has mused out loud about bringing the District of Columbia under federal rule, and has confirmed that he banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool for refusing to go along with his personal whim—codified in yet another executive order—to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

In a federal courtroom on Wednesday, Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, personally argued to drop the corruption prosecution of New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, so that he could help advance Trump’s anti-immigration policy agenda—a quid pro quo so obviously crooked that it led to multiple prosecutors quitting in protest.

Coming soon, according to multiple news reports on Thursday, is a loyalty purge of top generals at the Pentagon, including possibly the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This time, Trump wants to insure that the power ministries are fully in his control. …”
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“… Back in 2019, Putin crowed in an interview with the Financial Times about the end of the “obsolete” liberal world order that had long since “outlived its purpose.” The President of the European Council at the time, Poland’s Donald Tusk, pushed back on him, insisting that what was “really obsolete” was Putin’s own heavy-handed brand of governance, with its “authoritarianism, personality cults, and the rule of oligarchs.”

Just a few years later, reading that sentence evokes only sadness: it’s no longer just Putin’s Russia that threatens the foundations of Western liberal democracy but Trump’s Washington. “
 
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nycfan said:
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Our entire political system and government has degenerated into a reality television show. And the people running the government have about the same level of intelligence, morals, and ethics of most reality tv show stars, so it fits. And far too many people are lapping it up because all they watch are reality tv shows, "pro" wrestling, and the like. And it will remain that way until the shit really hits the fan - say, an economic collapse or serious foreign policy crisis - in which case we're all screwed because the loons we have running the government won't have a clue as to what they should do to fix it. Imagine Trump 2.0 trying to manage something like the Cuban Missile Crisis or the 2008 near-economic implosion and you'll get the idea.
 
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