If anyone else did what Trump has allowed Elon Musk to do, they’d be in federal prison on a variety of charges. Musk sent a gang of tech head twenty somethings into the Treasury Department to demand access to the private information of millions of people. They went into US Aid for International Development shut it down and turned what left over to the State Department. This agency helped millions of people around the world who need food to survive and all kinds of medical care. This, of course, on top the threat to two million federal workers. Take a buyout offer, or face termination. This is something that would shock us if it was happening in some third world country. This has never happened before in our history.
Today a federal judge has temporarily restricted Musk’s raid of the Treasury Department. The judge has ordered anyone who had access to the system to destroy all copies of downloaded records. This is the personal data of millions of Americans. Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent must appear in court on February 14th. This comes in response to nineteen state attorneys general claiming that Trump and Musk have violated the Constitution and “failed to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress.” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said the injunction meant “the world’s richest man has been stopped from stealing your data.”
The New York Times reports two of the Musk raiders have a bit of a history. One has posted racist rants on X, of course, owned by Musk. The other was fired from a date security firm after a leak of information. Imagine you’re one of the two million federal workers who have had their jobs threatened. You go into work one day, where you have been working for years, and told you’re done. Take a forced by out or you’ll probably be fired. All this is Trump’s deranged plan to cut what he and Musk have claimed is overwhelming fraud, waste and corruption. I wonder how many of those workers voted for Trump? Sixty-five thousand workers have signed up for the buy out. This idea is also on hold by the courts. I don’t think anyone would argue there isn’t waste in the federal government that could be cleaned out. But how about having a qualified team of experts come in and fix the problem. Instead of this terror campaign against people who work to keep our government functioning who Trump claims are part of “the deep state.”
It’s not just a domestic problem. One of the most bizarre performances by a president was the Gaza news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Trump’s plan to move two million Palestinians out of the devastated Gaza while the United States takes over the country, rebuilds it into the “Riviera of the Middle East” for all people. He was reading this as Netanyahu, who destroyed Gaza, was smiling a shaking his head saying what a good idea it was. Oh, and we’re not going to pay for it and it may need thousands of America troops on the ground for years. This sounds like his buddy Putin moving into Ukraine or the other guy back in the thirties who liked to gobble up countries. Trump hasn’t gotten around to ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.
Maybe the most indelible image of the first three weeks is Trump sitting at his desk signing all those Executive orders with that over sized black magic marker and holding it up to show his oversized unreadable signature. We should be very afraid of what we have done.
Rough ride ahead!