Eliminating The Middleman

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I'm starting to see a common thread among Trump/Musk ("Trusk") supporters who are letting an unelected billionaire from South Africa dismantle government agencies without going through Congress. They justify this because they are all convinced that Congress has been so thoroughly corrupted that it can't do anything in the public interest anymore.

There is a nugget of truth at the core of that perception. Congresscritters, particularly the Republican variety, have for the most part become so dependent on campaign donations from giant corporations and billionaires that they are indebted to them for winning their seat and keeping it.

Bernie Sanders built a substantial following by pointing this out and he attempted to correct it. Bernie was somewhat successful.  Democrats are now less dependent on big money donations thanks to the grassroots organization Act Blue which makes it easy for Democrats to receive large numbers of small donations from individual citizens. This makes Democrats less dependent on big money donors, while some have been able to eliminate the need for corporate funding altogether.

Trump, however, took a different approach. Being (barely) a member if the billionaire class himself, he has successfully used diversion tactics to draw attention away from the excessive influence his type has over the federal government. He convinced a majority of voters that the real problem is the "liberal agenda" relating to the border, LBGTQ rights, government regulations, guns, DEI, and an imagined war on Christmas, which is "destroying America."

So Trumpers are willingly letting Trump, Elon Musk, and their inexperienced minions have their way with every government agency while Congress just stands by and watches them dismantle everything, supposedly in the public interest which they define as "owning the libs." 

What Trumpers are not considering as they cheer on Trusk is the obvious connection Trusk has to the billionaire class that has corrupted Congress. They think Trusk is their savior who will rid the nation of overbearing government bureaucrats and their fictitious "deep state." But Trump is more corrupt than anyone! He's aggressively bypassing Congress, essentially eliminating the middleman, so he can be more like a king than a president. If he is successful, billionaires and giant corporations will no longer have to buy off individual Congresscritters. Instead, the president will hold all of the power for the benefit of big money, and the easily intimidated Republican majority in Congress will become a rubber stamp for Trusk.

And the Trumpers are OK with this.

Trump wants absolute power. He has a history of throwing temper tantrums if he doesn't get his way.  Case in point, he knew he lost the 2020 election fair and square, yet he spent the next two months trying to "find" the "missing" votes so he could stay in the White House. When that failed, he encouraged a mob of angry followers to march on the capitol to disrupt the proceedings that would formalize Joe Biden's win over him.

Trump can't have absolute power if Congress, even a majority Republican Congress, has any control over the government. You see, even Republican Congrescritters have to go back to their constituents every two years and get reelected. For incumbents, the bar of getting reelected is set pretty low, but the bar is there, and just a handful of losses in just a few "swing" districts can abruptly change the balance of power in Washington. Trump can't afford that in 2026, if he hopes to still be relevant after the midterm elections. So he has set out to make Congress irrelevant as quickly as possible. 

And the sheepish Republican majority in Congress is OK with that. 

By concentrating power in the Oval Office he alone will be running this country, and the rest of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, will have no more say in how things are run.

Yay?

 

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