The Musk Dynasty Will Be Hereditary

It’s abundantly clear now that the President of the United States is Donald Trump in name only, and that this show is being run by Elon Musk. In a press conference this week in the Oval Office to announce the second executive order pertaining to the “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)”, Musk, standing next to Trump, explained that the United States is not a democracy, it’s a bureaucracy, and by getting rid of the bureaucracy democracy will be magically restored.

As Heather Cox Richardson explains in depth, the updated executive order gives near limitless power to Musk’s DOGE, which itself appears to repurpose a previous government agency designed to solve IT issues with, ironically, Obamacare and thus exists within an existing legal framework. In short, the new executive order places a DOGE agent in every government department to interfere with every government hire and enforce an attrition-based workforce reduction of four to one. That is, for every four people that leave, one may be hired.

While he continues to sift through and shut down government departments looking for what he calls fraud using software engineers rather than forensic auditors, court challenges are nominally succeeding. A judge who blocked his attempts to shut down government funding was greeted with the personal information of his daughter, who works is a civil servant, being shared on Musk’s X account. Where Musk obtained her financial disclosures is not clear, but we do know that his DOGE has been into the tax records of American citizens. Yet it is Judge McConnell who is facing impeachment for trying to obstruct the illegal activities of the administration.

DOGE is shutting down departments and cutting funding in ways that are not consistent with US law. The power of the purse, in the United States, is held exclusively by Congress. The President can request pauses or removal of congressionally-approved funding, but Congress gets to vote on whether or not to grant the request.

At the same time as Musk is using DOGE to shut down various government departments, many of them currently investigating Musk’s business activities, which have not abated while in the administration, the Republican majority in congress is proposing some other transparent thefts from the American public.

The debt ceiling has long been a curiosity of the American system. The government budget is premised on significant deficits, borrowed from a mixture of wealthy people and capital funds who have extra money to loan the government, presumably from not paying the government their share of taxes, and from foreign powers. The acculuated debt has a completely arbitrary cab called the debt ceiling. Congress has agreed to raise this debt ceiling by $4 trillion — that’s with 12 zeroes, $4,000,000,000,000 — while also proposing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans of $4.5 trillion, and cutting funding to government services and programs by about $1.5 trillion, with much of the cuts coming from DOGE’s direction.

In short, Congress is going to give the richest in America $4.5 trillion, borrow $4 trillion of it back largely from the same people, and cut government services to the masses to pay the interest on the money borrowed from the wealthy to give them the tax cut.

That’s a pretty good deal for the world’s wealthiest person, standing behind the President in the White House. And about that…

At Tuesday’s press conference, Musk’s consolidated power all came together visually in the bizarre half-hour long performance. He brought his four year old son, X Æ A-Xii, to the Oval Office. That, on its own, is not that remarkable. Politicians bring their children out in public all the time for practical reasons and to show themselves as average, relatable, people raising their families.

The body language between Trump, Musk, and X, was the interesting part. While Trump sat looking uncomfortable, X walked up to the titular president while his father was speaking and said what sounded like “you’re not the President, go away” and later “I want you to shush… your mouth”. Out of the mouths of babes, as they say; it is clear that Musk does not consider Trump to be the President, or his son would not have picked up and shared that concept.

Musk has talked at length about his desire to make humans a multi-planetary species by getting to Mars as quickly as possible. The one government contractor that is not suffering through DOGE’s cuts is Musk-owned Mars-bound company SpaceX, which Wednesday received a new $38 million government contract.

Trump’s only major accomplishment in his first term was to not get his country into any new wars. Since Musk’s arrival, Trump has been fanning the flames of foreign conflict and conquest at every opportunity. Trump believes Canada needs to be the 51st state, never suggested during his first term, while Musk, already a Canadian citizen, has openly endorsed Pierre Poilievre for Prime Minister.

Musk appears to see himself as becoming the emperor of the United States and the territories it can add, and hopes some day to be the first person in history to simultaneously rule over more than once planet.

And by showing that even his son can be, ever so briefly, more powerful than the sitting President of the United States, he’s showing that he intends his empire to be a family dynasty.