Summary
The White House confirmed that Elon Musk is working as a “special government employee” under Trump, granting him significant authority to cut federal spending.
Musk has a government email, office space, and access to sensitive Treasury systems. His team abruptly shut down USAID headquarters on Monday.
Musk is consolidating unchecked power, raising legal and ethical concerns, particularly given his federal contracts.
Musk is unpaid and may not be required to disclose financial interests.
Like… Like a super special employee? An S.S.?
Someone really needs to shoot him.
“Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
Any bets on how long it will be until Elon does something so unpopular that there’s blowback on Trump and it becomes “Elon acted on this alone and I had nothing to do with it.”
I insist on only calling him President Musk because I know when he takes enough attention and credit from Trump, Trump will get mad and tell Elon to fuck off.
It’s legal because I said so
So is there no conflict of interest with the companies he runs getting federal contracts? Don’t politicians need to put their companies into some type of trust where they can’t run it and make decisions that would be in their favour? I mean I know it doesn’t work like that with stick trading (cough cough Pelosi).
I brought up the conflict of interest to a trump coworker and he deadass said, “I get the conflict of interest, but I just don’t care.” The mask is fully off.
Edit: not that I’m surprised, just depressed and somewhat bewildered
Trump did away with the trust thing. And they let him because it wasn’t a law, it was just something that was understood to be done. No talk of him doing it this time either.
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He’s special, alright.
Where’s all the “But…but…Jack Smith wasn’t legally appointed” people at?
I imagine that as a formality Musk’s recommendations go past Trump, then to Russell Vought who is head of the OBM (office of management and business), and the actual official in charge of funding allocations.
I think congress is the actual official in charge of funding allocations.
Is that the appropriation bill that fills the annual budget? Would the OBM be more like, allocation of those funds? I don’t know much about this stuff.
Would dems even have the votes to “shut down the government” that way? Is that in June/July?
Does that mean his communications will be subject to FOIA?
Doubt it. I bet they’ll try to classify any of his communications as presidential advice, which would make them privileged communications not subject to foia
Fat chance. I read he brought in his own server and connected it to the network at the OMB to spam emails to federal employees. That seems highly illegal.
Gosh, I remember a quaint time in the olden times when having your OWN EMAIL SERVER was something worthy of being lined up against a wall and shot for.
Guess that only applies to Democratic candidates for President named Hillary.
Also, and it bears repeating - I guess this would have been jUsTaSbAd under Kamala, because something something neoliberal argle bargle status quo genocide…
Legality is just words on a piece of paper if nobody is going to enforce it.
I tend to agree, but we should at least try. Pull every lever of governance we have for as long as we have it.
I don’t disagree but it’s not as if we’re dealing with people who have any sort of integrity or honor, who’ll accept when they’ve done something wrong.
Elon is special. Not in a good way though.
But he’s autistic guys! We’re all misunderstanding, there is no Nazi coup going on.
He failed background check.
The richest man on the planet who once joked about ending world hunger is cutting federal spending of the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. Let that sink in for a moment.
And they were in an awful hurry to kill USAID.
That’s probably just a trial run. They are floating the idea of killing the Department of Education now.
Not good enough.
Just because Trump declares him special doesn’t mean he is, or that he should have special privileges, anymore than his moronic cabinet picks can start moving their shit into their offices before being confirmed by the Senate.
And being special doesn’t excuse him from being a nazi.
He’s only special in the short bus sense of special.
No, he’s special in that he’s an entitled narcissist bar any ethics or principles.
Let’s be careful to not throw our differently abled friends under the bus by comparing them to Musk.
After all, most of them are kinder and have more sympathy than Musk.
*empathy
As long as we the people continue to allow it, he is indeed whatever they say he is.
What if donvict says “I HEREBY declare fElon as special” on his own stupid social media platform? Is that super duper Constitutional enough for everyone?
They’re proving that “act as if” really does work.
Oh no, this is one of those really fun powers we gave presidents a while back and forgot about. Presidents have a wide ranging authority to temporarily hire people and skip most of the ethics and oversight stuff that comes with normal federal hiring. The limitation is that it’s only good for certain positions, which DOGE, (formerly USDS) is a part of.
Oh he’s special, alright.
He looks pretty special in the photo.
