Among the new, never-before-tried things I’ve done over the years that have left me physically and mentally drained: I left home to go to college, I got married, I started exciting new jobs (more than once), and now I’m retired and focused on near-daily time on the driving range to improve my golf game. None of that compares, though, to how I feel watching President Musk remake the U.S. government, in many cases without the benefit of the law to support his actions. It’s exhausting.
I firmly belief that he and his little friend – uh, I mean TFG, not the literally “little guy” on his shoulders – are trying to do as much as they possibly can as quickly as they can so that we can’t keep track or keep up, to breed fear and confusion, and to cover up the graft and corruption. The scope of what is laid out in Project 2025 is no small task; they don’t want to wait until the other team is ready to go before they start the game.
The smug ones love to grin and remind us with a tsk tsk that “elections have consequences.” That is so, and even if I don’t like it Trump won the election (although not with the “mandate” for a such radical remaking of the government as they claim) and got right to work doing some of the things he promised. He’s also doing some things that he never ever said a word about, and some of his voters are already expressing regret about their election choice.
(BTW, as far as him “working” is concerned: have you ever seen a cleaner president’s Oval Office desk in your life? Two big phones, a Diet Coke button, and a large box of big fat Sharpies to etch his scribble onto another Executive Order. But not one thing for him to read, digest and understand before making a decision.)
Yes, so far some of it seems to violate the law and/or the Constitution, but this is not the first president to do something not permitted under law. In the past, Congress and the courts, the other two branches of government designed to provide the checks and the balances to the Executive, have taken steps to rein in a president, and already there are a number of lawsuits seeking court action to rule against this Administration.
But where is Congress? Yes, I know, the president’s party controls both the House and the Senate and so those members are not going to be quick to challenge the leader of their own party. But, c’mon: this Congress has turned into the three blind mice and is not even standing up for itself and its prerogatives, and that is highly unusual. A body full of folks who have never been accused of being shy, retiring wallflowers, who are generally quite assertive when it comes to their own high-and-mightiness and the rights and privileges thereto appertaining, are acting like they have no part to play. I get it that the Republicans are scared of MAGA nation being mobilized to challenge them in the next party primary election, but that excuse doesn’t explain what happened to the Democrats. The Democrats are only four seats shy of a majority in both the House and the Senate; “divided government” isn’t much of a hindrance to the majority when the minority goes into hiding. There’s a difference between being a member of Congress supporting the president of your party, and abdicating your responsibility under the Constitution: “Congress has not authorized [Trump’s] radical overhaul [of the federal government], and the protocols of the Constitution do not permit statutorily mandated agencies and programs to be transformed — or reorganized out of existence — without congressional authorization.”
Trump says he is fighting to defeat the un-American actions from within the government undertaken by elements of “the deep state,” a self-generated boogie man (boogeyman? bogeyman?) that can be blamed whenever no responsible party can be identified for something the MAGAs don’t like. But I think it’s very important for all of us to remember, it is not only not true just because Trump says it, in fact it is very likely not true because Trump said it, because he is the most prolific and shameless liar of our lifetime.
There’s a difference between bad policy and illegal activity. There’s a difference between a guy you didn’t vote for doing things you think shouldn’t be done, and that same guy breaking the law—with a smirk on his face—and daring anyone to do anything about it.
There’s a difference between being the leader of the free world, and presuming to dictate to the rest of the world what they are to do. Or to do a thing yourself and tell them to get used to it, as in the case of I’ll negotiate an end to your war, Ukraine, you don’t get to be there. That is just the kind of thing that makes the rest of the world hate America. By the way, you really shouldn’t accuse the leader of a country that should be our ally of being a dictator, and accuse his country of being responsible for being attacked by Russia when that is so obviously not true. What it is is helping spread Russian propaganda and disinformation, and making the rest of the world nervous thinking they can’t trust this American president, and maybe not the United States at all, about anything.
THIS JUST IN: I just ran across another possible reason for all the members of Congress to be afraid to challenge TFG. Gabriel Sherman writes in Vanity Fair that many are “scared shitless” that they will face physical violence from MAGA Nation. Sounds about right.
HEY, IT'S PAT RYAN'S BLOG! 