The DOGE Dance of Mass Distraction
Trump is pulling a fast one on MAGA and Musk to get revenge on everyone
The much-ballyhooed Department of Government Efficiency is anything but.
It’s not about cost-savings at all. Not for Donald Trump. He just wants payback, big time. He’s using anyone (Elon Musk) and anything (Project 2025) to satiate his roaring lust for getting even.
All because someone dared — timidly, halfheartedly, but still dared — to try to hold the Imperial Donald to account for his wrongdoing.
How dare they? That shall not stand! He won’t tolerate it, even while the rest of us have to put up with him, without end. Trump intends to have the last laugh by driving the U.S. government into cryptocurrency insolvency and the nation into feudal warring parts.
It’s Trump’s demonic specialty.
After all, Trump is a CEO/business owner who drove his companies smack into multiple bankruptcies. Let it all burn, as far as he’s concerned.
Yes, Trump has sold his soul — for a damn sight more than thirty pieces of silver. Small wonder he surrounds himself with billionaires. Like a vampire seeks human blood, Trump continually needs large cash infusions, and the one percenters line up eagerly to open their veins to him.
Their blood had better be of the green and folding variety.
Trump’s not picky about where such moolah comes from. Musk’s pockets. Vladimir Putin’s hoard (stolen from the Russian people). The U.S. Treasury. It’s all Trump’s for the taking, and he is busy taking plenty right now.
DOGE is the side-show, the huckster’s diversion to keep our attention fixated while Trump robs everyone blind and sets up the conflagration of his vanity.
There is, of course, a catch. There always is with Trump. Who’s really zooming who? That is the question to ponder in all this chaos and distraction.
Let’s examine the players and their real goals.
Declaring empathy a weakness of Western civilization, Musk gleefully chops away at any and every federal agency that might possibly try to rein in his shady business practices. Musk is also landing lots of new profit opportunities while he mows down the federal bureaucracy.
As an additional benny, Musk now has the goods on his competitors from all those formerly confidential government files on contractors that are now under his control. (I hope they sue the pants off of him. There has yet to be a man worth repeating a dozen times.)
Great for Musk, right? A pity (not) he’s much too arrogant to consider the Shakespearean example of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer. Cohen fell hard from grace when the scheme to hide Trump’s sexual relationship with a porn star until after the 2016 election came to light.
Cohen, left holding the bag, was the only one who did time for a crime that profited Trump, not him. That’s the way Donald likes it.
And Donald will be happy to let Musk take the fall should any of among that tsunami of DOGE lawsuits gain traction. Why do you think Trump publicly declared that Musk does indeed head DOGE — even after Department of Justice lawyers argued to a federal court that Musk is only a consultant?
Ambiguity suits Trump, just like chaos. The aim is to keep those Trump sees as his enemies on the back foot, always reacting instead of planning and getting ahead of him.
The very same chaos M.O. also applies to those who think of themselves as Trump’s allies and friends. News flash! Trump does not have allies or friends or even supporters. He just has tools. And he uses those tools unless or until they have outlived their worth to him. Then he drops them without a thought and moves on.
The One-Way Loyalty Street
Once Trump has extracted all the dollars he can get from Musk, or if the legal heat gets too high, he will cut Musk loose to twist in the wind. Like Trump did to Cohen, Rudy Giuliani, and a host of lawyers from his 2020 election fraud schemes who now find their legal careers in tatters because they foolishly went to bat for Donald Trump.
Trump regards loyalty as a one-way street, all heading in his direction. He demands absolute fealty from his retainers but never returns the favor. Never.
All that notwithstanding, the radical righties at The Heritage Foundation have to be thrilled. At last! The president steps aside while their newly minted DOJ officials and lawyers start shoving this country back to the 18th century.
They no doubt celebrate over DOGE tearing away at that pesky the federal bureaucracy that once upon a time was at least a minor check on the ambitions of the one percent to rule this country, democracy be damned. Their ultimate goal:
No unions.
No minimum wage.
No child labor laws.
No pollution controls.
No food safety inspections or weather forecasts for all.
No Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security.
No publicly funded education through high school.
No abortion for any reason in every state and no birth control, either.
Those unwashed masses should know their places, shut up, and work for pittances until they drop dead in their tracks. And women—white women, especially—should spit out babies until they die of exhaustion, too.
The one percenters’ wet dream is precisely what Project 2025 is all about. And Trump, for now, is happy to let that be the framework for his administration.
Not because he believes the ideology or cares about it. He’s just one lazy SOB and the Heritage Foundation is doing his work for him. Just like the Federalist Society chose all his federal judges and Supreme Court justices for him in his previous term.
Only Trump Gets the Spoils
But the Heritagers and the MAGA minions might want to hit pause on their euphoria. Trump reserves the spoils of grift and fraud for himself alone. And possibly family members to whom he still speaks.
Speaking of fraud and grift, what on earth did Putin and Trump promise each other during all those secret phone calls? Did they exchange rings and vow eternal faithfulness?
Now that would be news, given Trump’s spotty record on fidelity. Just ask Stormy Daniels. Trump sucks up to Putin because he wants something from him. And vice versa.
And, despite The Art of the Deal, Trump is one lousy negotiator. Putin certainly has gotten what he wanted from our wannabe Caesar. Trump pulled U.S. support out from under Ukraine, our ally, during the middle of war and has walked out on our European allies of the past eight decades.
That makes Trump a traitor in my book. There are no words to express my white hot rage over what he did.
But what has Trump gotten from Putin? Is it lurking in a numbered Swiss bank account? That’s probably part of it, because for Donald, everything is about money.
When we finally find out what Trump got from Putin, most likely we won’t like it. What will we do about it?