Donald Trump ditched any shred of decorum the moment he won the 2024 election, and quickly began stuffing his Cabinet with wealthy wackos with exactly zero experience.
Many of them are, much like Trump, also accused of — or convicted of — various crimes, and nearly all of them are so unqualified as to be laughable. The Trump White House is set to be the wealthiest, and least capable, istration in history, and leading the pack of pitiful pundits is Elon Musk.
Musk quickly replaced every other Trump crony at the top of the president-elect’s list of allies, and largely due to his stacked bank . It’s Musk’s wealth, not his qualifications, that landed him with his shiny new position, and we’re set to learn whether he can tank a country as fast as he tanked Twitter. There’s no real reason someone like Musk, whose conflicting interest list is longer than a CVS receipt, should be involved in any body of government, but its increasingly seeming that he’s set to occupy an extremely important space in Trump’s White House.
And it does give Musk broad influence over the U.S. government, which is prompting widespread anxiety over Trump’s growing Cabinet.
It’s a particularly eyebrow-raising development, given as news is breaking that Musk and SpaceX are undergoing three separate reviews by Federal agencies for possible security breaches, including failing to disclose details of meetings with foreign leaders, and declining to reveal the type and frequency of his drug use, per an investigative report by The New York Times.
Is Elon Musk’s new position part of the presidential Cabinet?
No one was truly surprised to learn that Musk secured a position at Trump’s side, but given his lack of political experience and clear personal interests, few thought he’d manage to claim one so high up. Despite the terrible optics, however, Trump just went ahead and granted the wealthiest man on the planet influence over the government via his new position as the co-head of the newly-minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Trump has indicated, in early interviews, that Musk’s new department will operate outside the bounds of the government. That means that Musk is not technically a part of the Trump Cabinet, just a loyal, wealthy crony with vested interests in how the Trump government proceeds. He and Vivek Ramaswamy are technically separate from the Cabinet, but they’ll still have a position at Trump’s side — or perhaps his backside — working to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies,” according to Trump.
It’s still not clear what kind of an approval process will be required for Musk and Ramaswamy to be confirmed, but it’s unlikely their nominations will be blocked. Despite Musk’s clear personal interests and the typical restrictions of the U.S. government, Congress is set to become hopelessly tangled in with Trump. With no real checks left to balance out the system, Musk and Ramaswamy are likely to be confirmed, regardless of the process, and take up their new positions when 2025 rolls around.
Published: Dec 22, 2024 03:08 pm