There is so much repellently sleazy behavior documented in the House Ethics Committee report about Matt Gaetz that a reader has to stop every few pages to look away and focus on what still seems astounding: This is the man that Donald Trump wanted to be the attorney general of the United States, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the land, the leader of the Department of Justice.
Trump wanted to give that position to a man who paid at least half a dozen women for sex, according to the report, which was made public on Monday. And the violation of Florida’s prostitution law isn’t even the real depravity; the committee took pains to detail the underlying implication of his actions: “Representative Gaetz took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter.”
Trump wanted to give the Justice Department to a man the committee says committed the statutory rape of a 17-year-old girl. A man who is accused of setting up a phony email account at his office in the House to buy illegal drugs and who then used the drugs to facilitate sexual misconduct. A man who accepted impermissible gifts and plane trips, according to the report, and who used the power of his office to help a woman with whom he was having sex. A man whose conduct, according to his own colleagues of both parties, “reflects discreditably upon the House.”
And of course, on Trump himself.
Nonetheless, when you read through the details, you can see the commonality between the two men, and the reasons Trump held Gaetz in high esteem. It’s not just the contempt for women as disposable commodities for hire or plunder; it’s the contempt for the law.
Gaetz fought the committee’s investigation at every turn, and the report’s appendices are full of letters from him dripping with disdain at the process, completely indignant that he should even be asked to account for his actions. He blames his enemies in Washington for his plight, he blames the press, he says Democrats have done much worse, and he just lies and lies, denying allegations that are fully documented elsewhere in the text.
The report says Gaetz refused to supply the committee with the exculpatory evidence that he claimed he had and refused to respond to subpoenas. His assertions “were nothing more than attempts to delay the committee’s investigation,” the report said. And then there were his attempts to bully witnesses against him. “The committee had serious concerns that Representative Gaetz might retaliate against individuals who cooperated with the committee,” the report said.
Does that sound familiar? It’s a summary of the conduct we’ve seen from the president-elect for years, whenever the law tries to make him responsible for his conduct. In many ways, these two men think the same way about authority, and in that sense, Gaetz would have been an ideal attorney general for the next administration.
Today the House Ethics Committee released its report on its investigation of widely reported allegations that while in office, former representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) had engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, shared inappropriate videos on the House floor, misused state records, diverted campaign funds for his own use, and accepted a bribe or an impermissible gift.
The report says that the committee found “substantial evidence” that Gaetz had, in fact, “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him”; “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl”; “used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy, on multiple occasions”; “accepted gifts…in excess of permissible amounts”; arranged official help for one of his sexual partners, whom he falsely identified to the State Department as a constituent, in getting a passport; tried to obstruct the committee’s investigation; and “acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House.”
The committee concluded that “there was substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”
It “did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that Representative Gaetz violated the federal sex trafficking statute. Although Representative Gaetz did cause the transportation of women across state lines for purposes of commercial sex, the Committee did not find evidence that any of those women were under 18 at the time of travel.”
Gaetz is a staunch ally of President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to put Gaetz in charge of the Justice Department. That appointment would have him responsible for law enforcement across the United States. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried hard to keep the report hidden once Trump had tapped Gaetz for attorney general, saying he “strongly request[ed] that the Ethics Committee not issue the report.”
The Ethics Committee at first deadlocked over releasing it, but Andrew Solender of Axios reported today that two Republicans on the committee, Representative Dave Joyce (R-OH) and Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), switched their votes to join the Democrats supporting the release of the report.
Ethics Committee chair Michael Guest (R-MS) and Representatives Michelle Fischbach (R-MN) and John Rutherford (R-FL) all opposed releasing the report, saying that they lost jurisdiction after Gaetz resigned, which he did when Trump announced his intention of putting him in the office of attorney general. In their comments in the report, they said they “do not challenge the Committee’s findings” but object to their disclosure.
Republican Party leaders were willing to put a man their own committee says likely violated state and federal laws into the position of the nation’s highest law enforcement officer. That scenario reflects the extraordinary danger of a country in which one party’s supporters see themselves as the country’s only legitimate governing party.
In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon’s team worried that the Republican Party would hemorrhage voters in the upcoming midterm elections. That spring, Nixon announced that rather than ending the Vietnam War, he had sent ground troops into Vietnam’s neighbor Cambodia. In the protests that followed, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd at Kent State University, killing four protesters. Nixon’s clumsy suggestion that the protesters were responsible for the shooting began to turn middle-class white Americans, his key demographic, against him.
So Nixon’s advisors turned to a strategy they called “positive polarization.” They believed that dividing the country was a positive development because it stoked the anger they needed to get their voters to turn out. They deliberately turned against what they called “the media, the left, [and] the liberal academic community,” drawing voters to Nixon by accusing their opponents of being lazy, dangerous, and anti-American.
This polarization became a key technique of the Republican Party in the Reagan years, when talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh began to fill the airwaves with attacks on “feminazis,” liberals, and Black Americans who they claimed were trying to impose socialism on America. By 1990, a Republican group associated with then-representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA) compiled a list of words for Republican candidates to use when talking about Democrats. They included “decay,” “sick,” “greed,” “corruption, “radical,” and “traitor.” In contrast, candidates were encouraged to refer to Republicans using words like “opportunity,” “courage,” “principle(d),” “caring,” and “peace.”
Over the past thirty years, Republicans appear to have come to believe that nothing is more important than making sure Republicans control the government. Less competition has given rise to states like Florida that are essentially controlled by the Republicans. This, in turn, means there is very little oversight of the party’s lawmakers, making obviously problematic candidates able to survive far longer than they would if there were opposition to highlight poor behavior.
It also means that party members appear willing to overlook deeply problematic behavior in their own lawmakers, who come to feel immune, while attacking Democrats for what Republicans claim is the same behavior. Notably, in February of this year, in a closed hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Gaetz badgered President Biden’s son Hunter over his drug use. Hunter Biden responded that he had been “absolutely transparent” about his drug use and asked: “What does that have to do with whether or not you're going to go forward with an impeachment of my father other than to simply try to embarrass me?”
The answer is that while the drug use of private citizen Hunter Biden did not affect the U.S. government, the drug use of congressmember Matt Gaetz did. In a healthy political system, political opposition would have called out his behavior long before he was tapped to become one of the most important figures in the government.
Crucially, in such a system, state law enforcement would have pursued Gaetz, and his own party would have dropped him like a hot potato long before it had to face commentary like that of progressive journalist Brian Tyler Cohen, who today wrote: “Congratulations to Mike Johnson for trying to pressure the House Ethics Committee into burying a report that found the then-nominee for attorney general had engaged in sexual activity with a minor. Party of Family Values, am I right?”
The Republicans’ determination to hold on to the government at all costs showed in a different story that broke this weekend. Representative Kay Granger (R-TX) has been absent from Congress since midsummer. On Sunday, Carlos Turcios of the Dallas Express reported that he found the 81-year-old representative in a memory care and assisted living home. In the months since she went missing, her staff continued to submit material to the Congressional Record, making it look like she was still active.
Chad Pergram of the Fox News Channel reported that a senior Republican source explained why Granger retained her seat despite her incapacity. Referring to what Pergram called “the paper-thin [Republican] House majority,” the source said: “Frankly, we needed the numbers.”
Granger’s condition has reignited the national conversation about the age and capacity of our lawmakers, an issue very much on the table for the 78-year-old president-elect, whose own behavior has been erratic for a while now.
On Sunday, Trump spoke at Turning Point’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, where, as Aaron Rupar of Public Notice recorded, he entered as if he were at a professional wrestling event. He proceeded to deliver a speech much like his campaign speeches.
It had an important new element in it, though, that he had pioneered on social media the night before. He claimed that Panama is not treating the U.S. well, and threatened that he will “demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly, and without question.” On Sunday he posted on social media that he wants Greenland too. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Panama’s president, José Raúl Mulino, responded that “every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent zones is part of Panama, and it will continue to be. Our country’s sovereignty and independence are not negotiable.” Prime Minister Mute B. Egede of Greenland said: “Greenland is ours. We are not for sale and will never be for sale. We must not lose our long struggle for freedom.”
To my knowledge, Trump never mentioned taking the Panama Canal or Greenland during the campaign, and such dramatic action will likely undermine the principle that countries can’t just take over weaker neighbors. This principle is central to the United Nations, which holds that territorial integrity and sovereignty are “sacrosanct” and that members “shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” David Sanger and Lisa Friedman of the New York Times note that Trump’s aggression “reflects the instincts of a real estate developer who suddenly has the power of the world’s largest military to back up his negotiating strategy.”
In a healthy political system, pronouncements from an elderly president-elect that could upend 80 years of foreign policy would spark significant discussion from all quarters.
Elon Musk is ‘unofficial president’ of the US, Netanyahu says
Boarded up shops on Union Square have reopened, the extent & squalor of the drug infested encampments in the city is a bit reduced, and a few of the closed restaurants reopened. Still far short of what it once was.
There is so much repellently sleazy behavior documented in the House Ethics Committee report about Matt Gaetz that a reader has to stop every few pages to look away and focus on what still seems astounding: This is the man that Donald Trump wanted to be the attorney general of the United States, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the land, the leader of the Department of Justice.
Trump wanted to give that position to a man who paid at least half a dozen women for sex, according to the report, which was made public on Monday. And the violation of Florida’s prostitution law isn’t even the real depravity; the committee took pains to detail the underlying implication of his actions: “Representative Gaetz took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter.”
Trump wanted to give the Justice Department to a man the committee says committed the statutory rape of a 17-year-old girl. A man who is accused of setting up a phony email account at his office in the House to buy illegal drugs and who then used the drugs to facilitate sexual misconduct. A man who accepted impermissible gifts and plane trips, according to the report, and who used the power of his office to help a woman with whom he was having sex. A man whose conduct, according to his own colleagues of both parties, “reflects discreditably upon the House.”
And of course, on Trump himself.
Nonetheless, when you read through the details, you can see the commonality between the two men, and the reasons Trump held Gaetz in high esteem. It’s not just the contempt for women as disposable commodities for hire or plunder; it’s the contempt for the law.
Gaetz fought the committee’s investigation at every turn, and the report’s appendices are full of letters from him dripping with disdain at the process, completely indignant that he should even be asked to account for his actions. He blames his enemies in Washington for his plight, he blames the press, he says Democrats have done much worse, and he just lies and lies, denying allegations that are fully documented elsewhere in the text.
The report says Gaetz refused to supply the committee with the exculpatory evidence that he claimed he had and refused to respond to subpoenas. His assertions “were nothing more than attempts to delay the committee’s investigation,” the report said. And then there were his attempts to bully witnesses against him. “The committee had serious concerns that Representative Gaetz might retaliate against individuals who cooperated with the committee,” the report said.
Does that sound familiar? It’s a summary of the conduct we’ve seen from the president-elect for years, whenever the law tries to make him responsible for his conduct. In many ways, these two men think the same way about authority, and in that sense, Gaetz would have been an ideal attorney general for the next administration.
It is starting to seem like the best way to interpret social media posts from President-elect Donald Trump is through the lens of professional wrestling. Never a true athletic competition—although it certainly required athletic training—until the 1980s, professional wrestling depended on “kayfabe,” the shared agreement among audience and actors that they would pretend the carefully constructed script and act were real.
But as Abraham Josephine Reisman explained in the New York Times last year, Vince and Linda McMahon pushed to move professional wrestling into entertainment to avoid health regulations and the taxes imposed on actual sporting events. That shift damaged the profession until in the mid-1990s, wrestlers and promoters began to mix the fake world of wrestling with reality, bringing real-life tensions to the ring in what might or might not have been real. “Suddenly,” Reisman wrote, “the fun of the match had everything to do with decoding it.”
Nothing was off-limits, and the more outrageous the storylines, the better. “[F]ans would give it their full attention because they couldn’t always figure out if what they were seeing was real or not.” This “neokayfabe” “rests on a slippery, ever-wobbling jumble of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods, all delivered with the utmost passion and commitment.”
Reisman concluded that producers and consumers of neokayfabe “tend to lose the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.” In that, they echo the world identified by German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt in her 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist,” she wrote, “but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
Yesterday, on Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah, Trump posted a “Merry Christmas to all” message that went on to claim falsely that Chinese soldiers are operating the Panama Canal, that President Joe Biden “has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.” The heart of his message, though, was that the U.S. should take over both the Panama Canal and Canada, and that Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark, “is needed by the United States for National Security purposes,” and that “the people of Greenland…want the U.S. to be there, and we will!”
Trump’s sudden pronouncements threatening three other countries—he has been quiet about Mexico since its president pushed back on his early threats—have media outlets scrambling to explain what he’s up to. They have explained that this might be a way for him to demonstrate that his “America First” ideology, which has always embraced isolation, will actually wield power against other countries; or suggested that his claim against Panama is part of a strategy to counter China; or pointed out that global warming has sparked competition to gain an advantage in the Arctic.
The new focus on threatening other countries, virtually never mentioned during the 2024 campaign, has driven out of the news Trump’s actual campaign promise. Trump ran on the promise that he would lower prices, especially of groceries. Yet in mid-December he suggested in an interview with Time magazine that he doesn’t really expect to lower prices. That promise seems to have been part of a performance to attract voters, abandoned now with a new performance that may or may not be real.
There is also little coverage of the larger implications of Trump’s threats to invade other countries. Central to the rules-based international order constructed in the decades after World War II is that countries must respect each other’s sovereignty. Between 1942 and 1945, forty-seven nations signed the Declaration by United Nations, the treaty that formalized the alliance that stood against the fascist Axis powers. That treaty declared the different countries would not sign separate peace agreements with Germany, Italy, or Japan.
They would work together to create a world based on the 1941 Atlantic Charter, which called for the territorial integrity of nations and the restoration of self-government to countries where it had been lost, and for global cooperation for economic and social progress. In 1945, delegates from fifty nations met in San Francisco to establish a permanent forum for international cooperation.
What emerged was the United Nations, whose charter states that the organization is designed “to maintain international peace and security” by working together to stop “acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace,” and to settle international disputes without resort to war. “The Organization is based on the principle of sovereign equality of all its Members,” the charter reads. “All members shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations,” it reads.
Russian president Vladimir Putin is eager to tear down the international rules-based order established by the United Nations and protected by organizations like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). His invasion of neighboring countries—Georgia in 2008, then Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022—demonstrates his desire to return the world to a time in which bigger countries could gobble up smaller ones, the ideology that after the invention of modern weaponry meant world wars.
On Christmas Day, Russia fired more than 70 missiles and more than 100 drones at Ukraine, targeting its energy infrastructure. The Ukrainian forces shot down more than 50 of the missiles, but the attack damaged power plants, cutting electricity to different regions. Just two years ago, Ukraine began to celebrate Christmas on December 25, following the Gregorian calendar rather than the less accurate Julian calendar still favored by the Russian Orthodox Church for religious holidays. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said the change would allow Ukrainians to “abandon the Russian heritage” of celebrating Christmas in January.
Also yesterday, an undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia failed, following a series of cuts to telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea in November. Today, Finland seized an oil tanker it believes cut the cables yesterday, noting that the tanker may be part of Russia's “shadow fleet” that is waging a shadow campaign against NATO nations at the same time that it is evading sanctions against Russia.
In a joint statement today, the European Commission, which is the government of the European Union, “strongly condemn[ed]” the attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure and said it would be proposing further sanctions to target the Russia’s shadow fleet, “which threatens security and the environment, while funding Russia’s war budget.” It emphasized Europe’s commitment to international cooperation.
Also yesterday, an Azerbaijan Airlines jet traveling from the Azerbaijan capital of Baku on its way to Chechnya crashed near Aktau, Kazakhstan, killing at least 38 of the 67 people on board. Nailia Bagirova and Gleb Stolyarov of Reuters reported today that a preliminary investigation by Azerbaijan officials suggests that Russian air defenses shot the plane down.
Newsweek’s Maya Mehrara reported that on Russian media last night, a propagandist close to Putin cheered on Trump’s demand for Greenland. "This is especially interesting because it drives a wedge between him and Europe, it undermines the world architecture, and opens up certain opportunities for our foreign policy," nationalist political scientist Sergey Mikheyev said.
Mikheyev supports Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and has called for Russia to add to its “empire” not only Finland and Poland, but also Alaska, Hawaii, and California. Last night he explained that Trump’s approach would undermine the rules-based order that has shaped the world since World War II. If Trump "really wants to stop the third world war,” he said, “the way out is simple: dividing up the world into spheres of influence."
Mehrara noted that academic Stanislav Tkachenko said that Russia should "thank Donald Trump, who is teaching us a new diplomatic language.” He continued: "That is, to say it like it is. Maybe we won't carve up the world like an apple, but we can certainly outline the parts of the world where our interests cannot be questioned.”
But yesterday in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, Armenians and Azerbaijanis joined the protesters who are filling the streets to protest the government’s attempt to tie Georgia more closely to Putin’s Russia. They hope to turn Georgia toward Europe instead.
And President Joe Biden issued a statement concerning Russia’s Christmas bombardment of Ukraine to cut heat and electricity for Ukrainians in the dead of winter. “Let me be clear,” he said, “the Ukrainian people deserve to live in peace and safety, and the United States and the international community must continue to stand with Ukraine until it triumphs over Russia’s aggression.”
Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be white, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the U.S. They believe that the modern government’s protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America, and they tend to want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. They make up Trump’s voting base.
On the other side are the new MAGAs who appear to have taken control of the incoming Trump administration. Led by Elon Musk, who bankrolled Trump’s campaign, the new MAGA wing is made up of billionaires, especially tech entrepreneurs, many of whom are themselves immigrants.
During the campaign, these two wings made common cause because they both want to destroy the current U.S. government, especially as President Joe Biden had been using it to strengthen American democracy. Traditional MAGA wants to get rid of the government that protects equality and replace it with one that enforces white male supremacy and Christianity. New MAGA—which some have started to call DOGE, after the Department of Government Efficiency run by Musk and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy—wants to get rid of the government that regulates business, especially technology, and protects American interests against competition from countries like China.
Their shared commitment to the destruction of the current government is about the only overlap between these two factions.
With the campaign over, traditional MAGA and DOGE are ripping apart. Trump sparked the fight when he announced on Sunday, December 22, that he would appoint Musk associate Sriram Krishnan, who was born in India, as a senior policy advisor on artificial intelligence.
On Monday, MAGA activist Laura Loomer criticized Trump’s choice of Krishnan. Loomer was in Trump’s inner circle until three months ago, when her anti-immigrant tirades made Trump campaign staff worry she would cost Trump votes and forced her out of his public schedule. Loomer noted that Krishnan wants to remove the cap on green cards for workers from certain countries.
Krishnan has also called for making it easier for skilled foreign workers to come to the U.S. on H-1B temporary visas. These programs are important to the technology sector, but critics say they enable companies to hire foreign workers at lower pay than U.S. workers, that H-1B workers are trapped in their jobs, and that wage theft is rampant in the H-1B program.
Loomer said those jobs “should be given to American STEM students.” Then she got to the heart of the matter, complaining that MAGA is getting left out of the new administration. She noted that “none of the tech executives who are meeting with Trump and getting appointed in his cabinet supported him in 2020 or during the 2024 primary.” She continued: “I feel like many of them are trying to get into Trump’s admin[istration] to enrich themselves and get contracts at [the] D[epartment] O[f] D[efense]. This is not America First Policy.”
When another tech entrepreneur and Trump appointee David Sacks defended Krishnan, Loomer made a series of racist posts, claiming among other things that: "Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third-world invaders from India." She said, "It's not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H-1B visas. Not an extension."
On Wednesday, December 25—Christmas, a major holiday for MAGA supporters—Musk took a stand against Loomer and the MAGAs. He posted on X that the U.S. needs twice the number of engineers it has, and welcomed foreign engineers. “The number of people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated in the USA is far too low,” he tweeted. “Think of this like a pro sports team: if you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win.”
Loomer responded: “Is DOGE real? Or is it a vanity project?” Others complained about the “Tech Bros” “hubris [and] arrogance with their flippant, condescending, and elitist responses to legitimate criticisms of the H1B1 program.” Still others pointed out that there were big layoffs in tech this year and asked why they weren’t getting rehired if there was such a desperate need for workers.
Musk posted: “Investing in Americans is actually hard. Really hard. It costs money and time and effort to make a person productive. It’s a short term net loss. It’s much easier to bring in skilled workers who might not do quite a good a job [sic], but will work for a fraction of the cost and be happy just to be here.”
Loomer responded: “The elephant in the room is that [Musk], who is not MAGA and never has been, is a total f*cking drag on the Trump transition. He’s a stage 5 clinger who over stayed his welcome at Mar a Lago in an effort to become Trump’s side piece and be the point man for all of his accomplices in big Tech to slither in to Mar a Lago.” [sic]
Musk called Loomer a troll, and she responded that “Telling the truth isn’t trolling… You bought your way into MAGA 5 minutes ago…. We all know you only donated your money so you could influence immigration policy and protect your buddy Xi JinPing.”
Thursday everything broke open. Ramaswamy, who was born in Ohio to parents who immigrated to America from India, posted on X an indictment of American culture that seemed a direct assault on MAGA Republicans, who have been vocal about their disdain for education.
Ramaswamy posted that tech companies hire foreign-born and first-generation engineers rather than native-born Americans because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long…. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” He called for “[m]ore math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less ‘chillin.’ More extracurriculars, less ‘hanging out at the mall.’”
“If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve,” he warned. “‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our a**es handed to us by China.” He called for America to embrace “a new golden era,” but warned it was possible “only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness. That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence.”
With that, the fat was in the fire. MAGA dragged Ramaswamy, with even former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley retorting: “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.” Haley ran for president against Trump but ultimately endorsed him. She is herself the child of Indian immigrants.
Loomer also hit back against Musk, posting: “Is DOGE a way to ‘cut spending’ or REDIRECT the spending toward the pet projects of tech bro billionaires? It’s looking like the latter, T[o] B[e] H[onest].” She continued: “‘Hey, let’s convince the peasants that we are saving them money as we enrich ourselves!’” Another right-wing poster wondered: “How did DOGE go from ‘let’s cut wasteful government spending’ to ‘here’s why we need to import more immigrants’ almost overnight?”
When Musk appeared to limit Loomer’s ability to use X, she posted: “I have always been America First and a die hard supporter of President Trump and I believe that promises made should be promises kept. Donald Trump promised to remove the H1B visa program and I support his policy. Now, as one of Trump’s biggest supporters, I’m having my free speech silenced by a tech billionaire for simply questioning the tech oligarchy.” Other right-wing accounts accused Musk of censoring them, too, and racist anti-immigrant sentiments flowed freely.
On Friday, when cartoonist and right-wing commenter Scott Adams posted that MAGA was “taking a page from Democrats on how to lose elections while feeling good about themselves,” Musk agreed and added: “And those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.”
Loomer commented that Musk “is now referring to MAGA as ‘contemptible fools.’... The Trump base is being replaced by Big Tech executives. So sad to see this.” She tagged Trump and added “I feel so sad for MAGA.” Meanwhile, other MAGA supporters on X piled on Musk, complaining that he had not paid them, as promised, for their participation in his “free speech” petition during the campaign.
By today, key Trump ally Steve Bannon, a central figure in MAGA, had taken to another right-wing social media platform to warn his supporters that Musk is showing his “true colors” and to demand that the H-1B visa program be “zeroed-out.” Another right-wing influencer, Jack Posobiec, tweeted: “Today was the day we found out who is getting rich by screwing over the American worker.”
Trump did not weigh in on the fight but, in what appeared to be intended to be a private communication to Musk, wrote on his social media site: “Where are you? When are you coming to the ‘Center of the Universe,’ Mar-a-Lago. Bill Gates asked to come, tonight. We miss you and x! New Year’s Eve is going to be AMAZING!!! DJT.” (According to Aaron Pellish and Alayna Treene of CNN, “x” here likely refers to Musk’s son X Æ A-Xii.)
Why does this all matter? Because while Trump’s people keep insisting he won in a landslide and has a mandate that he will put in place on day one, his fragile coalition is splintering even before he takes office.
Trump won less than 50% of the vote. Despite their slim victory, the Republican Party was already in a civil war between MAGA and establishment Republicans who are fed up with the MAGAs who threaten to burn down the government and almost a century of international diplomacy: just a week ago, Senate Republicans were publicly complaining about the dysfunctional “sh*t show” and “fiasco” in the House.
Now, with Trump not even in office yet, the two factions of Trump’s MAGA base—which, indeed, have opposing interests—are at war.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk on Saturday restated his backing for Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), calling the party the "last spark of hope" for the country, in an op-ed published by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
His remarks triggered anger among German politicians, with the country six weeks away from a snap federal election.
Shortly after the piece went online, the editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, wrote on X that she had submitted her resignation, with a link to the commentary.
[...]
The future editor-in-chief of the Welt group, Jan Philipp Burgard, contradicted the billionaire's statements in his own op-ed, posted next to Musk's.
Burgard said: "Musk's diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally wrong."
Other Welt journalists also posted their disapproval publicly on X.
Musk's backing of the AfD has sent shockwaves through Berlin, with some lawmakers this week accusing the SpaceX chief of interfering in German politics.
On Saturday, former health minister and a lawmaker for the center-right CDU party, Jens Spahn, wrote on X:
"Elon Musk says, look beyond the labels of the AfD. Now, let's do it then: The AfD wants to leave NATO, reactivate Nord Stream 2, and is anti-US, pro-Putin and pro-Russia. Is that what the USA wants? A Germany that turns towards Russia and away from the USA? The AfD wants to leave the Eurozone, our by far largest trading partner. We conduct ~40% of our trade within Eurozone. Without the Euro and the EU, the German economy would completely collapse."
Spahn said the AfD had also been against the construction of the Tesla factory in Grünheide.
[...]
The AfD is now running second in opinion polls with around 19% support, behind the conservative CDU/CSU alliance with more than 30%.
However, Germany's mainstream parties have all ruled out working with AfD at the national level.
It all seems like political theatre of the absurd – but the disrupter-in-chief has a habit of making the unthinkable inevitable
“Merry Christmas,” Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Christmas Day with a photo of himself and his wife, Melania. So far, so traditional. But the US president-elect was just getting started.
In another post, Trump wished merry Christmas to all “including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama canal”. He poked fun at the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and claimed the US could annex Canada as its 51st state. For good measure, he addressed “the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the US to be there, and we will!”
It was the type of diatribe that, if delivered by a drunk uncle at the Christmas dinner table, might be laughed off or undercut by “Anyone for dessert?” But Trump, 78, is less than a month away from accessing the nuclear codes and commanding the strongest military in the world. No one is quite sure whether to take him literally or seriously – or both.
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Trump lobs threats at Greenland, Panama and Canada – should we take him seriously?
Quote:It all seems like political theatre of the absurd – but the disrupter-in-chief has a habit of making the unthinkable inevitable
“Merry Christmas,” Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Christmas Day with a photo of himself and his wife, Melania. So far, so traditional. But the US president-elect was just getting started.
In another post, Trump wished merry Christmas to all “including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama canal”. He poked fun at the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and claimed the US could annex Canada as its 51st state. For good measure, he addressed “the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the US to be there, and we will!”
It was the type of diatribe that, if delivered by a drunk uncle at the Christmas dinner table, might be laughed off or undercut by “Anyone for dessert?” But Trump, 78, is less than a month away from accessing the nuclear codes and commanding the strongest military in the world. No one is quite sure whether to take him literally or seriously – or both.
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Don't put anything beyond what Trump would do.
