The Elon Musk-dominated Oval Office press conference this week fundamentally disrespected the Office of the Presidency.
While the world’s richest man spoke in generalities about his illegal efforts to remove whole sections of government, weakening American security, trampling civil liberties, and eliminating resources to aid the world’s poverty and disease-stricken nations, while empowering the world’s billionaire class, President Donald Trump sat in the background and said very little.
We can debate government bureaucracy and assess the merits of this or that program, but to entrust Musk with the rejection of USAid sans Congressional oversight represents more than merely a clear and present danger to America.
We reject Elon Musk in black and a baseball cap undertaking this role on behalf of a president who began his tenure by firing eight independent nonpartisan inspectors general. In a suit announced this week, those former IGs claim Trump broke the law “when he attempted to terminate them without justifying their removal or giving Congress 30-day notices.” If Trump were serious about reforming government for average people, he would not eliminate inspector generals and allow the invasive presence of a billionaire eccentric to oversee the overhaul of government.
Not only does Musk disrespect the average working guy out there who ultimately depends on some forms of government control to regulate the Musks of the world. But he disrespected the office of the presidency itself, degrading the Oval Office and clearly overshadowing the nation’s chief executive.
While the unelected Musk ponders the fate of the U.S. Department of Education and pulls the plug on aid to Africa, the President appoints himself, effective immediately, chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board. The former reality TV star seems strangely relegated to entertainment, even as a blandly acquiescent Congress ramrods his cabinet picks, among them vaccine-skeptic Robert Kennedy Jr. as – of all things – secretary of health.
The sight of Musk on his feet and Trump scrunched to one side does not bode well for our great country, which requires strong executive leadership to ensure the protection of real people by the federal government, real Americans, not investor class interlopers who can’t even pretend well to have our interest at heart without obviously and painfully defiling the White House, finally a symbol of our collective power in this republic.
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