Elon Musk, Trump, DOGE and MAGA

What is AGI? – Artificial General Intelligence Explained
AGI is a field of theoretical AI research that attempts to create
software with human-like intelligence and the ability to self-teach.
AI Video of Trump Kissing Elon Musk’s Feet Sparks Chaos in Washington

Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon
The president is pleased with Elon Musk, but the decision comes as the tech mogul increasingly looks like a political liability.
(Politico) President Donald Trump has told his inner circle, including members of his Cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man.
The president remains pleased with Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, but both men have decided in recent days that it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role, according to three Trump insiders who were granted anonymity to describe the evolving relationship.
Musk’s looming retreat comes as some Trump administration insiders and many outside allies have become frustrated with his unpredictability and increasingly view the billionaire as a political liability, a dynamic that was thrown into stark relief Tuesday when a conservative judge Musk vocally supported lost his bid for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by 10 points.
It also represents a stark shift in the Trump-Musk relationship from a month ago, when White House officials and allies were predicting Musk was “here to stay” and that Trump would find a way to blow past the 130-day time limit.
One senior administration official said Musk is likely to retain an informal role as an adviser and continue to be an occasional face around the White House grounds. Another cautioned that anyone who thinks Musk is going to disappear entirely from Trump’s orbit is “fooling themselves.”
Elon Musk Made an Election About Him. Wisconsin Said, ‘No, Thanks.’
Having purchased himself a presidential BFF last year, Elon Musk was pumped to effectively buy himself a State Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. The voters had other ideas.
Musk and his related groups dropped more than $20 million on boosting the conservative candidate, a former state attorney general, Brad Schimel. (Those $1 million sweepstakes giveaways were especially shameless.) Musk held a town hall/rally in Green Bay on Sunday, where he urged folks to back Schimel, and he pitched the race as “one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”

12 March
How Silicon Valley boys came to rule politics
The promise of the internet was that it would be a widely accessible archive of collective knowledge. But it is ephemeral, and intensely susceptible to manipulation by a chosen few. Our government is beginning to feel similarly flimsy as the spoiled man-children of the tech industry chain-saw their way through the vast federal workforce, leaving in their wake a pile of broken links.
(WaPo) … Silicon Valley’s self-involved “toxic toddlers,” as described by tech journalist Kara Swisher, like to move fast and break things with little regard for what or who might get hurt. Social media promised connectivity but also has fueled phenomena such as revenge porn and cyberbullying. Ride apps such as Uber and Lyft put taxi drivers out of work. Facebook amplified violence against the Rohingya people in Myanmar in 2017. When Musk suddenly pulled the plug on the U.S. Agency for International Development last month, workers stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo were left to their own devices as they tried to flee violence in Kinshasa.

8 March
Elon Musk Is Making Republicans Sweat and Giving Democrats a New Target
His unusual governing arrangement with President Trump is opening Republicans up to being yoked politically to Mr. Musk, who polls show is broadly unpopular.
(NYT) He held court in the Oval Office in a T-shirt and blazer with a child clinging to his shoulders. He takes private meetings on Capitol Hill, offering his phone number for senators to voice their complaints, as if they are his constituents. And last month, he brandished a chain saw as he promised to cut spending, to rapturous cheers from conservative activists.
Seven weeks into President Trump’s second administration, Elon Musk has not just upended the government. His omnipresence in Washington has also swiftly become an unpredictable factor that could reshape politics across the country.
Already, the billionaire’s signature slash-and-burn style and showy spending cuts have reverberated far beyond the Capitol, making even lawmakers from deep-red states begin to sweat. He has shown a willingness to shape elections directly, both by spending locally and by threatening to wield his fortune to stifle dissent within the Republican Party.

28 February
Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim Cuts Ties with Elon Musk’s Starlink, Costing Musk $7 Billion After Controversial Tweet
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has officially severed ties with Elon Musk’s Starlink, opting to invest in his own telecommunications infrastructure rather than relying on Musk’s satellite technology.
Slim’s company, América Móvil, announced a massive $22 billion investment over the next three years to enhance its network, signaling a major strategic shift in Latin America’s telecommunications industry. The decision is expected to deliver a financial blow to Starlink, which had anticipated a profitable partnership in the region.
Tensions between the two business moguls reportedly escalated after Musk shared a controversial tweet implying Slim had connections to organized crime. Within minutes of the post, Slim canceled all collaborations with Starlink in Latin America, causing Musk to lose an estimated $7 billion.

25-26 February
Musk’s Cabinet Cameo: The Elephant in the Room Wore Black
At the first cabinet meeting of his second term, President Trump asked Elon Musk to speak first. The man tasked with slashing the federal government spoke far more than anyone else, other than Mr. Trump.
Musk dominates, disparages federal workers at first Trump Cabinet meeting
(The Hill) Elon Musk at the first meeting of President Trump’s Cabinet defended his email demanding all federal workers report their accomplishments to his office, calling it a “pulse check” and saying anyone with a heartbeat and neurons could complete it.
Musk said he asked all federal employees to send emails listing their accomplishments in order t make people who are collecting paychecks prove they are actually working. Musk has argued his efforts are rooted in eliminating waste and fraud in the government.
OPM instructs agencies to turn over plans for mass government layoffs
(The Hill) A Wednesday memo from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directs agencies across government to turn over plans for widespread layoffs of federal employees by March 13.
The memo, which provides more specific guidance after a Feb. 11 executive order from President Trump mandating layoffs, requires agencies to break down their plans for a reduction in force and broader restructuring of their agencies.
Law enforcement, national security, military and Postal Service roles are exempt, as are all political appointees and the White House.
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, accused the Trump administration of seeking to ignite chaos, warning of the costs.
“Laying off potentially hundreds of thousands of federal workers will mean fewer services at higher costs for the American taxpayer. Longer waits at VA hospitals, fewer inspectors ensuring the safety of our meats and produce, less research into cures for debilitating and deadly diseases, more risks for air travelers, longer waits for Social Security enrollment and passports, and the list goes on,” the union said in a statement.
“What it will not do is result in any discernable savings for taxpayers – in fact, taxpayers likely will end up paying more as the essential work our government does is sold off to private, for-profit contractors,” it added.
Musk’s cost-cutting drive quietly deletes billions in claimed savings from website
‘Wall of receipts’ drops five largest savings claimed by ‘department of government efficiency’ after debunking
When Elon Musk’s cost-cutting drive, the so-called “department of government efficiency (Doge), posted its “wall of receipts” boasting of major savings to the federal budget, the list was billed as the proud public interface of a radical shake-up of the US government.
Instead, like much of Musk’s unprecedented engagement with the federal bureaucracy, the initiative has been mired in errors, confusion and obfuscation.
In the latest embarrassment to befall the site, Doge has stealthily expunged all of the five largest items on the “wall of receipts” after the much-vaunted “savings” were revealed to be so much hot air.
The deletions, first reported by the New York Times, were made on Tuesday without explanation. A White House spokesperson would only say that Musk’s slash-and-burn initiative had “identified billions of dollars in savings”.
Trump defends Musk as backlash to federal workers ultimatum grows
President intervenes amid first signs of internal dissension as government departments push back
21 DOGE Staffers Quit, Refusing to “Dismantle Critical Public Services”
(Democracy Now) On Tuesday, DOGE quietly dropped false claims from its website about what it called its five biggest savings to U.S. taxpayers. The reversals included DOGE’s claim of $8 billion in cuts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the figure was in fact, $8 million.
Elon Musk will join President Trump’s first Cabinet meeting, scheduled for today — even though Musk was not confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet post and is listed by the White House as a “special government employee.” The White House said Tuesday Musk is not the head of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency; instead, the White House said DOGE’s interim administrator is Amy Gleason, who worked at the U.S. Digital Service during Trump’s first term before Musk rebranded it. The New York Times reports Gleason is on vacation in Mexico and was not aware that the White House planned to make her role public now.
Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding
Government infusions at key moments helped Tesla and SpaceX flourish, boosting Musk’s wealth.
Elon Musk and his cost-cutting U.S. DOGE Service team have been on a mission to trim government largesse. Yet Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers.
Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments, a Washington Post analysis has found, helping seed the growth that has made him the world’s richest person.

22 February
The DOGE Project Will Backfire
Trump’s war on public employees is bad for all of us.
By Donald Moynihan
(The Atlantic) President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk justify dismantling the civil service as cost cutting. … Their actions—a barrage of executive orders, memos, layoffs, and attempts to unilaterally eliminate entire agencies—have sparked outrage, but Musk sees that only as proof of their achievements: “They wouldn’t be complaining so much if we weren’t doing something useful.”
For all of Trump’s and Musk’s talk of efficiency, their policies will likely slow down the government. The state needs capacity to perform core tasks, such as collecting revenue, taking care of veterans, tracking weather, and ensuring that travel, medicine, food, and workplaces are safe. But Trump seems intent on pushing more employees to leave and making the civil service more political and an even less inviting job option. … A smaller, terrified, and politicized public workforce will not be an effective one.
DOGE shared its receipts — and some of them don’t match
“Everyone is very well-aware they’re repeating the wrong numbers,” said one manager at a company on DOGE’s list of cuts.
The first comprehensive public listing of the billions of dollars in purported savings Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is making across federal contracts is filled with errors, according to a POLITICO review of the published data.

21 February
Back in their districts, GOP lawmakers get an earful on DOGE and Musk
Town halls from Wisconsin to Oregon grew testy this week as concerned voters showed up to vent
Town halls this week for congressional Republicans from Georgia to Wisconsin to Oregon grew testy as voters showed up to vent, outraged at the firing of workers and the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to sensitive data. Protesters showed up around the country at lawmakers’ offices.
The backlash extends far beyond federal workers in the Beltway, reaching purple districts that will decide control of Congress in 2026 and swing states like Georgia that helped return Trump to the White House. Layoffs just hit the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Funding freezes have halted clean-energy projects championed by President Joe Biden.
…new Washington Post-Ipsos polling suggests some of Trump and Musk’s moves are unpopular beyond the Democratic base. About 6 in 10 Americans surveyed were opposed to shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Musk bragged about feeding “into the wood chipper.”

The political education of Elon Musk
(Politico Nightly) To date, Musk has been insulated by his proximity to Trump, as well as the impression that he is carrying out the president’s wishes. But the political education of Elon Musk is about to begin.
The classic early signs of backlash are beginning to surface — a batch of worrisome polling, angry town hall scenes, protests — and congressional Republicans are beginning to get nervous.
The trouble is, the federal government is a far more complex organism than he seems to recognize. Some agencies are more popular with the general public than others. There are distinct partisan differences in how various departments are perceived.
The federal government’s reach also stretches well beyond the D.C. area. Its economic presence is felt acutely in every state and in all 435 congressional districts — not just through government transfer payments, but in terms of actual jobs.
Beyond the Beltway, across the blue and red state divide, there are IRS processing centers, Postal Service distribution centers, national laboratories, VA hospitals and cemeteries, missile sites, military installations, penitentiaries, national parks, historic sites and rural development offices, just to name a few of the federal outposts that stand to be affected by Musk’s massive firings and spending cuts.

20 February
This Might Be the Fastest Way to Get Elon Musk Out of the White House
(Slate) Earlier this month, two lawsuits were filed challenging the legality of the Musk appointment for violating the Appointments Clause. These suits directly raise the issues discussed above, so the federal courts will have the chance to weigh in. If they find that Musk’s appointment indeed violated the appointments clause—because he should be understood as either a principal officer or an inferior officer—that would provide reason for courts to require that the executive branch unwind any official actions that Musk took when exercising power beyond what the Constitution allows.
Given the many threats that the Trump administration poses to the rule of law, from the politicization of the Justice Department to the threat of ignoring court orders, these lawsuits risk escaping public notice. That would be a mistake. The appointments clause is a critical safeguard of the role of Congress in our system of checks and balances—a system a majority of the public now believes to be faltering, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday. The appointments clause is, in other words, the constitutional enemy of the exact type of unchecked power Musk is trying to exert.
Musk’s mass firings are already backfiring
Culling the federal workforce with a sledgehammer does nothing to advance efficiency.
(WaPo editorial) … Americans widely agree that their government is burdened by “waste, fraud and abuse.” But the U.S. DOGE Service is simply taking a sledgehammer to federal operations. The result is predictable: Vital functions — including safeguarding nuclear weapons — that should have been nowhere near the chopping block have been axed.

19 February
After ceding power of the purse, GOP lawmakers beg Trump team for funds
Republican senators are asking Cabinet secretaries and other Trump officials to let money flow back into their states.
Senators have in recent days made the case to Cabinet secretaries and other Trump officials to let money flow back into their states. They are trying to finagle exceptions to President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders or cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service that freeze hundreds of billions of dollars, including money for farmers and infrastructure projects. That push comes as the administration has also sought to fire a wide swath of federal employees — some of whom live in red states.

18 February
Elon Musk’s DOGE Bros Have Breached the Firewall
(Closer to the edge) The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not a government agency. It is not a think tank. It is not even a collection of competent, well-meaning bureaucrats trying their best to fix a broken system. No, DOGE is a frat party that somehow got approved for a security clearance.
Elon Musk, America’s favorite billionaire toddler, has taken a wrecking ball to the federal government and staffed his destruction crew with a bunch of overcaffeinated tech bros who would get lost trying to fill out a W-4. They have been handed the keys to the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and the U.S. Treasury, despite most of them still having their parents on their health insurance. This is the sort of bold, innovative leadership that makes you wonder if America has finally decided to end things by shooting itself in the face.

Daggers out for Elon Musk
This latest Bannon salvo at Musk reflects the sharpening of already rough-edged rivalries within Trump’s circle between hard-core populists (like Bannon) and hyper-libertarians (like Musk). For his part, Musk has mostly ignored Bannon’s attacks. In a recent tweet, Musk dismissed Bannon as “a great talker. Not a great doer.”
That may be in part because Musk knows Bannon and others have little real leverage to use against him. In past administrations, members of the president’s party in Congress or major party donors could use their influence with the chief executive to sideline an unpopular aide. But Musk’s money gives him a potent weapon to use against lawmakers fearful of well-funded election challengers, and no donor has ever offered a candidate more than Musk gave Trump in 2024. Former Trump Communications Chief Anthony Scaramucci predicts that though the president won’t “jettison” Musk, his influence on Trump is “not sustainable.” We’ll see.

17 February
The anti-Musk protest movement is expected to ramp up with Congress on recess
(AP) — Donald Trump is the president, but billionaire Elon Musk is the focus for thousands of Democratic activists launching a protest campaign this week to fight the Trump administration’s push to gut federal health, education and human services agencies.
Hundreds of protests are scheduled outside congressional offices and Tesla dealerships, with organizers hoping to send a pointed message to members of Congress who are on recess this week.
The backlash still hasn’t approached the intensity of protests during and after Trump’s first inauguration eight years ago. But a loose coalition of Democrats and progressives is coalescing around Musk’s rise as Trump’s top lieutenant and his purge of the federal bureaucracy.

14 February
They’re not just suing to stop DOGE. They’re suing Elon Musk himself.
(Politico) A pair of lawsuits say that, with all the power he has accumulated, Musk is violating the Constitution’s rules about the appointment of federal officers.
Elon Musk’s efforts to disrupt and dismantle the federal government at the behest of Donald Trump have already sparked a legion of lawsuits. Now the legal challengers are setting their sights on a new target: Musk himself.

11 February
Musk appears at White House defending DOGE’s work but acknowledging mistakes
President Donald Trump’s most powerful adviser, Elon Musk, made a rare public appearance at the White House on Tuesday to defend the swift and extensive cuts he’s pushing across the federal government while acknowledging there have been mistakes and will be more.
Musk stood next to the Resolute Desk with his young son as Trump praised Musk’s work with his Department of Government Efficiency, saying they’ve found “shocking” evidence of wasteful spending. The Republican president signed an executive order to expand Musk’s influence and continue downsizing the federal workforce.

8 February
In chaotic Washington blitz, Elon Musk’s ultimate goal becomes clear
Shrink government, control data and — according to one official closely watching the billionaire’s DOGE — replace “the human workforce with machines.”
(WaPo) The [Department of Government Efficiency]DOGE campaign has generated chaos on a near-hourly basis across the nation’s capital. But it appears carefully choreographed in service of a broader agenda to gut the civilian workforce, assert power over the vast federal bureaucracy and shrink it to levels unseen in at least 20 years. The aim is a diminished government that exerts less oversight over private business, delivers fewer services and comprises a smaller share of the U.S. economy — but is far more responsive to the directives of the president.

27 January
Bill Gates calls Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians abroad ‘insane shit’
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist calls fellow tech titan ‘super-smart’ but guilty of ‘overreach’
Bill Gates has labelled Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians and attempt to interfere in the politics of other countries – including the UK – as “insane shit”.
Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, said that his fellow multibillionaire tech titan was guilty of “overreach”. “It’s really insane that he can destabilise the political situations in countries,”….

24 January
Trump Bets It All on OpenAI
Earlier this week, he unveiled perhaps the most ambitious infrastructure project in history—and all but dedicated it to Sam Altman.
By Matteo Wong
(The Atlantic) The project, known as Stargate, is a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and several other corporate partners that aims to invest $500 billion over the next four years in America’s AI infrastructure: data centers, energy plants, power lines, and everything else needed to develop superintelligent computer programs. The first data center, already under construction, will soon be dedicated to training OpenAI’s next models.

22-23 January
Trump staff ‘furious’ after Musk trashes AI project
“It’s clear he has abused the proximity to the president,” said one ally of the president.
(Politico) Some of President Donald Trump’s key aides and allies are furious with Elon Musk for publicly trashing his $500 billion artificial intelligence mega-deal [that Trump called “tremendous” and “monumental” just a day prior].
… It is highly unusual for a senior adviser — Musk — to criticize a president’s initiatives in public, and his broadsides renewed speculation within GOP circles about whether he and Trump will eventually have a falling-out.
OpenAI Goes MAGA
Sam Altman has once again put himself in a position of power—this time by sidling up to President Trump.
By Karen Hao
(The Atlantic) …Elon Musk…co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman and others, but the two had become fierce rivals. As “first buddy” to Donald Trump, Musk was suing OpenAI while rapidly building up his own AI venture, xAI, whose chatbot, Grok, has become a central feature on X.
OpenAI has once again reestablished its dominance. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced the Stargate Project, a joint venture between SoftBank, Oracle, and OpenAI to pump $500 billion of private-sector investment over four years into building out U.S. AI infrastructure, with the intent of securing America’s leadership in AI development against China. Very little is known about how any of this will work in practice, but OpenAI is speaking as though it will reap most of the rewards: In its blog post announcing the partnership, it said that all of the infrastructure will be “for OpenAI.” The company’s president, Greg Brockman, underscored the point on X: “$500B for AI data centers for OpenAI.”
Why Trump’s AI plan made Elon Musk flip out
A feel-good photo op just triggered a billionaire slapfight. Here’s what’s really at stake.
(Politico) At the White House on Tuesday, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son confidently predicted that “artificial superintelligence” will kick off America’s “golden age.” President Donald Trump beamed as Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison announced a $500 billion investment in an American scheme to unlock the potential of super-powerful AI.
The goodwill didn’t last 24 hours.

21 January
The Tech Oligarchy Arrives
Donald Trump’s inauguration signaled a new alliance —for now— with some of the world’s wealthiest men.
(The Atlantic) What wealthy donors could get in return for their support of Trump remains an open question. Zuckerberg’s, Bezos’s, and Musk’s federal business interests include rocket-ship and cloud-computing contracts, a federal investigation of Tesla’s auto-driving technology, a pending Federal Trade Commission lawsuit against Meta, and a separate antitrust case against Amazon. Just last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Musk for allegedly failing to disclose his early stake in Twitter, the social-media giant he later took over and renamed X. (A lawyer for Musk has said he did “nothing wrong.”) When Trump promised in his inaugural address to “plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” the cameras panned to Musk, whose SpaceX is racing Bezos’s Blue Origin. …
Tech titans take center stage at Trump inauguration
(Today Show) A lineup of tech titans including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, were front and center at Donald Trump’s inauguration — with seats in the first row in front of some cabinet nominees. NBC’s Hallie Jackson reports for TODAY on the new ties between the president and billionaire CEOs.

18 January
How Long Can the Alliance Between Tech Titans and the MAGA Faithful Last?
(NYT Opinion) On Sunday evening, the night before Donald Trump’s second inauguration, scores of luminaries from across the New Right are expected to gather for a dinner and gala called the Coronation Ball at the Watergate Hotel. … [T]his upstart coalition of thinkers may be best described simply as the intellectual wing of Trumpism. … [The gala] seems intended to mark the ascent of a new counterelite with aspirations to supplant the existing establishment in everything from high politics to business and culture. But this is a loose alliance, colored by rivalries and complex divisions.
… When Elon Musk endorsed Mr. Trump, putting a great deal of personal money and energy into the project of MAGA populism, he joined figures like the venture capitalist and podcaster David Sacks and the crypto exchange founder Tyler Winklevoss in what represents one of the most surprising and disruptive alliances in American political history. Tech emerged as an alternate power center to the Republican establishment. Silicon Valley money filled in for dollars lost from the traditional donor class. As the presidential transition took shape, tech figures stepped in to supply elite human capital, as they put it, to staff the new administration.

12-18 January
Trump Just Handed Steve Bannon a Big Weapon in His War With Elon Musk
The onerous new immigration bill would empower state attorneys general to force wholesale visa denials. It turns out Bannon can use this to his advantage in the MAGA civil war over immigration.
(The New Republic-TNR) Republicans may not know it yet, but they’re in the process of handing Steve Bannon a powerful weapon to wield in his war with Elon Musk over visas granted to high-skilled immigrants. This could further divide the MAGA coalition over immigration—and badly inconvenience Musk, who is trying to protect those visas from a ferocious assault being waged by Bannon and his allies.
The weapon in question, it turns out, is buried in the Laken Riley Act, the controversial bill that would mandate the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of minor nonviolent crimes.
Eugene Robinson: The Great MAGA Schism of 2025 is only getting uglier
War of words between Musk and Bannon shows gap between rhetoric and reality
Donald Trump hasn’t been inaugurated yet, and already two bellicose titans of the MAGA universe are waging total war — against each other.
… This war of words between two insufferable blowhards reveals a consequential schism in the MAGA world — and the yawning gap between MAGA rhetoric and objective reality.
It is an article of faith among some of Trump’s most loyal and avid supporters that immigration is a bad thing, period. In this view, the H-1B program is nothing more than a way for tech companies to hire foreign workers who can be paid less than American citizens and who cannot complain or quit because of their immigration status. Bannon speaks for this group when he calls for “a 100 percent moratorium on all immigration until we get this thing sorted.”
Musk and other tech leaders see the program as a way to maintain U.S. technological primacy by attracting the most creative and talented engineers from around the world. Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk’s partner in the advisory “Department of Government Efficiency,” goes much further.

As Trump prepares to take power, MAGA can’t stop the ugly infighting
A new clash between Stephen K. Bannon and Elon Musk epitomizes the fraught and bellicose confederation that surrounds Donald Trump.
(WaPo) …because Trump has proved so malleable, there is a premium on being the one in his ear.
That dynamic is already leading to a rash of infighting over who grabs that ear and guides both Trump and his base.
And the fight over what Trumpism means has gotten quite ugly quite quickly.
Steve Bannon derides Elon Musk, vowing to limit influence over Trump
By Jeff Stein
President-elect Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon is ramping up public attacks on billionaire Elon Musk amid an intensifying debate on the right about Musk’s influence in the incoming administration.
Bannon has also criticized Musk’s support for a skilled-worker visa program that led to a bitter rift last month between far-right activists and Trump’s tech executive supporters, who see the program as a crucial lifeline for Silicon Valley.
Trump ultimately sided with Musk in that dispute, but Bannon said he is preparing a broader effort to limit the Tesla executive’s ability to shape Trump’s agenda.

10 January
Elon Has Appointed Himself King of the World
After helping Trump win the election, the world’s richest man is turning his attention to Europe.
By Ali Breland
(The Atlantic) Musk has spent recent days hyper-focused on replicating the influence campaign he has waged on U.S. politics. In addition to backing the AfD, he has injected himself into British politics, accusing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the leader of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party, of enabling child sex abuse by failing to address grooming gangs as a previous head of England and Wales’s Crown Prosecution Services, and calling for his ouster. … After Nigel Farage, who leads the U.K.’s far-right Reform Party, said that he disagreed with Musk about Robinson, Musk posted: “The Reform Party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes.”
Despite Musk’s ability to become a major political figure in the United States, it’s not clear whether his pressure campaign in Europe will work. Musk’s efforts to influence European politics are hampered by campaign regulations that curb the role of money in politics.

8 January
There is little the US can do to constrain Elon Musk. But here are some ideas
Robert Reich
Musk is not the first person in history to be seduced by the thrill of unconstrained power, although this may be the first time so much power is concentrated in one unelected megalomaniac.
(The Guardian) …politicians everywhere now recognize his capacity to pour money into their parties and political campaigns, as he did by investing a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected.
He also owns X, formerly Twitter, which (as of December 2024) has 619 million monthly active users. He has manipulated X’s algorithm to boost his own posts, which now reach 210 million.
But Musk’s real power these days comes from his proximity to and presumed influence over Donald Trump, soon to be president of the United States.
For the time being, particularly under Trump, there is little that we in the US can do to constrain Musk except by boycotting Tesla and X.
Canada and Britain and other European nations, meanwhile, should, at the very least:
Enact laws and regulations to prohibit non-citizens (like Musk) from financing activities that could affect their elections.
Maintain, if not strengthen, laws and rules against hate speech, and ensure that they are applied to social media companies, such as Musk’s X.
Refuse to contract with Musk’s Space X and its Starlink satellite division, or with Musk’s other corporations (Tesla and the Boring Company).
Disengage from any joint ventures or technology transfers involving Musk, including xAI, his artificial intelligence company.