Elect a Clown and You Get a Circus
A post going through the litany of crises we are facing.
Hey all. The Jackal has been touch and go lately because regular work is busy (1), we have had multiple bouts of sickness in our house, including the flu (2), and we also went up to the mountains (3). I have also been doing what I can - on the side - to help out Federal employees from various departments deal with the Trump Administration’s actions. So, this will be a Jackal mostly about that and Darth Elon’s chaotic/idiotic attempt to gut the Federal government.
In the time that I’ve been gone, I’ve also started and stopped multiple other Jackals. So, don’t be surprised if a separate, shorter one hits pretty soon.
Before I get into the severity of everything, I want to give a little bit of perspective. The Trump Administration has been in power for about a month and, objectively speaking, the wheels are already coming off the bus. Even leaving aside things that they could be held responsible for (e.g., planes falling out of the sky after Elon Musk fired the FAA head), the overall picture has been poor. Just to go over a few:
Trump’s approval rating is already underwater, with 53% disapproving of the job he’s doing and 46% approving. This sets a record for the second-earliest net disapproval rating in modern American history. The only Administration that beats him out? His first Presidency, which began with a negative approval rating. Stellar.
As a reminder, it took Joe Biden until September 2, 2021, to get to the point Trump is at now. Presidents usually enjoy a “honeymoon period” at the beginning of their term, and Trump’s is already fading. In addition, his previous best rating - approval on the economy - is now the lowest it has ever been.
While Trump’s initial approval rating during his first term was worse, his precipitous drop this time around is the fastest in history. And we are already starting to hear story after story about Trump voters regretting their choice in November.
His team is losing left and right in court. While a lot of this post will be about the attempt to defund the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), that order is actually on hold. The more serious threat comes if/when they decide to ignore the courts, which they have threatened to do (I talk about this more below).
Similarly, his Executive Order on birthright citizenship has been repeatedly smacked down in the courts (by conservative judges too, because there is no real debate about the intent of the 14th Amendment).1
Other things, like the Federal funding freeze, have also been stopped in the courts and the Trump Administration has had a really hard time explaining the justification for their actions.
Any favorable decisions they have gotten so far tend to be on the more technical side, with judges all but saying the people suing the Administration are going to succeed on the merits.
Trump’s actions are plainly illegal. This will play out in the courts, but the majority of them are going to eventually side with Federal workers and contractors who were fired without just cause. USAID will likely have its funding restored and though the damage done to the organization is going to be permanent, the U.S. government is probably going to be paying settlements to people who were illegally terminated for a long, long time. And, while we now know Trump has “immunity” for “official acts,” that does not apply to members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), or Elon himself.
Egg prices are the highest they’ve ever been, which is directly Donald Trump’s fault. He personally went into the farms, stole the chickens, and shipped them to Guantanamo Bay, so now we are facing a shortage. If Trump voters are suddenly finding “nuance” in the discussion about inflation and how much the President himself is to blame, it is really too bad. The rules are that the current spike in egg prices is Donald Trump’s fault. No backsies.
Overall economic indicators - finally coming to terms with the fact that Trump was not kidding about tariffs - are souring. Inflation rose by 3% last month, the highest it’s been in over a year. Job growth was slower. And consumer confidence is dropping, with 54% of Americans now having a negative view of the economy. J.P. Morgan increased their predicted odds of a recession, although they still think it is less than 50%.
Economists that I have spoken to are also saying that some of the big banks are only just now starting to adjust their views on the economy. A lot of them didn’t think Trump would move forward with his tariffs plan, but he obviously did. Similarly, a lot of them weren’t expecting a mass layoff of Federal workers, so forecasts were rosier at the end of last year. Now, the overall feeling is that there is a real chance for a recession in the next year and possibly sooner than that. It has turned that quickly.
Earlier today, the stock market plummeted and wiped out all of its gains since Trump was inaugurated. It took a while, but businesses are finally waking up to the hurt that is coming.
So, I think too many people are acting like the new Administration is all powerful and an unassailable behemoth of bad stuff. In reality, they haven’t been that successful, and public opinion is turning on them quickly. A lot of people missed this, but a few weeks ago Democrats flipped a state senate seat in Iowa that went for Trump by almost 30 points. In Iowa, that is generally hard to do, and we have a lot of other special elections coming up this year.
Yes, but Elon is bulldozing through the government.
While I do think the Trump Administration has made more mistakes than are being reported in the media, that isn’t to say they’re harmless. Elon Musk, in particular, is running through different government departments, laying people off, getting access to our Social Security numbers, and potentially messing with our nuclear weapons (!!!!) all in the name of uncovering “fraud.”
I want to say this clearly: I was not born yesterday, so I do not think Elon actually cares about uncovering fraud. How do I know this? Because if I were going to “audit” the government, I would not immediately fire the inspectors general, who are in charge of finding fraud and abuse. Trump and Elon did just that.
Then, by wild chance, Elon began to “uncover fraud” in all the government departments that were conducting investigations into his companies. If you want a fun graphic to look at:
What an amazing coincidence! I am personally trying to figure out what Elon’s ultimate goal is, because even when I apply my built-in cynicism, I can’t figure it out.
For the past month, Elon has been posting about DOGE’s “savings,” which has largely been celebrated by Trump supporters. But a pattern has emerged: Elon will announce that he found fraud in a certain program, people will act surprised, and then what he said gets debunked a few hours later.
This is where all the details about USAID come into play. A narrative was built up about all the “waste” and “fraud” in that organization, and nearly every word of it turned out to be a lie.
Money for a transgender opera in Colombia? False.
Money for an LGBT comic book in Peru? False.
Celebrity trips to Ukraine? Also false.
Payments to the New York Times and POLITICO? Obviously false.
When you are finally able to push through the firehose of bullshit, the only claim that ended up being true was that we paid for Sesame Street to be played in Iraq, which I cannot bring myself to get angry about. I do not think it is a crime that half of a penny from my paycheck allowed an Iraqi child to experience Elmo.
And that is all before you get to the really egregious stuff, like Elon’s statements about Social Security. He said that tens of millions of dead people were getting Social Security checks, which was then repeated by Trump at a press conference. As it turns out, Elon just couldn’t figure out the Social Security Administration’s coding system. Trump’s new acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration even corrected them publicly.
There are two conflicting thoughts I have when I go over all of this:
If fraud were so easy to find in government, then why does Elon have to lie about what he’s finding?
If Elon really is just trying to stop the investigations into his companies, then what does he expect to happen when Trump is out of office?
Point 2 has given me some worrying pauses over the past couple of weeks. I have written a lot about Musk over the past few years, and I’ve said a lot of stuff but I don’t think I’ve ever called him stupid. I keep thinking: Elon is a smart guy, so he has to know that if a Democrat comes back into office, his empire is over.
SpaceX? Definitely gone.
Tesla? Probably gone.
The Boring Company? Gone (if it even still exists).
His government contracts are gone. His favorable tax breaks for his companies are gone. And any Democrat who wins in 2028 (and yes, a Democrat is going to win in 2028 after the rubble clears) is going to bring a sledgehammer to whatever EV credits Tesla still gets, assuming the company hasn’t fallen off a cliff by then.
So, if Elon is smart and knows that his current actions will eventually mean the end of his companies, why is he doing this stuff? For a while, I was worried: Elon is clearly acting as if he will never be held accountable, which means that Trump will likely try to stay in office beyond this term.2
But then I looked into some of the stuff that DOGE is doing and I came to a more reasonable conclusion: Elon Musk is actually pretty stupid. His team has been trying to tout the actual savings they have been “winning” for the American people with DOGE, and they have actually made a few big boo boos (not quite as big as firing the nuclear experts, but close). Basically, DOGE has been calculating their savings all wrong because they cannot do basic math (or proofread). NPR has more:
The doge.gov/savings page then lists a "wall of receipts," DOGE's first major data release that initially claimed to show more than $16 billion in savings from ending contracts. After correcting an apparent clerical error, it now shows $8.5 billion.
An NPR review of the more than 1,100 contracts in that initial release finds that DOGE's "maximally transparent" calculations still overstate its estimated savings totals by billions of dollars.
There are other hints of stupidity when you look beneath the hood. Musk and his team canceled the government’s contract with WestLaw, a piece of legal software used to read cases. WestLaw is necessary if you want to look at certain cases that have not been officially published, and the government has been using it for 50 years.
The total savings for canceling WestLaw are $0, after you calculate the benefits of the program. So, why did Elon cut it? Because DOGE thought it was the government’s subscription to Reuters, a wire service similar to the Associated Press. In reality, Thomson Reuters - a huge company that consists of more than just its wire service - is used by everyone from banking officials to legal professionals. My own accountant uses Thomson Reuters to upload secure files to us. Surely Musk - who is a billionaire with, I assume, several accountants - knows what Thomson Reuters is and that it freaking runs WestLaw?
I think the clear answer is that he doesn’t, because he is dumb. If you have read the Jackal for a long time, you know that I have my own version of Occam’s Razor, which I call “Dumas’s Razor:” Always assume that stupidity is the best explanation for any behavior from a public official.
I don’t think Elon is thinking about what happens after Trump (eventually)3 leaves office because I don’t think he is smart enough to think that far ahead. A couple years ago, when Elon was faced with a major advertiser exodus over his promotion of an ant-Semitic tweet, he not only refused to apologize for it…HE TOLD THE ADVERTISERS IN THE ROOM TO GO F*** THEMSELVES. Spoiler alert: This did not result in the advertisers returning to Twitter.
I don’t think we have to pretend anymore: Elon Musk, even with all of his success, is not a smart man. Capitalism has its benefits and it has lifted millions of people out of poverty around the world, but just because you make a lot of money doesn’t mean you are intelligent.
Stupid, but still evil.
Elon’s destruction of USAID has been heartbreaking to watch. I have personally heard from multiple employees within the program itself (and connected to it) who have lost their jobs and had their lives upended. All of them were doing important work caring for the most vulnerable people on the planet, and I can only imagine how devastating it is to watch that hard work get torn apart. Some of them read the Jackal, and to them I will only say: Be thankful for your tears, because they are unassailable proof that you cared.
I think a false narrative has spread within America about America, that began on the Left but now pops up on the Right a lot too: We are a bad country and the world hates us.
While world opinion on the U.S. shifts a lot (and the Trump and Bush Presidencies were particularly low marks for us) most countries actually like us a lot:
The numbers from Southeast Asia, South America, and Africa are pretty startling. Colombia has a 72% approval rating of the United States! (Do they know what we did in South and Central America in the 20th Century?!) Ghana and Kenya like us more than any other country! Even Mexico gives us positive marks by 28 points, and we have a few bits of territory that used to belong to them. Not bad.
I really cannot overstate this: A lot of this has to do with USAID. It has helped America’s image abroad because of the good work that it does, but it also attracts people to our country. The idea that America can be a “force for good” in the world is now rejected by the bases of both Parties, but USAID is proof that it can be true. That is an old, conservative principle that Trump has jettisoned because he is not at all conservative.
We don’t have to give foreign aid. We do so because it furthers our national interests. That’s why we give foreign aid. Now, obviously there is a component of foreign aid that is humanitarian in scope, and that’s important too. And I promise you, it’s going to be a lot harder to recruit someone to anti-Americanism terrorism if the United States of America is the reason why they are alive today. Anybody who tells you that we can slash foreign aid and bring our budget into balance is lying to you. Foreign aid is less than 1% of our budget. It’s just not true.
You don’t have to take my word for it. In fact, if you read the previous paragraph and did take my word for it, you actually took Marco Rubio’s. All of that is a compilation of quotes from him before he magically turned on USAID after becoming Trump’s Secretary of State.
The reason Rubio - and the overwhelming majority of other Republicans - made comments like these about USAID is because they fully understand its benefits, and what the ending of USAID means for our reputation abroad. I want to get into a real-life horror story about what Trump’s actions have meant for real people, but trigger warning for anyone who hates stories about pregnant women and children.
After USAID was defunded, scores of its employees were left stranded overseas. These are people who are serving in smaller, less wealthy countries in order to directly help those in need. An American USAID worker was abruptly fired, which was more than a small inconvenience for him. His wife is stationed with him and is in her third trimester, close to her due date. She has had a complicated pregnancy, so she needed a special medical evacuation out of the country that they are in, back to the U.S. However, because the USAID worker was fired, the Trump Administration refused to provide him and his wife an evacuation.
He pleaded with the Trump Administration and was repeatedly told no, but then finally got in touch with a U.S. Senator who organized an evacuation for him and his family. Unfortunately, by then it was too late; his wife needed to be put in an intensive care unit for the rest of her pregnancy. What’s worse: Because her pregnancy was suffering from additional complications, her infant may need to be placed in a NICU for treatment.
The country that they are currently stuck in does not have NICU capabilities, so the USAID worker is currently trying to organize a potential emergency airlift to the nearest country with a NICU for their child, which will cost $120K (now that his USAID health insurance is canceled). So, because of Donald Trump’s actions, this USAID worker may have to leave his wife shortly after she gives birth, travel with their infant child in an emergency airlift to a different country, and then find a friend or family member to take care of their other daughter. Oh, and come up with $120K.
Why are they doing this again? Is it to “root out fraud?” Because, as we’ve shown above, they really aren’t finding that much.4 Even taking DOGE at its words, its total savings are $8 billion across all departments, less than 0.1194% of the Federal budget. The Trump Administration’s current budget projections are showing an increase in the deficit, which means even after accounting for all of these cuts, we are still spending more money than we take in (and that’s before he does another round of tax cuts).
So, why was USAID the focus? Sure, their inspector general was investigating Musk’s companies. But is that it? Maybe. Still, I can’t get this POLITICO headline out of my head:
And then there’s this one too:
Does anyone want to guess where Tesla does the most business after the U.S.?
You know what? I take it back. Maybe Elon is smarter than we all thought.
See you all soon.
The Jackal’s post on this is coming. It will be long.
I still think he’s going to try. If you’ve been following his statements lately, Trump keeps “joking” about running again. But I have seen this movie before, and it usually goes:
Trump says something crazy. “He’s joking! Don’t be ridiculous.”
Trump repeats it again and again. “He’s trolling you to get attention. Calm down.”
Trump starts exploring it. “OK, he’s got it in his head he can run again. Just humor him for a while.”
Trump tries to do it. “I do not support him trying to do it at all and think it is bad. I am saying this now, but in 6 months when we have all moved on I will support him wholeheartedly and pretend like I never turned on him.”
🙏
I will let you in on a little secret: We had a whole debate about government fraud, waste, and abuse during the Obama Administration. Do you know what we did? Sequestration, and everyone hated it.