Elon Musk may have just unwittingly handed us a huge gift
Yesterday’s Donald Trump – Elon Musk press conference in the Oval Office was a new American low in a number of ways. Trump just sat there at his desk while Musk stood adjacent to him and gleefully bragged about the damage he’s doing to the federal government, even while admitting that he’s been spewing misinformation about the agencies he’s raiding. It was proof that this administration is completely out of control. It also provided proof of something else.
Donald Trump is the most malignant narcissist of his generation. He famously can’t tolerate the spotlight being on anyone else. Nor can he tolerate anyone who works for him getting any credit. Trump famously turned on Steve Bannon after SNL portrayed Bannon (as the grim reaper) towering over a hapless Trump in the Oval Office (pictured above). All it took was the mere perception that Bannon was running the show, and Trump shoved him out the back door.
Yesterday’s Trump-Musk press conference was so similar to the old Trump-Bannon SNL sketch, you’d think it was staged that way on purpose. Yet even as Musk utterly dominated the press conference and made clear that he’s running the federal government, Trump just sat there. Trump barely bothered to speak up. He made no effort to shift the attention back to himself. He just sat there looking confused, like he didn’t know or care what was going on.
There has never been one moment in Trump’s narcissistic life where he would have allowed something like that press conference to happen. The fact that he let Musk show him up like that on live national television is absolute proof of how deep into cognitive decline Trump has fallen. That guy sitting there meekly at that desk, that wasn’t Donald Trump. That was the empty husk of the man that used to be Donald Trump.
If Trump still had any wits about him, he’d be taking public shots at Musk today, and ramping up to ultimately firing him. But that won’t happen, because Trump isn’t Trump anymore. He’s a confused, listless, pliable dementia patient who doesn’t know what to think until he’s told what to think.
What’ll be interesting is that by all accounts, everyone else in the Trump regime despises Musk and wants him out. So we can fully expect everyone who has face time with Trump in the coming days to use it to try to convince Trump that he hates Musk. The question is whether it’ll work. Dementia patients can be alarmingly easily talked into believing something, but they can also be irrationally stubborn about things. There’s no predicting which way Trump will go on this when his people try to convince him to oust Musk.
Either way, I think Musk just handed us a gift. An ugly, offensive, jarring gift to be sure, but a gift nonetheless. We’ve spent three weeks making the argument that Musk is operating as the President and that Trump is in la la land. It’s easy to see when you’re paying close attention, but it’s harder to make such a case to members of the public who aren’t paying close attention. But now there’s a video broadcast of Musk cosplaying President from behind the Oval Office desk, while Trump sits there and looks senile. The footage makes the argument for us.
So, as always, let’s try to use this to our advantage. If we can keep playing up the fact that Musk is running the country, and if it somehow gets through to an addled Trump that Musk is showing him up, then Trump just might oust Musk – or at least move to rein him in. And if that happens, it’ll severely hinder the corrupt agenda that the Trump regime is currently trying to carry out.
