Elon Musk is demonstrating live online how to make small fortune owning a social media company – start with a HUGE one.  Making the rookie mistake of believing you can cut your way to success, Musk has wrought havoc at Twitter since acquiring it, firing half of the staff, making unreasonable demands of remaining employees, and slashing costs, even the ones that keep the platform running.  In addition to these mistakes, he’s run off billions of advertising dollars with TFG-like behavior and erratic decision making.  His full on MAGA management style and allowing white supremacists and hate merchants back on the platform has driven millions of normal people away.  Add that to banning any journalist who dares publicly criticize him, Twitter has become the North Korean photonegative of the the company he spent $44 billion to buy.

His most recent accomplishments are stopping paying the rent in some offices, closing data centers, and even firing janitorial staff, forcing employees to bring their own toilet paper to work.  He’s demanding that employees sleep at the office, and continues to run the company by online polls where millions of bots infest his platform, obviously voting in favor of his worst ideas, like allowing TFG back on.

Like others, I kept thinking that Musk is some kind of evil genius with a long-term plan to remake Twitter into a new payment platform.  It’s become apparent that this was either a pipe dream or a myth – he’s now facing a serious turnaround situation with no apparent skills to actually lead a turnaround.  Add his sociopathic behavior to this situation and he’s only making matters worse, not better.  To fund all this, he’s been dumping his Tesla stock which has contributed to its price plummeting 70% in 2022.  To be fair, blue chip and tech stocks have been pounded this year, but Musk’s goofy behavior and selling has greatly displeased investors.

All this is to say that behavior of companies’ senior management matters and the being wealthy doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart.  This multi-billion dollar soap opera is far from over, and it remains to be seen if Musk is going to be one of the surviving members of the cast.

Trump, even as late as this weekend, repeated the lie on his blog that the election was stolen from him by non-existent voter fraud.  He bragged that 80% of Republicans believed that lie as he desperately tries to keep his iron grip on the party that he wants destroyed.  Trump is nothing, if not obsesively vindictive.  What’s telling, though, have been his actions.  How do we know?  Trump tried to wreck as much of the US government as he could on the way out the door.  I don’t think he would have done that had he truly believed he won.

On November 9th, John McEtee, aide to Trump, told Douglas Macgregor, new acting defense secretary Chris Miller’s senior advisor, that Trump wanted full military withdrawal, by Inauguration Day,  from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, all of Africa, and…wait for it…Germany.  Recall that Miller had just taken on the defense job after Trump fired Mark Esper by tweet just a few days earlier.  This, as you would imagine, was an impossible task, and worse, it was from out in left field.  A written order followed two days later that commanded the Pentagon to withdraw troops  from Somalia by December 15th, and Afghanistan bay January 15th.  It was personally signed by Trump in his idiotic scribble.  The order sent shockwaves through the Pentagon as leaders realized that this was an “off the books” operation with none of the usual planning, table top simulations, or alternatives.  This was just Trump being Trump, and luckily the Pentagon held the line, slow walking the order to run out the clock.

At the same time, Trump tried to wreck the CIA and dig dirt on his enemies by installing loyalists at the top of the agency trying to get the director, Gina Haspel, to resign.  Mercifully, that effort also failed as Pence and WH counsel Pat Cipollone came to Haspel’s defense.  Switching tactics, Trump then installed a Nunes staffer and Trump loyalist, Michael Ellis, to the general counsel position at the NSA, a position difficult to terminate by the new administration.  In an appropriate end to his short career, Ellis resigned in April after he had been sidelined by an IG investigation into his role in the handling of classified information and placed on indefinite leave.

It’s now just coming out that Trump’s DOJ tried to get the courts to unmask a Twitter user who had gotten under Devin Nunes skin with a parody account @NunesAlt.  Barr’s attorneys sought a grand jury subpoena of Twitter to reveal the user’s actual name, and Twitter had fought the subpoena until the demand was dropped after Biden took office.

These are just a few examples of the lengths to which Trump went in the waning days of his infestation to wreck as much of the government that he could, install loyalists as his spies, and punish his supporters’ enemies.  Luckily the actual public servants in these agencies kept their oaths to the Constitution, and repelled Trump’s attacks.  Next time (if there is a next time) we might not be so lucky.

Matt Gaetz is spinning so fast he’s going to fall down.  After deny, deny, deny didn’t work, he’s now saying that the DOJ investigation into sex trafficking and crossing state lines with a minor for sex is all a Democratic plot to take him down.  The little detail he left out?  The investigation was begun last year when Trump and Bill Barr were still in office.  Oops.  Oh, and it gets worse.  While Gaetz continues to dig a deeper hole for himself, the NY Times is reporting that he had petitioned the Trump WH for a blanket preemptive pardon for himself a some unnamed associates for crimes they may have committed during his term in office.  Mercifully, WH counsel determined that request to be a non-starter.  Apparently, he did not disclose to the WH that he was under federal investigation at the time of the pardon request.  Oops, again.

As if he didn’t have anything better to do, Trump has started restricting Chinese press in it’s access and reporting in the US. In retaliation, China has expelled the NY Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.  So.  Here we are in the middle of a global pandemic where the press is THE most important outlet for information, so what does Trump do?  Start a pissing contest with the largest country in the world.  Jesus.

Jeffrey Epstein, being held for trial in a jail in Manhattan was found dead in his cell this morning.  Wait – what?  I thought he was on suicide watch.  At minimum, the guys doing the watching suck at their jobs.  At worst this is just plain old stink to high heaven fishy.  Part of Epstein’s record was released just yesterday revealing just how bad this guy was, even containing details of how young girls were recruited for him at Mara Lago.  Yes, THAT Mara Lago.

It’s not unreasonable to believe that this was an, uhm…”assisted suicide” to get rid of him before the sordid details of his and Trump’s relationship spilled out all over the floor during his trial.  Based on Trump’s 40 year reputation for loving young girls, it’s not a stretch to imagine Trump being right in the middle of Epstein’s activities.

Is this just another flare up in the Trumpster Fire that is the current infestation of the White House, or will this one matter?  I’m not holding my breath.

Since his first day infesting the WH, Trump has been trying to produce a militaristic super duper patriotic ceremony to celebrate…himself.  The Pentagon succeeded in shutting down his Soviet style military parade last year, but now he’s decided to co-opt the most American of American holidays and make it about himself.  The National Park Service has announced that, at Trump’s order, they are turning a traditional non-partisan event of American music and fireworks into an event centered on His Orangeness, including giving a speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and rearranging the entire holiday celebration to put himself in the middle of it.

My response to Trump trying to take over OUR HOLIDAY to make it about himself?  Fuck you.  I refuse to participate in any way, not even turning on my television for it.  Enough of this nonsense is enough.  He’s turned the entire US government into a reality television show starring him, his criminal cronies, and his entire fucking family.  I’m sick of it. Congress needs to stop this narcissistic asshole in his tracks, get him out of office, and then return our government to some level of normalcy.

For God’s sake, I want my country back from insanity and cheesy reality television.