Installing sycophants, weirdos, and Russian assets to cabinet positions with a compliant Senate doing zero to stop it. Threatening career civil servants. Purging the FBI, installing loyalists. Painting over core values of federal law enforcement.  Weaponizing the US bureaucracy while decrying weaponization.  Blaming Biden and Obama for everything.  All of these terrible actions are Trump’s retribution for the federal government prosecuting him for the crimes he committed.  As bad as that is, though, that’s not the big problem.  The big problem is Elon Musk.

You know Musk as the CEO of SpaceX, which he founded, and Tesla, which he did not.   He took over Tesla through a series of stock buys which gave him control.  The story is interesting that you can read about here, but not the subject for this piece.  Prior to these two ventures, Musk founded X.com (not Twitter) which was a fledgling payment platform that merged with Confinity, another payment platform founded in part by Peter Thiel (yes, THAT Peter Thiel) in March of 2000.  The combined company took on the X.com name (Musk has always been obsessed with X) with him as CEO.  In September of that year, Thiel lead a coup against Musk and ousted him from the company.  Even back then, Musk was infamous for being a very difficult and unpredictable.

Musk has also been obsessed with payment platforms for decades, and when he bought Twitter and renamed it X, he announced his intent to convert into a super PayPal for payments.  And just so you know, just a couple of days ago, Musk unveiled another a global payment platform as part of X called X Money.  Why do I mention this?  It’s no coincidence that over the last few days Musk has taken control of both the Office of Personnel Management computer systems and the US Treasury payment systems.  When given control, he then locked out career civil servants from the system.  It’s also no coincidence that a 30 plus year Treasury leader, David Lebryk, suddenly retired on Friday, apparently over a conflict with Musk over the payments system.

So why is Trump handing US government data and payment systems over to Musk?  That’s easy.  It’s my strong belief that with Trump’s acquiescence, Musk intends to privatize all data and payments systems and roll them into X Money, putting himself alone in control of the largest economy on the planet.  That’s not an exaggeration.  All the red lights are flashing, and it’s obvious, or should be obvious, even to the most casual observer.

Let’s be clear…Trump doesn’t give a flying fuck about actual governing.  All he wants is the trappings, the fawning, the power, Air Force One repainted, and self glorification.  If he has a guy like Musk doing the dirty work, all the happier he is, as long as the FBI and DOJ are punishing his enemies.  And he knows if his guy is controlling ALL THE MONEY, he can stay in control and elections won’t matter.

You can call me crazy, but I believe this is where we’re going.  If Musk gets away with this, and I believe we’re in severe danger of that, we as a people are FUCKED, and it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible to get unfucked, Especially with the spineless, heartless, and brainless leadership in Congress and the packed courts.  There’s no legal precedent for this, and no statutory structure that’s robust enough to stop it, since laws don’t mean a goddam thing to Trump, Musk, and the rest of the American Gestapo.

God help the United States of America, what’s left of it.