Like many Americans lately, I am seized with curiosity about who is actually running the government of the United States. For that reason, I watched Sean Hannity’s Fox News interview tonight with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
But I am still not sure who’s in charge. If there is a headline from the interview, it is that the president of the United States feels that he requires the services of a multi-billionaire to enforce his executive orders. Trump complained that he would write these “beautiful” executive orders, that would then languish in administrative limbo. Musk, for his part, explained how the president is the embodiment of the nation and that resisting his orders is the same as thwarting the will of the people. Hannity, of course, enthusiastically supported all of this whining about how hard it is to govern a superpower.
In other words, it was an hour of conversation among three men who have no idea how American democracy works.
The goal of the interview, I assume, was to calm some of the waters around Trump’s relationship with Musk, and especially to present Musk as just another patriotic American who is only trying to help out his government in a time of crisis. Hannity deplored how shamefully the richest man in the world is being treated despite trying to create technologies to “help the blind to see.” Trump and Musk bemoaned how the world is trying to drive them apart, but affirmed that they like each other very much. “I wanted to find somebody smarter than him,” Trump said in one of his classic insult-praise combination punches, “but I couldn’t do it.”
They may have even been telling the truth: Trump loves people who publicly love him back, and Musk seems to be grateful to be in a place—in this case, the White House—where people aren’t judging him for supporting Trump, a new social opprobrium that clearly stings him. “The eye-daggers level is insane,” he said, after recounting that people at a dinner party reacted to Trump’s name as if they’d been hit with “a dart in the jugular that contained, like, methamphetamine and rabies.” (This, from a man whose social media feed is a daily exercise in trolling.)
The interview was arduous both for the viewer and for Hannity, because everyone who interviews Trump must always contend with the president’s apparent inability to hold a single thought for very long. Hannity, as usual, tried to throw softballs; Trump, as usual, missed every pitch. Hannity at one point noted that Trump has “become a student of history” and then asked how the Framers of the Constitution would view his efforts to rein in the bureaucracy. Trump verbally wandered about before returning to his talking points about Musk, who he said is “amazing” and “cares.” So say James Madison and the other Founders, apparently.
And so it went, with Trump digressing into various riffs drawn from his rally speeches, ranging from immigration to the money he saved on contracts for Air Force One to hurricane damage in North Carolina. (He was trying to praise Musk for providing Starlink access to stricken areas, but it was evident that Trump has no idea what Starlink is or does.)
A few other news flashes from the interview: The president of the United States thinks that the government should not pay its bills in full. It should lowball its contractors and force them to accept half payment, he said. Former President Joe Biden was going to leave two American astronauts marooned in space for “political reasons” according to Musk. Also, Biden wrecked America in every possible way, but they’re fixing it. Musk said he has never seen Trump do anything “mean” or “wrong,” while Trump claimed that he’s always respected Musk. Musk added that he’s never asked Trump for anything, ever, and that if a conflict should arise in his DOGE efforts, he’ll recognize it and recuse himself. (Earlier today, when asked why DOGE and SpaceX employees are working at the FAA and DoD, agencies where Musk has contracts or regulatory relationships, Trump said: “Well, I mean, I’m just hearing about it.”) Finally, Trump and Musk expect to find a trillion dollars of fraud and waste in the government.
Musk did generally behave himself, instead of stealing the show as he did a few days ago in the Oval Office. When prompted by Trump, he said he very much liked “Bobby”—Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. —who he said was demonstrating the scientific method by questioning science. And in an interesting moment of inadvertent candor, Musk also defended some of the people working for DOGE, noting that they were taking much lower pay to help the government rather than the salaries they could command in private industry—much like the people he’s working to get fired.
Hannity at one point brushed away Musk’s status as an unelected functionary by noting that no one votes for the Cabinet, either, which returns us to the problem that this conversation took place among people who do not understand the basic structure of their own government. (Cabinet officials, unlike Musk, are confirmed by the Senate and impeachable; the days when Republicans objected to Hillary Clinton’s task force on health care because she was unelected and unaccountable are now only of blessed memory.)
After an hour of this rambling and sometimes weird conversation, all I could think of was George W. Bush’s reported reaction to Trump’s first inaugural address: “That was some weird shit.”
This low-key fandango was probably good enough for MAGA fan-servicing purposes, but seems unlikely to reassure the millions of Americans doubtful that the president and the plutocrat know what they’re doing. The president seems only dimly aware of the details of Musk’s adventures, but he’s certain a smart guy like Musk is furthering his agenda—whatever it is. Musk, who answers to no one, is full of fervor to kill off government agencies he does not understand, because unelected rich men firing probationary federal employees is apparently how true Jeffersonian democracy is restored to an ailing America.
How long this chaos can go on is anyone’s guess. At some point, Musk might cross one of Trump’s other officials, or he might bring enough bad press that Trump himself could end up throwing Musk off the ship of state, as he has done to so many other of his loyal subordinates. But no matter how it ends, Trump will still be president, and Musk will still be rich. The rest of us, unfortunately, will be living with the damage done.
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