Coop Scoop: The Musk-Trump Confederacy of Dunces

The boss is wounded and there's blood in the water

December 22, 2024

By Marc Cooper

As a holiday treat, I am lowering our Trump threat level from DEFCON 2 to DEFCON 3. The threat of serious damage from the incoming administration is still alive and well, and we need to stand strong against any and all threats from the renamed MUMP administration. (H/T Timothy Snyder).

But this past week has revealed serious cracks, not only in Trump’s head but also in his MAGA coalition. And like any mob boss, the most dangerous thing you can do is reveal weakness. If you are not the undisputed kingpin, those below you start to wonder if you need to be... um... replaced.

The last week has dramatically exposed—once again—Trump’s political sociopathy, but it has also shown him to be somewhat subservient to that other tower of political stupidity known as Elon Musk.

The boss has been firmly kicked in the nuts, and the addition of Musk as co-president has only twisted his sac.

Shall we briefly review the state of the transition, the weakening position of Trump, and what it portends for his coming term?

The trouble began when the MAGA Senate rebuffed and ignored Trump’s indicated choice for president of the body and instead elected the most moderate among the candidates, John Thune. Trump’s favored candidate came in last with only 13 Senators’ votes. Thune is no bleeding-heart liberal, but neither is he a blind worshipper of The Boss.

Then, the absurd Matt Gaetz nomination to head the DOJ was smothered in the crib by Republican senators. Worse, the House Ethics Committee is about to make public its internal report on Gaetz’s scummy doings and that is gonna make some real salacious reading. And those ethics reports are rarely circulated so this is a wonderful exception.

The Senate Armed Forces Committee then decided it wanted to see and distribute the FBI background report on one of Trump’s proposed mob captains, his nominee to run the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth. Again, these reports are also very rarely circulated. Not a good sign either for the family.

Then comes the government funding debacle. With a government shutdown looming last Friday night, the scramble was on to get some kind of funding bill passed.

The bipartisan House leaders hammered out a compromise that would easily pass the House, even with nincompoop Mike Johnson as Speaker.

But the day before the vote, I suppose due to a momentary shortage of ketamine, Musk began tweeting against it at 4:03 AM. He went on to issue an astounding 150 frenetic tweets condemning the bill as not being austere enough and directly warned that any GOP House member who voted for the bill would be met with a primary challenger that he could easily finance.

Late in the day, after his post-cheeseburger nap, Trump remembered that it was he, not Musk, who was putatively president-elect, and he belatedly joined the chorus against the bill, demanding it be revised. Trump then put his head together with Musk and his partner Vic IamSmarmy, no doubt lowering their collective IQ, and came up with a revised bill that was even worse. Trump now wanted the new bill to include a suspension or abolition of the national debt limit (an anathema to former normal Republicans), and Johnson, after getting clearance from Musk, prepared to put the bill on the floor.

The threat of putting any Republican who now opposed the revised bill in confrontation with a Musk-funded primary challenge and running them out of Congress was forcefully renewed by Boss Trump.

But lo and behold, more than three dozen Republican House members flipped off the president, voted NO, and the bill went down in flames. That’s a pretty big diss against the supposedly all-powerful Boss who had threatened their tenure.

With less than 12 hours to go, both parties in the House met again and came up with version three of a compromise that was very similar to version one, which Trump and Musk had opposed. With 3 hours to go before the shutdown, the bill easily passed the House, with some 170 Republicans now voting yes in direct defiance of Musk and Trump.

Blood began dripping into the water, and the Trump Transition team had to issue a press release reminding the media that “Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party,” as much of the media was beginning to suggest that the South African zillionaire Musk was actually in charge.

And the final bill that passed did not include any suspension of the national debt ceiling. While that may sound like policy trivia, consider this: It means that in the first months of the Trump administration, there will not be sufficient funding for the big, fat tax cut for billionaires that Trump has promised, which would run up a tab of $4.8 trillion over ten years. There also may not be sufficient funding to begin the mass deportation program Trump promised, which could cost more than $300 billion.

But wait, there’s more. There are still about 40 delusional House Republicans who don’t want to fund anything and the GOP is only going to a retain a 3 or 4 seat majority. And that means that when the new House is seated on January 3rd, the chances of Mike “The Dweeb” Johnson retaining the Speaker’s gavel are in peril, and we might be treated to another 12 rounds of voting to find a sucker big enough who will take the job of “leading” the Republican House.

Further, the rising prominence of Musk, who seemed, indeed, to be in charge of the funding circus and who failed, exposed him as someone who knows next to nothing about how the U.S. government works. It also highlighted the fact that Trump was following his lead, not the other way around. And the third wheel, Vic IamSmarmy, a very loud lunatic, was proposing cuts in certain programs that Congress doesn’t even control. No, I am not making this up.

The Republican House members who voted with the Democrats to pass the final version of the funding bill could not have helped but notice that the boss man was something of a paper tiger, as he had to swallow their quiet rebellion. And the funding bill is only good until mid-March, meaning that in 90 days, we will get an encore performance from the new Republican majority of three seats. Once again, they will not have enough votes or loyalty to Trump to pass a funding bill on their own... or anything else for that matter. That is, unless the Democrats bail them out though Democratic Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries swears it ain’t gonna happen. Let’s hope so.

Is this bad for Trump? That’s like asking how good it would be for Tony Soprano to show up and greet his crew at Satriale’s dressed in a pink tutu, his hair dyed purple, and his tongue pierced with an FBI badge pinned to his sheer shirt. As for JD Vance, I suspect he will start showing up on milk cartons any day now.

Too bad this all didn’t happen last month. It might have saved a few oligarchs from trekking to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the ring of the not-so-Almighty. And the sleaze weasel Mark Zuckerberg might not have had to go lower in the sewer by showing up and putting his hand over his heart when Trump played him a recording of an off-key national anthem sung by a chorus of jailed January 6th hooligans whom Trump is promising to free.

In short, Trump has been seriously weakened. Musk helped in that task, but in doing so, also discredited himself (and 700,000 Teslas were recalled this week). There have also been myriad reports of extreme discomfort among Tesla board members, who’d prefer the CEO show up for work instead of spending all night and day thumbing through Twitter like some psycho. Just to make sure everyone knew what kind of psychotic snap Musk has undergone, in the midst of this tumult he spat out another tweet saying that only the ADF party “could save Germany.” ADF is the most extremist right wing party in Germany and is full of self-declared neo-nazis.

And there’s still a month to go before Trump and his gang take office. With a wounded Trump and a MAGA Congress clearly tiring of him, I would not place any money on more than one or two of his big five cabinet choices getting confirmed.

Make no mistake. I am not arguing that Trump is finished and that the autocratic threat isn’t still severe. I am sure he will create as much damage as possible, that he will break as many norms and laws as he can get away with, or that we need to drop our guard.

But as of today (and I reserve the right to change my mind), I find his whole outfit to be too stupid, too incoherent, too deluded, and his troops too divided to construct a truly fascist state. For that, you need a leader who might not be rational but who at least must be consistent and who can command a disciplined, unified ruling political party with some truly smart (if evil) guys in their top ranks.

That’s not Trump or MAGA.

Oh, and might I add that he is already starting to chip away at the solid economy that he inherited and promised to improve. The stock market is on a record-long losing streak out of fear of Trump and the possible trade war with Canada and Mexico that he could ignite with tariffs. And the Federal Reserve has already rolled back planned interest rate reductions, anticipating an inflationary rise from Trumpenomics.

My view might change once they take office. We still don’t know who will really be in charge of what or to what degree his vow for revenge and mass deportation will actually materialize. I will say that some goofball House Republicans now pushing for a criminal indictment of Liz Cheney for her activities on the January 6th committee is drawing not shock, but rather laughter, from just about every lawyer, judge, and jurist not on the MAGA payroll.

Instead of a functioning authoritarian state, we may very well be facing a Confederacy of Dunces, which, while not great, is better than having to fend off stormtroopers from a runaway FBI.

I am in no way suggesting we drop our guard. Indeed, I would argue that we need to escalate our resolute opposition to Trump and MAGA. They talk a scary game, but so far, they have been inept in applying it. That very well might change once they take state power. But with Christmas coming and going and a new year beginning, there are no excuses for liberals to keep cowering, depressed, and under the bedsheets. If 170 Republican House members can rebuff Trump, there is no excuse for anybody anti-Trump to abstain from the coming fight. Opposition and more opposition, thank you.

When your enemy is down, that’s the best time to kick him as hard as you can. Just ask Tony. +++

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