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Elon Musk doesn’t have any authority to make any kind of government decisions. He’s not even technically part of a so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
That clarification was filed in a court document, in which the White House had to spell out for a judge that Musk has “no actual authority to make government decisions himself” while he is accused of amassing unchecked power under a president who is giving him permission to do so.
Musk is Donald Trump’s adviser, and his job is to “restore the will of the people, through the president,” the world’s wealthiest man told Sean Hannity.
The will of the people, according to Musk, means choking off congressionally approved funds, shutting down federal agencies, firing thousands of workers, seizing the Treasury Department’s payments system, and blasting out hysterical false information to a massive social media platform on which he is the star.
Hannity tried to turn Tuesday’s primetime Fox News interview into an opportunity for Musk to introduce himself – and talk about the successes of PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla – to shape Musk into a funny, tech-savvy, good-government altruist.
“I’m a technologist,” Musk told Hannity. “I’m here to provide the president with tech support.”
Musk “gets the order done,” according to Trump. “There used to be signed executive orders, but no work got done. He and his genius team make sure they are executed.”
Aired hours before Trump’s 30th day in office in his second administration, and recorded one week ago, Hannity’s sycophantic Fox New interview with the president and the man to whom he’s delegating unprecedented authority slapped on a thick coat of flattery before giving Musk the floor to let viewers know he has no idea what he’s talking about.
A lifetime of news from the administration has happened in between that interview and the 29th day of the Trump administration, as the president continues to rely on his trusted brand of zone flooding to overwhelm both the media and broader public.
A few days after Trump sat in the Oval Office while Musk rambled in front of an assembled pool of reporters, Trump seemingly declared himself above the law, issuing his own version of Napoleon’s “l’état c’est moi” maxim that could not have been more explicit.
Hours before the interview aired, Trumpsigned an executive order effectively centralizing independent agencies under his command, fulfilling another aspect of his unitary executive theory to consolidate power. All of the independent regulatory agencies created by Congress now report to him, and they aren’t allowed to disagree with him, according to the order.
Meanwhile, Musk has tried to rally support for impeaching the federal judiciary en masse while posting dozens of easily debunked examples of what he claims is “waste” and “fraud” to a frothing X audience. Within the last few days, Trump has spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars golfing and driving on a NASCAR track.
The president is empowering Musk to fire civilian employees and effectively dissolve entire agencies, running roughshod through the constitution and federal law and drawing dozens of lawsuits while doing it.
Trump is accused of facilitating an unprecedented breach of executive authority, delegated to the world’s wealthiest man with billions of dollars at stake in government contracts, business interests abroad, immersion in global far-right politics, and an understanding of democracy that shreds checks and balances.
He is facing a lot of scrutiny, obviously.
“Do you give a flying rip?” Hannity asked him.
“I guess we must be over the target,” said Musk. “All we’re really trying to do here is restore the will of the people, through the president. … If the will of the president is not implemented and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented and that means we don’t live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy.”
The Fox News chyron lit up with “ELON MUSK RESPONDS TO THE LEFT’S SMEARS.”
“I think what we’re seeing here is the threshing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people,” Musk said. “Is this making sense?”
No, according to constitutional scholars, legal analysts and judges. It doesn’t.
“They’re saying things are unconstitutional. But what they are doing is unconstitutional. They are guilty of the crime of which they accuse us,” according to Musk.
Trump is not able to jam his agenda through a Republican-controlled but largely deadlocked Congress without serious compromise, so a tidal wave of radical executive orders giving Trump and Musk the illusion of supreme authority will have to suffice.
In that role, Musk is a “senior adviser to the president,” according to the White House. Trump depicts him as an enforcer, tasked with going door to door to federal agencies to force compliance with his executive orders.
“A lot of them” should be codified into law by Congress, Trump told Hannity, but “the beauty is, we have four years – that’s why I like doing it right at the beginning.”
