Trump and the incredible disappearing government

Now that the complete dismantling of the U.S. Government looks as though it’s going to require a third full week, the people who are paying attention have begun to appreciate the general sequencing of the dominoes in play.

The Department of Education appears to be next in the line, adjacent to the General Services Administration, following the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where most of the watchdog work has been frozen by new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. That was after threats to the IRS Direct File option, where eligible taxpayers could file returns online for free, which Elon Musk claims to have deleted along with the government agency that works on such tech projects.

The Direct File option was still available as of Tuesday despite Musk’s pronouncement, but as you might have noticed, things are moving fast.

Trump 2.0 chaos

In a span of some 20 minutes on Monday, for example, President Donald Trump peppered an Oval Office press conference with the following figures on topics ranging from tariffs to NATO to COVID to Panama to trade deficits: “38,000,” “100,000,” “200,000,” “300,000,” “millions and millions,” “billions and billions,” “numbers like you wouldn’t’ believe,” “420 billion,” “600 billion,” “636 billion,” “2 trillion,” “60 trillion” and “almost infinity.”

The likelihood that any or all of those numbers are wildly inaccurate isn’t the point so much as how they reflect the rate of chaos in Week 3 of Trump 2.0, where the Secretary of State can wake up in El Salvador as the new Acting Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which may or may not exist.

All of this has everything to do with the dollar figure Trump didn’t mention Monday, the reported $290 million Musk gifted his presidential campaign in evident exchange for unlimited access to everything including all of the data in the U.S. Treasury, meaning all of the financial information of Americans and American businesses.

The richest man in the world taking control of all the nation’s financial data as well as the mechanisms for distributing the government’s money sounds like the plot of a Cold War era cartoon, but judging from the initial reaction, Mighty Mouse has left the building.

In those days, and days of yore back to the late 18th century, and even the days of yore known as three weeks ago, there were three branches of government in this country, and even though most Americans couldn’t name all three, they were somehow vaguely aware that each was in place to limit the power of the other two. Checks and balances, was the phrase. In case anyone went crazy.

How quaint.

Today, Mighty Musk, an unelected oligarch from South Africa whose businesses depend on U.S. government contracts and foreign entanglements, is windmilling a sledgehammer at agencies and institutions that “millions and millions” of Americans depend on just to get through the day, to say nothing of the people around the world who depend on USAID.

Trump’s new deals

Over the weekend, the Associated Press reported that two top security officials at USAID tried to stop two of Musk’s representatives from accessing classified information they did not have security clearance to see, and that the Trump administration put the officials on leave. Musk’s boys got the data.

By this time, who else has it?

While Musk swung the hammer internally, Trump was busy creating international tension with the one tool he pretends to understand, tariffs.

Tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China, he admitted, might cause American consumers some pain but in classical Trump fashion, posting “Will there be some pain? Yes, maybe (and maybe not!).”

Translation: I have no idea.

Trump quickly backed off on 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada when the stock market tanked at Monday’s opening bell, instead opting for a 30-day delay, but kept up his threats as he articulated his long-established geo-political overview, a kind of “Let’s Make A Deal” without the costumes, or the talent.

“Every single one of those countries is dying to make a deal — you know why? — because they’re ripping us off, really badly, and the United States is tired of just being ripped off,” was the way he explained it Monday. “That’s why we have $36 trillion in debt, because we make bad deals with everybody.”

So these countries, as I heard it, are dying to make deals that are less favorable to them. Got it.

And the tariff-postponing deals he made with Mexico and Canada this week were modifications of the deal made in 2019 to change the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA) to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). That deal took most of two years to complete during the bad-deals-with-everybody era, and was negotiated by Donald Trump.

Trump’s week 4

Few want to imagine what Week 4 of the Kakistocracy will bring, but for now, Trump and Republicans in Congress (remember Congress? That was once a thing) seem content to let Elon swing the hammer while they inhale the effluvium of plausible deniability.

Trump said Monday he’s got no quarrel with what Musk has wrought, or with the fact that Musk has no official role in government. Then he made him a “Special Government Employee,” which sounds like it comes with a little hat he can wear on some FEMA emergency vehicle.

If FEMA is still a thing.