Trump administration

So Donald Trump and Sean Hannity are each springing for a Tesla. It shouldn’t prove much of a hit to their respective wallets, seeing as how each has amassed a not insubstantial fortune thanks to the emergence of the MAGA movement, though Hannity is probably something of a piker next to Trump. Trump went all-in: “Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stand for.

Who would have thought that Michael Wolff would have another book about Donald Trump in him? UK Books editor Sam Leith interviews Wolff on this week’s Book Club podcast. They discuss Wolff’s latest, All or Nothing, which follows the world of Trump from January 6, 2021, to his second inauguration. Seeing as this is now Wolff’s fourth book bringing to light some things those around Trump would presumably prefer to stay in the dark, Leith asks why anybody even bothers to pick up the phone when they see his name on the caller ID. Wolff says that it is in part because he has kind of become their friend after having followed Trump and his cohort around for the last ten years; but it is also because those in “Trumpworld” are themselves trying to figure out what’s been going on.

We’ve been told that President Trump’s address to Congress tonight would dilate on the theme of the “Renewal of the American Dream.” And so it did. But for short hand, two ideas predominated. One was “Woke No More.” The other was “common sense.” Both were themes of Trump’s inaugural address. I have expatiated on the theme of Trump’s embrace of common sense in a talk I gave to the Connecticut outpost of Hillsdale College at the end of January. The irony is that what should be common to all has been so uncommon in an age marked by perversity and ideology. Together, the attack on wokeness and the reinstitution of common sense go a long way towards summarizing the extraordinary achievements of Donald Trump in his first forty-two days.

Why are Democrats mounting such a ferocious assault on Elon Musk? Why are mainstream media outlets so eager to go along? The simplest answers are the best. Musk is the most prominent member of the new administration aside from the president himself. He is Donald Trump’s point man for exposing malfeasance in federal bureaucracies, determining where the money is going and cutting the engorged payroll. The more Musk and Trump succeed, the worse for Democrats. They created those agencies; their supporters staff them; and those supporters funnel lots of public money to specially favored institutions and projects. When Musk attacks this partisan nexus, he is attacking a major source of Democratic power and influence. That is what’s really at stake here, beyond cutting the budget.

National Harbor, Maryland President Donald Trump capstoned a three-day CPAC pep rally with a message of… well, Trump. To be fair, that’s what virtually everybody else at the conference was speaking about too. The ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort was packed. In the build-up members of the Trump administration and world leaders had taken the stage, but make no mistake: the attendees were here to see the president himself. Trump entered to rapturous applause. After his signature move of standing before the podium for the entirety of “God Bless the USA,” he addressed the audience. “We fought through hell together, but in the end, we achieved the great liberation of America,” he said. “Kamala?” Trump asked himself, as if searching for a forgotten memory.

National Harbor, Maryland Elon Musk made a surprise appearance at CPAC Thursday afternoon, where Argentinian president Javier Milei presented him with a chainsaw. “This is a chainsaw for bureaucracy!” Musk said, brandishing it before a whooping crowd. The Department of Government Efficiency chief took to the stage with Newsmax host Rob Schmitt. Musk wore his MAGA hat — “dark gothic MAGA!” as he said — a black jacket and mirror shades, which he kept on for the duration of his appearance. The X CEO called for America to “legalize comedy” and agreed with Schmitt that legacy media companies receiving USAID money from the federal government were becoming “mouthpieces for the state.

When your fiercest loyalists are accusing your government of being taken over by Elon Musk, who they brand a “parasitic illegal immigrant,” what’s the best way to respond? Donald Trump opted for a side-by-side interview with the X CEO on Fox News, speaking to Sean Hannity, the anchor with whom he remains friendliest.  And for all the attempts — both from inside and outside the conservative tent — to drive a wedge between Trump and tech billionaire Musk, the two seemed chummier than ever.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMbcMO5JgEo&ab_channel=FoxNews Responding to Hannity’s claim that the mainstream media wants to see the pair get a divorce, Trump was nonplussed.