By Mayank Chhaya-
Although the House eventually passed a stopgap funding bill on Friday evening it was not before Musk, not elected by anyone to any office, and Trump, elected by nearly 80 million Americans, nearly blew up the routine task of funding government spending.
Essentially two billionaires with a third, just about a billionaire, namely Vivek Ramaswamy in tow have taken charge of how Congress should vote. It is by far the clearest harbinger of plutocracy in America.
It is a measure of how much Musk wants to overwhelm the current Congress’s fiscal behavior is that he tweeted more than 150 times on the spending bill in a span of some 12 hours or so on X, a platform he bought for $44 billion. It is almost as if the entire rationale behind the extravagant purchase of Twitter was to build it into his personal political weapon of choice for a time like this.
Although the bill that was pushed through by Trump and Musk was defeated on Thursday 235 to 174, with 38 Republicans and 197 Democrats voting no, it illustrated how the two men propose to govern, one of them without any electoral mandate.
The 38 Republicans who voted against it much to the chagrin of Musk and Trump is a significant number indicating that not the entire party is beholden to the president-elect’s fiats. However, many of them could fall back in line once they confront the prospects of being primaried as already threatened by Musk.
A single individual, who does not happen to be Trump, has been able to blow up legislative process via social media fulminations. Even a decade ago a scenario such as this would have seemed too fantastical but now it is a political reality. It is almost as if Musk has emerged as a parallel power center with Trump helplessly looking on. It is no surprise that many Democrats are mockingly using the sobriquet “President Musk.”
It is a measure of how powerful he has become that there are Republicans like Senator. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who has suggested that Musk be made Speaker replacing the incumbent Mike Johnson. Saying that the Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress, Paul tweeted, “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it . . . nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds).”
Representative. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) jumped on Paul’s bandwagon saying she would be open to supporting Musk as Speaker adding, “The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday. This could be the way.”
As outlandish as this may sound, it is not altogether inconceivable that it could happen provided Musk and Trump are willing.
The 2024 presidential election is being interpreted by Trump and his nearly 80 million supporters as carte blanche to ram though every item on their agenda. It is possible that the president-elect sees it as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to turn the idea of government inside out and upside down. The only problem is many of those agenda items will be decided by plutocrats like Musk and Ramaswamy, not to mention Trump himself.
With 207.9 million X followers, a vast number of them in the U.S., Musk appears to see himself as a nation unto himself. Add to that his unprecedented personal wealth and unfettered access to Trump’s ears and there is the making of an unabashed plutocracy in America. Although historically the wealthy have always had disproportionate sway over government and policymaking in the U.S., it has never been this flagrant and in one’s face.
There are, of course, steadfast voices against it like that of Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, who tweeted, “Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government. The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring? Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government.”
As of now, the only check against Musk is Trump’s well-known propensity to jettison anyone who might be nursing ambitions and courting influence grander than his own.