Musk Runs Amuck
By Hal Shepherd
We are now two weeks into Trump’s presidency, and his administration has already starteda government coup.
It began with psychotic billionaire Elon Musk, who Trump gave the ambiguous role of head of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Because Trump has given Musk free rein to define what DOGE’s purpose is (pronounced Dodgy?), like the villain in a thriller novel, Musk is using the office to feed his never-ending lust for power.
We are now two weeks into Trump’s presidency, and his administration has already started a government coup.
It began with psychotic billionaire Elon Musk, who Trump gave the ambiguous role of head of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Because Trump has given Musk free rein to define what DOGE’s purpose is (pronounced Dodgy?), like the villain in a thriller novel, Musk is using the office to feed his never-ending lust for power.
According to history professor Heather Cox Richardson, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”[1] Musk apparently gave Elez privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”[2] and yes, control over 20% of the U.S. economy.
One federal IT worker said, “[if] you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider like Elez could have been granted access to any government server, let alone one that could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows.”[3]
On the same day the news about the illegal access to the federal Treasury came out, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked whether DOGE would cut funding to programs approved by Congress like “cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”[4]
Because power is more digital than physical today, the federal government relies heavily on computers and the integrity of digital files. Therefore, because Musk and his tech geek thugs have no authority to take over or obstruct critical government functions affecting trillions of dollars by accessing or tampering with these digital files, their actions amount to a government coup.
Professor Timothy Snyder, an expert in history and authoritarianism, warns that Musk is in the process of taking over the federal government. He says that a “coup is, in fact, happening. And if we do not recognize it for what it is, it could succeed…there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing.”
This move serves Trump’s campaign to take apart the federal government so that only the very wealthy have rights. According to Snyder, this “is a logic of destruction. It is very hard to create a large, legitimate, functioning government. The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can and disable the rest. The destruction is the point. They don’t want to control the existing order. They want disorder in which their relative power will grow.”[5]
This dismantling process has been in the works since the Reagan administration, which rolled back federal regulations and gave major corporations the freedom to make greater profits.[6] According to Snyder, the “parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide them with services are conspirators within a deep state. We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes.”[7]
According to Richardson: “Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric.”[8] She says that over this time, while the majority of Americans continued to support democratic principles,
Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged.[9]
Meanwhile, Trump appears to be content with giving the more cunning Musk free rein to create havoc while he continues his infatuation with the delusion of his own greatness. In a move eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s purge of art and culture that was not German, Trump not only fired the chairman and board of directors of the Kennedy Center stating, “they do not meet our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture” he then announced “an amazing chairman” – himself. Trump’s continuing distraction with himself is probably one reason why experts are saying that Musk is “more powerful than President Donald Trump and has a substantial amount of control over the president.”[10]
The good news is that immediately after Musk and Trump attempted to unilaterally dismantle the United States government and gain access to American’s private information, the congressional phone system was jammed with tens of millions of calls from outraged constituents. Similarly, Congressional Democrats and hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Washington, D.C. to speak out against the hostile takeover of the Treasury. At the same time, House Democrats announced legislation to stop the takeover, calling it “Stop the Steal” in a play on Trump’s “Big Lie” about the 2020 election. Finally, multiple lawsuits have already been filed to Stop Musk’s and the new Administration’s politics of chaos and efforts to undermine the Constitution.
While Republicans in Congress continue to meekly go along with Trump and Musk’s efforts to destroy the country, we have to remind them that they took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Please contact your Congressmen to ask them to support the Stop the Steal legislation and any other efforts to stop the Coup.
[1] Letters from an American February 4, 2025, citing Vittoria Elliott, et al of Wired (February 4, 2025).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Timothy Snyder, The Logic of Destruction, and how to resist it (Feb 02, 2025)(The Logic of Destruction).
[6] Harold Shepherd, Return to Ekuenick’s Time, Defending Waters and Tradition in the Arctic, Introduction (iUniverse, October 2024).
[7] The Logic of Destruction.
[8] Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American (February 4, 2025).
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
Thanks for pulling together the many threads to these events, including Heather Cox Richardson's and Timothy Snyder's comments. That the speed with which the administration is disabling our government and taking power of the purse from Congress is alarming is an understatement. and deserves our immediate action. I believe legal action is an essential first step.