Here’s what Trump, Musk are doing to Make Democrats Hysterical Again

It took a hot minute, but Democrats have finally remembered and returned to their normal mode in a Trump presidency: Lose their ever-loving minds at every move he makes. It’s like 2017 on steroids.

They might want to pace themselves. We’re not even three weeks into this round. The guy gets a whole four years, folks.

But don’t tell Trump that. The president is conducting business as if his term ends tomorrow. Any pace seems frenetic when it follows that of a president who needed twice-daily naps. Now it’s everyone else who wouldn’t mind a few minutes’ rest.

A headline last weekend from satirical news site the Babylon Bee sums it up: “Exhausted Media Begs Trump to Take a Day Off.”

“It really is a breakneck pace and that really does flow directly from presidential leadership,” said Vice President JD Vance told Breitbart on Tuesday. “[Trump] is constantly asking us, ‘How many days do we have left? How many weeks do we have left? What have we done today?’ It’s a constant drive from the top and it’s why I think you see all these great things coming out of the White House.”

Quite a lot came out of the White House last week, starting with a trade war on two fronts that was narrowly averted.

I don’t like tariffs, but if there’s one thing I can appreciate about them, it’s their magic power to get Democrats to admit that tacking costs onto commerce means passing those costs onto consumers.

“To ‘punish’ Colombia, Trump is about to make every American pay more for coffee,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on social media platform X on Jan. 26, after Trump’s first tariff showdown with Colombia for refusing flights carrying Colombian deportees being returned for repatriation.

“Remember,” she continued, “*WE* pay the tariffs, not Colombia.”

Wait until Rep. Ocasio-Cortez figures out who pays the cost of minimum wage hikes, corporate tax increases and business regulations. Her economics professors will be so proud.

Almost as quickly as he declared retaliatory tariffs, Colombian president Gustavo Petro caved and agreed to accept the deportation flights. Tariffs on both ends were called off, Colombia promised to send some diplomats to the U.S. to kiss and make up, and Trump got his win.

That’s also more or less what happened last week. After Trump announced tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China to take effect just after midnight on Tuesday morning, Each country announced retaliatory tariffs. Before anything took effect, it was announced that Canada and Mexico had decided to devote more troops to securing their respective borders with the U.S., prompting a 30-day delay in tariffs on each side and an opening for further negotiation.

Even China, despite no actual delay in the implementation of the new tariffs, seemed muted in its retaliatory measures. President Xi Jinping is reportedly interested in further discussion with Trump.

I still don’t like tariffs, but I’ll admit that unlike actual tax increases, they can be wielded for leverage — and get results. A White House fact sheet released last Sunday stated that while trade accounts for just under one-fourth of the U.S. GDP, it makes up a whopping 67% of Canada’s GDP and 73% of Mexico’s, putting the U.S. at a far bigger advantage to negotiate on critical safety and security issues at the border.

Meanwhile, if Democrats are so horrified about extra costs being imposed on Americans, I hope they channel that energy into preventing the 2017 Trump tax cuts from expiring at the end of this year. If they don’t, we might find out the hard way that nope, despite their claims, it was NOT just the richest Americans who got a tax cut.

Of course, tax cuts don’t work that well if we can’t control spending. At the same “breakneck speed” lauded by Vance, Trump is moving to cut waste and improve the function of the government.

Enter the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, headed by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter.) The billionaire Musk is working for free, leading a gaggle of young tech savants who have worked for the companies of Musk and PayPal founder Peter Thiel.

Of course, Democrats and the media are losing their goose feathers at the idea of hiring cyber-bros who are indeed unusually young, bemoaning the young staffers’ “inexperience.”

But inexperience in what? Government? In the cesspool of status quo that is the federal government, that’s arguably an advantage in a job that seeks “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries.”

None of us are qualified to assess the aptitude of a whiz kid, especially as it relates to skillsets that involve advanced maneuvering of complex systems. And I doubt many 40-year-olds would leave a good job and haul their spouses and kids to Washington, D.C., to go work “80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting,” as Musk described the position. Especially for no pay.

Some DOGE staff have reportedly been made special government employees at the U.S. Treasury and given read-only access to payment systems. A federal judge has limited further access after labor unions filed a lawsuit.

Critics claim that Musk could obtain and use Americans’ sensitive personal data to further his business interests. That’s doubtful.

Any government employee will tell you that using government property for personal gain — including and especially information — is highly illegal. Musk is a weirdo, not a moron.

Still, Democrats in the Congress and Senate shriek, “We didn’t elect Elon Musk!”

(I’m tempted to make a sarcastic retort about how nobody voted for Jill Biden, either. Joe certainly wasn’t running the country.)

But they’re right — no one voted for Elon Musk.

Voters did, however, check the box for Trump. And as president, Trump is afforded the authority to bring in advisers and enact an executive agenda.

I’m far less concerned with what a background-checked 24-year-old whiz kid who has sworn an oath will do with my personally identifiable information than I am with what the federal government is doing with our tax dollars.

After all, the whiz kids are under intense scrutiny with zero leeway for mistakes or character flaws. Ravenous critics already claimed their first kill when one DOGE staffer resigned under pressure after a journalist unearthed past racist comments on his social media page. After the Vice President wrote on X that he didn’t think “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Musk responded by saying the staffer would “be brought back.”

The federal government, on the other hand, is hardly adequately scrutinized for the way it blows our tax dollars. If it were, Trump’s promise to put Musk in charge of reducing fraud and waste wouldn’t resonate with voters like it did.

But tell that to Democrats, who lost their tator-tots when it was decided to suspend foreign aid from the United States Agency for International Development and furloughed or terminate employees in the first big Trump-era effort to rein in reckless spending. A federal judge put a hold Friday on many of the terminations.

Congressional Democrats went as far as to stage a protest outside the Treasury and threaten to be “in your face and on your asses.” I haven’t seen them this mad since yesterday.

Proponents of reform are elated. Not at the idea of workers getting pink slips — rarely is anyone ever pleased to see people losing their jobs. If the hold on terminations is lifted, those separated employees who will have to subsist on up to a year’s worth of severance pay are definitely in my thoughts.

Not every USAID job or funding expenditure was slated for elimination. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed waivers for aid that provides lifesaving humanitarian assistance, which is considered “core lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance.”

But the tens of billions of our taxpayer dollars spent on things including a Sesame Street show in Iraq? Transgender procedures in Guatemala? Workplace DEI measures in Serbia? Combating misinformation in Kazakhstan?

DOGE, on behalf of taxpayers, has a simple message to countries and NGOs treating the U.S. like a charity: Go fund yourself.

Democrats and their few remaining supporters insist the measly $72 billion disbursed by USAID in fiscal 2023 accounted for less than 1 percent of the federal budget. Fact check: True.

But if they freak out like this over a sliver, what kind of fit will they pitch when Trump greenlights DOGE to go for a chunk?

Democrats say, “We didn’t vote for this chaos!” while failing to realize they are the chaos. Without their catastrophizing, the business of bringing efficiency to the federal government would look — get this — normal. Practical. Boring, even.

All of these big moves were in the span of one week. I never thought we’d see this.

Again, Democrats might want to pace themselves with the histrionics. We’re gonna be here awhile. And Trump doesn’t appear ready to let up anytime soon.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com