Things seemed bleak enough when our collective assumption was that Donald Trump, having won the election, would be our president. But, proving that things can always get worse, it’s increasingly clear that the real president will actually be South African tech billionaire and ketamine enthusiast Elon Musk. Calling Musk the “shadow president” may be underselling the severity of the situation. Musk and his unofficial “Department of Government Efficiency” are undergoing a hostile takeover of the Treasury Department. Musk seems to believe he can ignore the legal authority of Congress to control federal spending, and instead control all decisions on how to spend taxpayer money. If successful, this effort would functionally make Musk a dictator using the elected official, Trump, as his figurehead.
But while Musk ignores the Constitution’s clear-cut law giving the power of the purse to Congress, he does have another group of people he thinks should have discretion over how the U.S. government spends its money: The ugly assortment of incels, white nationalists and other such far-right scum he’s assembled as a cheerleading squad on X (formerly Twitter). While congressional Republicans lamely hand their spending power over to this unelected conspiracy theorist billionaire, Musk is crowdsourcing ideas of what he should unilaterally cut from the absolute worst people on the internet.
Musk’s crowdsourcing of ideas from random Twitter weirdoes is a troubling sign of where this could go next.
The first target of Musk’s illegal campaign to cut programs that Congress has authorized money for is USAID, a program started by President John F. Kennedy that administers foreign aid and development assistance. The program has long been embraced by both parties, with Democrats supporting its charitable aims and Republicans more interested in how it buys goodwill that keeps the U.S. as the top international power. Shutting it down would also undermine Trump’s efforts to reduce immigration from places like Central America, by increasing the poverty and desperation that drives migration. But Musk doesn’t care about the law or the disastrous effects. He’s too busy trying to please his minions on X, especially the ones with nice things to say about Adolph Hitler.
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One of Musk’s ad hoc Twitter troll “advisors” is Michael Benz, a former Trump State Department official who has rebranded as a MAGA influencer. He was outed by NBC News in 2023 as an unapologetic white nationalist who promotes anti-semitic conspiracy theories, despite being Jewish himself. Indeed, he would use his Jewish identity to give credence to his claims that Jews are “controlling the media” and using it to orchestrate a “white genocide.” He also used it to justify his praise of Hitler, writing that “If I, a Jew” could read “Mein Kampf” and see “Hitler actually had some decent points,” then it should bolster Hitler’s credibility for others.
Musk is a big fan of Benz, constantly boosting Benz’s elaborate conspiracy theories accusing the U.S. government of using foreign aid for vague but nefarious purposes. Their lengthy public Twitter communications suggest Benz is guiding Musk’s attacks on USAID. Musk has been chatting with Benz on Twitter about the alleged evils of foreign aid for months and is now celebrating with Benz about their efforts to end the program illegally.
Over the weekend, Wired exposed how the team Musk assembled for his attempted government takeover are “six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24.” Federal employees report being told they must drop everything to “justify their jobs” to a 19-year-old who just graduated high school in May. Investigative journalist Jacqueline Sweet reported the young man, named Edward Coristine, recently changed his handle on X from “BigBalls” and made it private, though his tagline appears to be a reference to the work of anti-democracy blogger Curtis Yarvin.
Contrary to some info I’ve seen, 19-yr-old Doge staffer “BigBalls” Edward Coristine did not delete his X account, it’s just renamed and is private. Wired reported that govt tech workers had to defend their work to the Neuralink intern in an Office Space-esque scene. / more for Canadians
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— Jacqueline Sweet (@jsweetli.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Musk’s baby-faced boy army is just an especially galling example of how the billionaire believes random know-nothing right-wingers should usurp the authority of elected representatives. Their youth is alarming not because they lack experience — which will thankfully make it harder for them to figure out how to execute Musk’s supervillain-style plans — but because of what it suggests about Musk’s strategy. Young people tend to be more naive and are probably starstruck by their celebrity boss. Such people are easier to lure into committing direct crimes, so they incur legal liability instead of Musk. It’s easy to see how young men, drunk on memeified far-right politics and the cloak-and-dagger excitement of hacking into government offices, might not see how they’re taking serious risks with their futures by playing illegal games.
No doubt, the attack on USAID is a test run to see how much Musk and his minions can simply stop legally mandated payments without getting blowback from Congress or the courts. As Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum pointed out on Bluesky, “I suspect USAID is first because it’s ‘foreign aid’ and fewer Americans will object. But once the precedent is established, expect unilateral dismantling of domestic institutions too.” Musk’s crowdsourcing of ideas from random Twitter weirdoes is a troubling sign of where this could go next. As Laura Barrón-López of PBS News Hour reported Monday, Musk’s group is now targeting the Small Business Administration. There’s little doubt they’re hoping to deny loans they believe are “woke,” i.e. to business owners who aren’t white men.
QAnon conspiracist Michael Flynn, who was convicted of lying to the FBI about his shady dealings with Russian operatives, falsely accused Lutheran Family Services of being a “money laundering operation.” Musk replied, “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments.” In reality, the Lutheran organizations he targeted provide nursing homes, daycare, foster care, adoption services, and food pantries, among many altruistic activities.
Musk agreed with @WallStreetApes, an anonymous Twitter account that mostly boosts far-right propaganda, that “Nothing says taxpayer money laundering like ‘consulting contracts.'” In reality, of course, that’s the federal government hiring experts to help with all manner of projects, ranging from health care provision to environmental regulation.
Musk boosted a post from Scott Presler, a virulently racist activist who declared, “Stop giving $ to countries that hate us.” Presler’s anti-Muslim group, ACT for America, is known for holding events that include “white nationalists, neo-Nazis and antigovernment extremists,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was also involved in organizing the January 6 insurrection.
A random tweeter named @PJ4Trump suggested ending agencies that enforce business regulations he finds annoying. Musk took this at face value, asking for more information. It is true that business owners often don’t like meeting environmental regulations, protecting food safety, or not being allowed to hire underage workers. But those regulations exist for a reason. Letting Musk end them on the say-so of an anonymous tweeter is lunacy.
As for people who say the foreign-born Musk wasn’t elected, well, he’s decided that he was! He retweeted MAGA influencer insisting, “Elon was very visible with Trump and we elected Trump to utilize Elon in cleaning out corruption in our government.” But, that doesn’t change the fact that Musk was not elected. Trump also did not hire Musk for a high-level government job, which would require a background check and a confirmation hearing. Musk is an outsider who, with absolutely no legal authority, is coming into the Treasury Department and taking the keys away from people who work there.
There is a dark genius to Musk’s strategy to install himself as a shadow dictator, controlling the actual functions of government while Trump gets his picture taken signing stuff in the Oval Office. This takeover is happening out of sight, through financial and computing mechanisms. It’s designed to be a story too boring and complicated to garner engagement from voters, especially those low-information voters who just thought Trump might bring down the price of eggs. (His tariff schemes suggest that even that was a dumb hope.) But maybe it will break through to people if they understand Musk is, without any legal authority, planning to vacate funds they need for daycares and road-building, and all on the say-so of random QAnoners and Hitler fanboys on X.
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