By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
“When people let an alligator rule, it will smile at you while biting off your leg.” Efal Revillot, 18th century essayist.
America, get ready for the bite marks! Even though Don the Con has yet to be sworn in as president, he is in full presidential mode as if Joe Biden were already carted out of the White House in a wheelchair.
When swearing in ceremonies commence on January 20, 2025, Trump and his silent boss, Elon Musk, will have already set up their charts and graphs as to how they plan to decimate the federal government and its long-reaching service bureaucracies.
Elon Musk, the power behind the throne, is nigh giddy with excitement that he will reign and rule as a private citizen whose only claim to fame is that he is the richest man on the planet; and who practically bought the White House for his puppet, Donald Trump with over $270 million in loyalty payments to his campaign.
Trump, ever the one to not say no to freebie money, took the treasure and in return, he has and is allowing the South African born entrepreneur to have an inordinate amount of power and influence over the now forever fractious GOP and the now delirious MAGA base.
Musk, like Trump engages in voluminous tweets to any and all and in those tweets he, like Trump, has learn the art of twisting soulless men and women in the GOP Congress to do his bidding, or else…you will be primaried!
Musk’s billions of dollars provide him a political HAZ-MAT suit while he and flunky Vivek Ramaswamy tear away at the flesh of the Constitution, norms of governance and basic protocols of civility.
When you add to this toxic formula of political dilettantes, the incoming clown car of possibles like RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Kari Lake and Tulsi Gabbard, you can only envision what an upcoming debacle of governance will hit Washington D.C., in the coming months and years.
And we have not even discussed the situation in Congress with the GOP having a one seat majority rule in the House and the Senate nigh deadlocked on all things of major importance.
Have we tossed in yet what may happen if and when there are government shutdowns or efforts to fund the government even in short spurts fizzle out due to Musk and Trump simply saying no to anything that remotely resembles a continuation of what is needed to keep the checks rolling out of D.C.?
A sure tell-tale sign of the power of Musk will be if he is even questioned about his security clearances with the federal government when it was taped and played to the public that he purportedly smoked reefer with Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan podcast.
The unofficial DOGE committee (Department Of Government Efficiency) headed up by both Musk and Ramaswamy, is seemingly given unparalleled powers to either initiate or demand from Congress certain draconian cuts in federal spending including the holy grails of Social Security and Medicare.
Time will tell if a feckless Congress abdicates their responsibilities to two un-elected civilians when they, vis a vis their puppet, Donald Trump want to literally chip away at the social fabric of this country.
It always amazes me when billionaire Trump and others of his ilk pretend to the public that they are populists working for the good of all but when the curtain is pulled back, their allegiance is to fat-cat corporations and the billionaires that funded his campaign.
Do you think Don The Con is going to propose generous tax cuts for the working poor and the middle class? Think again! Trump has no working know edge of such persons and for him, they are props to use when he wants to excoriate the Deep State or pummel the media outlets that do not fawn over him.
To say that the next four years will be interesting is an understatement.
Good example. He is proposing that Herschel Walker of Georgia, the former footballer who can barely cobble together a coherent sentence, will be his choice for Ambassador to The Bahamas!
Such is the state of affairs when Don The Con is attempting to bring into his cabinet a motley crew of woefully inexperienced people whose only common and singular trait is that, upon cue, they will genuflect to Trump… 24/7.
So, without casting stones as to which Democratic faction failed to vote or failed to vote in sufficient numbers in the key battleground states, suffice to say
that there are consequences for those who have short memories of the first
Trump administration; and now with this second go around to, “get his retribution right,” Trump will perform like a Darth Vader leading his minions to
attempt to wreck, torch and burn the Constitution.
Any attempt to stop the barbarians at the gate will occur in the midterm elections, unless there is a declaration of martial law by Don the Con.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com