Reassuring Words.

 

November 7, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 07, 2024

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Today the Trump family posed for a post-election photo. Missing from the group was former first lady Melania Trump. Joining the family was billionaire Elon Musk, who supported Trump’s campaign both through his ownership of X, formerly Twitter, and then with $132 million in cash and with apparent giveaways to get voters to give the campaign personal information. 

As an immigrant from South Africa, Musk is barred from the presidency himself by the U.S. Constitution, which requires that a president be born in the U.S. (out of the Framers’ concern that a foreign country could put a puppet in the presidency). But he is now very close to Trump and stands to gain significantly from a Trump presidency, both through deregulation and government contracts, and through Trump’s planned tariffs on Chinese imports that will enable Musk to monopolize the electric vehicle market in the U.S. Musk also would like a victory in the culture wars; he is strongly opposed to transgender rights.

After the election results came out, Musk posted on X, “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” Latin for “New World Order.” 

At Trump’s election party, Trump said: “We have a new star: Elon. He is an amazing guy. We were sitting together tonight—you know he spent two weeks in Philadelphia and different parts of Pennsylvania campaigning? He's a character, he's a special guy. He's a super-genius, and we have to protect our geniuses, we don't have that many of them. We have to protect our super-geniuses.”

Trump’s new closeness with Musk presents an issue for the Republican Party. The president-elect is 78 and has shown signs of mental and physical deterioration, making it possible that someone will need to take his place at some point in the next four years. 

The vice president–elect, current Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who is backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, is constitutionally the next in line for the presidency, but neither Musk nor Vance has Trump’s popular support, making it unclear who will take over the leadership of the party if such a takeover is necessary. Whether either can command Trump’s supporters is also unclear. 

What is clear is that neither of them has much experience in elected office. Vance was elected senator just two years ago, and Musk comes from the business world.

There is another, major problem for the party, as well: Trump won the election in part by promising everything to everyone, but the actual policies of the MAGA party are unpopular, even with many Republican voters. 

Notably, Trump has said he will appoint Musk to head a new government efficiency commission, and Musk has vowed to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget. Such cuts would decimate government services, including food programs and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Supplemental nutrition programs disproportionately benefit rural areas, and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are used much more heavily in counties that support Trump than those that don’t. 

That will be a hard circle to square.

So will Trump’s promise to lower consumer costs while also putting tariffs of 10% to 20% on all foreign imports and of 60% on imports from China. Tariffs are borne by consumers, so by definition they will drive prices up. These two promises cannot be reconciled. 

Trump has promised mass deportations, and much of his base is fervently behind them. The Republican National Committee even had signs saying “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” made up for attendees to wave at the party’s convention. 

Priscilla Alvarez and Alayna Treene of CNN reported today that Trump’s allies have been preparing for mass detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants, and the stock prices of private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic have soared since Trump’s election. Steven T. Dennis of Bloomberg reported that on an earnings call today, GEO chief executive officer Brian Evans told investors that filling currently empty beds could bring in $400 million a year and that the company can scale up its current surveillance, monitoring, and transportation programs to handle millions of immigrants. “This is to us an unprecedented opportunity,” he said.

But deporting up to 20 million people will be a logistical nightmare and is projected to cost from $88 billion to $315 billion a year. At the same time, much of the U.S. economy depends on undocumented immigrants, and Republican businessmen will certainly object to losing their workers. 

Tom Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump in his first term, backed away from some of the extremes of Trump’s immigration policy when he told CBS last month: “It’s not gonna be—a mass sweep of neighborhoods. It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous…. They’ll be targeted arrests. We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find ‘em based on numerous, you know, investigative processes.” 

Meanwhile, Democratic state lawmakers have been preparing for a potential Trump administration for more than a year, and some are putting down public markers that they will not cooperate with the extreme policies of the Trump administration. 

Trump vowed to begin his mass deportation plan in Aurora, Colorado, where he maintained—contrary to the statements of local Republican officials—that Venezuelan gangs had taken over the city. Aurora is a suburb of Denver, and yesterday the mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, told a reporter he would not cooperate with requests that are “immoral or unethical or unfair.” 

California governor Gavin Newsom called an emergency session of the California state legislature to convene on December 2, “to help bolster our legal resources and protect our state against any unlawful actions by the incoming Trump Administration.” It will focus on funding lawsuits against any actions that impact civil liberties, reproductive rights, protection for immigrants, and climate initiatives. Newsom said the California lawmakers “will seek to work with the incoming president—but let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law.” 

California has the fifth largest economy in the world, and its population of 39 million people is more than four times the 9.59 million people in Hungary, the country from which MAGA Republicans are taking much of their ideological vision.  

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, who has been called a “happy warrior,” held a press conference today, telling reporters that he will continue working to keep Illinois “a place of stability and competent governance” and vowing to protect the people of his state no matter what the new administration does. “To anyone who intends to come take away the freedom and opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans: I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior,” he said. “You come for my people, you come through me.”

Trump has made it clear he intends to have a say in the decisions of the Federal Reserve, which manages interest rates, and during his first term he frequently attacked Fed chair Jerome Powell, whom he appointed, for not lowering rates to boost the economy. Trump’s advisors have suggested the president can gain power over the nation’s finances by removing members of the Fed in his next term. 

Today, when reporters asked Powell if he would resign before Trump takes office, he said no. When asked if Trump could fire or demote him or the other Fed governors, Powell was firm: “Not permitted under the law.”