The art of governing according to Trump

(Washington) Donald Trump was enjoying his victory Wednesday with his close guard at Mar-a-Lago when the phone rang. It was Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Ukrainian president, following all other heads of state, wanted to congratulate the president-elect.

Donald Trump passed the device to one of his guests: Elon Musk.

We don’t know what the three men said to each other.

Long before his new friend was elected, the richest man in the world was already a key player in the war in Ukraine. When the Russian army invaded the country, all telecommunications systems were wiped out. Publicly challenged on his own social network, X, Musk sent hundreds of Starlink terminals to the Ukrainians two days later. Then thousands.

When electricity infrastructure was attacked, Musk sent out solar-powered charging systems. At the expense of the company, which said last year that it had supplied 80 million in equipment.

Without Elon Musk, Ukraine might have capitulated long ago.

But when the Ukrainian army decided to use this communication system to launch drone attacks on the Russian fleet in Crimea, Musk got involved. His aid was humanitarian, defensive, not intended for military escalation.

Suddenly, the multi-billionaire became a sort of negotiator, in contact with the Kremlin, the White House and Kyiv. He even presented a peace plan, which ceded Crimea definitively to Russia, plus certain territories, subject to referendums.

For Musk, there is not the slightest chance that Ukraine will win this war, and the billions in Western aid, especially American, are a complete waste.

This is a relatively unpopular opinion, but widely held. The question today is not so much whether he is right or not. It is rather that of the role that the richest man on earth will play in the future Trump administration. And, at the same time, the art of governing according to Donald Trump.

Elon Musk is not only the richest man. If his wealth was based “only” on his control of Tesla, he would already have enormous power in the American system. Since a Supreme Court decision in 2011 (Citizens United), there are virtually no limits to political financing in the United States. He was seen spending more than $100 million for Trump in Pennsylvania this fall, including running a lottery where he gave away $1 million each day to a lucky Republican signer.

That’s not what it’s about, although the expression “buying votes” could hardly be better illustrated. Democratic billionaires also pumped their millions, by the way.

Musk is also much more powerful than his immense fortune alone suggests. And not even because he controls the social network X, where he has 200 million subscribers who he floods with pro-Trump propaganda and conspiracy theories.

Musk, whose companies own more than 6,000 satellites, is a Pentagon supplier. Its technology is of major strategic and military importance. The rescue of astronauts by one of its SpaceX rockets, when the Boeing subsidiary failed, highlighted its technological strength. He is now entering the field of military intelligence and espionage, and everything indicates that no one is able to compete with him.

In other words, American Defense, which does business with Musk’s companies, is already involved with him.

This is the man Trump wants to appoint to clean up the federal civil service. The president-elect calls him a genius, and undoubtedly the term is not an exaggeration when we see the areas he tackled, the technologies his companies developed, the talents he attracted.

He is also in a deep conflict of interest, being both a beneficiary of federal government contracts and subject to its regulation.

What will be the art of governing according to Donald Trump? There is a word to describe a regime where the richest exercise power: plutocracy. Some will say that, already, the power of money is preponderant in the United States. But this is done behind the scenes, through a play of influences, more or less counterbalanced by elected officials and court decisions.

Musk’s place in the upcoming presidency would be unprecedented. By its proximity and by the extent of its technological and financial power.

The genius of the American political system for 250 years has been the game of checks and balances. The power of Congress to pass laws is not unlimited; the president can exercise his veto; courts can strike down unconstitutional laws. The power of the president, likewise, is limited by the Constitution; its initiatives can be blocked by the Senate or the representatives; courts can overturn its decisions.

This year, Trump finds himself with a Republican Senate. Probably also a Republican House of Representatives. “His” Supreme Court granted the president broad immunity for his actions.

Trump has indicated that he intends to extend his powers, believing that he has been too often prevented in his first term by the civil service or elected officials.

The way is clear this time. He will surround himself with faithful people, “loyal” people, as he says.

That doesn’t mean he can achieve everything he promised, like deporting 10 million people. A complicated task, which requires a lot of personnel in a public service that is supposed to lose weight.

It is also unclear how his promise to produce more oil will come true. Musk is not a climate skeptic and the market will perhaps make this return to carbon less attractive.

But we know what he promised: fewer controls on the environment, less power to government agencies, disappearance of the Department of Education – which is used in particular to finance schools in disadvantaged areas.

Trump has already announced that he will appoint a notorious anti-vaccine, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to head of Health. In an interview this week, RFK Jr. said he was not opposed to vaccines, but that he would like to launch investigations into their safety. We can already imagine the clashes with Public Health.

To say that it was under the presidency of his uncle, in 1962, that the major free vaccination campaigns were launched in the United States, leading to the elimination of several diseases. A deal was made when RFK Jr. abandoned his campaign in favor of Trump, and he will do “what he wants”, said the president-elect, who does not give a damn, as we saw during the pandemic.

The appointment of the leaders of the CIA and the FBI will be a crucial issue. It was the federal police who put together the files in their own criminal trials. He calls it the “Deep State” and wants to clean it up…

His trials, by the way, are all destined to fade away. We don’t need to wait for the dismissal of special prosecutor Jack Smith: a directive from the Department of Justice is that we should not try a sitting president. The New York trial, managed by the local prosecutor, is due to conclude in two weeks with Trump’s sentence. It becomes obsolete, or at least insignificant. You don’t send a sitting president to prison. The Georgia affair, already very badly screwed up and poorly managed, will probably also crash.

Which leads to another serious question: who will be the attorney general? Those of his first term did not suit Trump, because they did not want to do everything he asked. The guardian of legality, a key figure in the administration, will be loyal to Trump… Will he be loyal to the rule of law?

Trump also announced his intention to grant pardons to the insurgents of January 6, 2021. “Patriots”, some of whom were sentenced to more than 10 years in penitentiary. There’s no reason to believe he won’t keep his word, considering all the questionable allies he pardoned in his first term.

All these appointments will paint a portrait of the Trump II presidency. The authors of “Project 2025”, who want to push the government as far to the right as possible, are knocking at the door. Who will be nominated?

This time, the Senate, which must approve judicial nominations and those in high positions in the administration, is in the hands of Trump.

Apart from economic power and the unpredictable influence of big financiers, there is no power on the horizon to seriously slow down the projects of the 47^e president. Neither in his party, which has become his own, and hardly in the media, financially weakened, increasingly marginalized.

What will be the style of the 47^e ?

A much more concentrated version of the 45^e.