Next Up For Her “What Just Happened?” Moment: Tulsi Gabbard—But With Musk Growling In The Background

Now We Watch The Slippery Slope From Democracy To Plutocracy

A public humiliation extravaganza for Putin's favorite American politician?

Last week Joni Ernst (R-IA) met with Pete Hegseth and refused to endorse him for confirmation. After the much-anticipated meeting, she just gave a wishy-washy statement about how everyone deserves a fair hearing. Trump went crazy and co-president Musk openly declared he would spend whatever it takes to primary any Republican who opposes— in any way— any Trump nominee. A Mar-a-lago spokesperson: “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary.” So… Ernst scheduled another meeting with Hegseth this week so she can make nice with Musk. 

Two other Trump psychopaths being forced down GOP senators’ throats are Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel. Tulsi met with Trump asslickers James Lankford (R-OK), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mike Rounds (R-SD) yesterday with additional Intelligence Committee Republicans later in the week. And John Cornyn (R-TX) met with Kash. Yesterday, before the meetings, Rachael Bade and Eugene Daniels reported that Assad’s collapse over the weekend “has reinvigorated scrutiny about Gabbard’s past sympathies for the brutal dictator... John Bolton told Politico that Gabbard has shown ‘an inclination to believe the most outrageous propaganda against the United States by some of its strongest enemies’— citing, as an example, her parroting the unfounded, Russia-backed ‘biolabs’ conspiracy theory  holding that the U.S. was conducting biological warfare research in Ukraine. It ‘raises serious questions about her judgment,’ Bolton said, reflecting a ‘funhouse of mirrors’ view of American foreign policy that ‘goes beyond normal political discourse in this country— and really is evidence of some kind of flaw, maybe even a character flaw, that she doesn’t realize what she’s saying.’” Unable to answer Bolton’s fact-based argument, the transitions response was that Trump’s former national security advisor “Bolton is irrelevant and him saying he would write in Dick Cheney for president this year should tell you everything you need to know about his disastrous and failed foreign policy instincts of never-ending wars and more American deaths.”

She already has backing from all the Senate MAGAts, of course, but she’s hoping to get Bernie to return the favor from 2016 when— for her own careerist reasons— she endorsed him and, incongruously, was one of his top campaign surrogates.

It’s worth noting that McConnell is retiring in 2027, so this particular threat about a primary won’t deter him from voting the way he wants to. If Chuck Grassley runs again in 2028 he’ll be 95.

If they run for reelection, Republicans up in 2026 are:

• Joni Ernst (IA)

• Susan Collins (ME)

• Thom Tillis (NC)

• Bill Cassidy (LA)

• Shelley Moore Capito (WV)

• Tommy Tuberville (AL)

• Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS)

• Dan Sullivan (AK)

• Bill Hagerty (TN)

• Cynthia Lummis (WY)

• Markwayne Mullin (OK)

• Pete Ricketts (NE)

• John Cornyn (TX)

• Roger Marshall (KS)

• Mike Rounds (SD)

• Tom Cotton (AR)

• Steve Daines (MT)

• Jim Risch (ID)

• Lindsey Graham (SC)

And the Republican senators up in 2028 will be:

• Lisa Murkowski (AK)

• Todd Young (IN)

• James Lankford (OK)

• Chuck Grassley (IA)

• John Thune (SD)

• Rand Paul (KY)

• Katie Britt (AL)

• Ted Budd (NC)

• John Kennedy (LA)

• John Bookman (AR)

• Jerry Moran (KS)

• Mike Crapo (ID)

• Ron Johnson (WI)

• John Hoeven (ND)

• Tim Scott (SC)

• Mike Lee (UT)

• Eric Schmitt (MO)

Also, whoever replaces Marco Rubio (FL) and JD Vance (OH).

It will be interesting to see which of these senators are willing to not just stand up to Trump but to stand up to the Musk plutocracy to boot! And presumably Musk's threat doesn't just cover nominations but policy as well. So... why even bother having a Congress at all? What we’re looking at here is nothing short of the toxic interplay between Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, Musk’s plutocratic bullying and the GOP’s complicity and fear-driven silence.

Every member of Congress— from both parties— should be more than alarmed. Musk’s threat to fund primary challenges against dissenters represents more than just the latest escalation in plutocratic overreach— it’s a direct attack on the independence of one of the constitutional branches of the government. The Senate, already teetering on the edge of irrelevance under Trump’s domination, now faces a dual assault: from a billionaire willing to buy its submission and a party apparatus that no longer tolerates dissent, debate or even conscience.

Historically, legislative bodies have often been reduced to ceremonial roles under authoritarian regimes— from the rubber-stamp parliaments of the Soviet Union, the Reichstag under Nazi Germany and the National Assembly in Vichy France to the Cortes under Franco and Pinochet’s Congress, the pattern is clear: once money and fear replace dialogue and deliberation, democracy itself becomes the casualty. The Roman Senate was once a powerful body but was reduced to irrelevance once they bowed down to the dissolution of their own prerogatives under Augustus. 

Closer to home, during the Gilded Age here in the U.S., the Senate was called “the Millionaire's Club” because of the dominance of robber barons like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon and J.P. Morgan. These vicious tycoons used their wealth to bribe legislators, dominate party politics, and shape policy in ways that served their interests. The direct election of senators via the 17th Amendment (1913) was, in part, a response to this corruption. In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Duma came under the sway of oligarchs who had amassed immense wealth by exploiting the chaotic privatization of state assets. These billionaires— like Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich— used their fortunes to buy political influence, ensuring that legislation favored their business interests and insulated them from accountability. Whether by authoritarian suppression or plutocratic subversion, the replacement of genuine representation with control by a narrow elite is deadly for democracy. While authoritarian regimes often use fear and violence, wealthy oligarchs employ economic power and media control to achieve similar ends. The U.S. today faces a dual threat: a proto-authoritarian movement (Trumpism) and the unchecked influence of billionaires like Musk, Charles Koch, Peter Thiel, Ken Giffin, Israeli operative Miriam Adelson, Jeff Yass, Harlan Crow, Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, Marc Andreessen, the Mercers and the Uihleins, where financial coercion erodes the legislative process.

Musk and Trump may not yet have completely achieved this transformation, but their trajectory is unmistakable— and their threat extends beyond mere nominations. The risk now is that the Senate is becoming a hollow shell, an institution that exists only to ratify the whims of a billionaire and his chosen authoritarian figurehead. Is it time to dispense with elections, debates and votes, and simply let Musk and his allies govern directly? That, of course, is the ultimate aim: a system where power flows not from the people, but from the purse strings of America’s wealthiest self-serving criminal families. I’m warning you: this is no longer about any one nominee or even this particular Senate. It’s about the survival of representative democracy itself. And the question is not whether the GOP senators facing re-election in 2026 or 2028 will cave to these threats. It’s whether anyone left in their ranks is willing to stand up and remind us what Congress is supposed to be.