No License To Steal & Nothing Allowing Him To Hand The Government Over To Musk
Is it possible that anyone reading the Financial Times report noting that “Trump’s second administration risks being rife with potential conflicts of interests given the sprawling business and financial interests of several cabinet picks and allies” was surprised at all? After all, his “cabinet is shaping up to be one of the wealthiest on record after he tapped a number of financiers and business executives, including nominees Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary, Howard Lutnick to lead the commerce department, and Chris Wright as energy secretary.” Worst of all— by far— Elon Musk has a murky role as well.
The Financial Times team wrote that “It is not unusual for senior figures from corporate America and Wall Street to join the US government. Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs was Treasury secretary in George W Bush’s administration, and ExxonMobil head Rex Tillerson served as secretary of state during Trump’s first term. But critics say the intersection of business interests and government policy during Trump’s second term could be more complex and potentially problematic than in previous administrations, increasing the danger that government ethics standards could be flouted or ignored. ‘We are looking at potentially the greatest ethics cataclysm in the history of our government,’ said Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, a federal agency. ‘There is no reason to believe that these potential conflicts of interest are going to be resolved.’... There are fears the business and financial interests of Trump’s nominees are so vast it will be very difficult to disentangle them from government affairs. These are compounded with concerns the Department of Justice under Trump will choose not to prosecute any violations of conflict of interest laws. The president-elect has called for the prosecution of his political opponents, leaving some legal experts fearing for the department’s independence.”
If confirmed, Bessent, Lutnick and Wright will have critical roles shepherding the country’s economic, trade, and energy policies in areas Trump has pledged to make major changes— including tax cuts, sweeping tariffs, and deregulation— that will have a broad impact on businesses and markets around the world.
Archon Fung, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, said the worry with nominees who are businesspeople is that “because of their experience in the industry, they’ll be either beholden to a . . . web of relationships there that will affect their judgment about what the public interests require” or “they’ll have completely absorbed a particular point of view, rather than the diverse points of view about what would be good . . . policy.”
Musk’s role as co-chair of Trump’s proposed “department of government efficiency,” or Doge, is expected to face particular scrutiny. The billionaire owns Twitter, the social media company as well as Tesla, the electric-car maker and SpaceX, the space exploration group.
Trump has tasked him with slashing government spending and increasing the productivity of federal agencies— including some that have multibillion-dollar contracts with the tycoon’s businesses.
He has previously railed against government agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration, which he sees as having hamstrung his businesses. Tesla, from which Musk derives most of his wealth, has also clashed with the Environmental Protection Agency.
Because Doge would be an independent body, Musk is not subject to the same ethical rules and laws as federal officials, but his heavy involvement in government policy is triggering concern over potential conflicts of interest.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in Missouri, said: “This Musk venture is simply an attempt to do an end run around government ethics laws while also being able to exert a huge amount of governmental power.”
Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
…“Donald Trump is stocking up his cabinet with billionaires again, offering them a special tax break just for signing up,” said senator Elizabeth Warren. “These nominees should commit to not use loopholes to avoid paying taxes as a result of their government service.”
And those are, relatively speaking, “the normies” among appointees— not the off-the-deep-end nominees like Tulsi Gabbard, Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, Pete Hegseth, RFK, Jr, Tom Homan, Pam Bondi, Linda McMahon and Dr. Oz. Does Trump have a mandate to bring these sociopaths into the government. Well… presidents are usually given wide latitude when they put their teams together. Matt Gaetz was a bridge too far and even Republicans in Congress told Trump NO. Trump was forced to tell Gaetz to withdraw, likely with a get-out-of-jail-free promise for the future. The U.S. has long given presidents broad discretion in staffing their administrations, reflecting a constitutional framework that vests significant executive power in the presidency. This latitude stems partly from the understanding that the president, elected by the people, must have the ability to assemble a team aligned with their policy vision. Very rarely Congress draws the line when appointees are deemed excessively unqualified, corrupt or ideologically extreme, underscoring that this discretion is not without limits. Historical examples include Congress blocking Eisenhower’s nomination of Lewis Strauss as Secretary of Commerce (1954) due to concerns over his abrasive management style and controversial stances. Similarly, in more recent history, Trump’s attempt to place rapist and drug addict Ronny Jackson as head of the Department of Veterans Affairs (2018) was derailed due to bipartisan concerns over allegations of misconduct and his lack of administrative experience. Despite Jackson’s close personal relationship with Trump, both Republican and Democratic senators raised red flags, forcing him to withdraw his nomination.
As for Trump’s insistence about having been given the biggest mandate in history… just more typical Trump dishonesty and gaslighting… largely enabled by the mass media. Hours after the election was called, he said “America a has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate… a political victory that our country has never seen before, nothing like this.” Truth is, Trump’s was one of the closest popular vote elections in modern history, as we’ve been repeating since election day. He didn’t even with a majority of votes cast, just a plurality. And the American people sure didn’t give him a mandate— juts a shrinking 49.83% to 48.28% win over Kamala. Once the rest of the votes in California, Oregon and Washington are counted, he’ll be lucky to not fall below 49%.
On Thursday, then L.A.Times went so far as to ask As Trump’s lead in popular vote shrinks, does he really have a ‘mandate’?. Jenny Jarvie made it clear there is no “MAGA mandate… [noting that] there is fierce disagreement over whether most Americans really endorse his plans to overhaul government and implement sweeping change... The question is whether Trump can garner significant public support to push through his more contentious administration picks and the most radical elements of his policy agenda, such as bringing in the military to enforce mass deportations.”
Scholars of American politics have long been skeptical of the idea of a presidential mandate.
The first president to articulate such a concept was Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, who viewed his 1832 reelection— in which he won 54.2% of the popular vote— as a mandate to destroy the Second Bank of the United States and expand his political authority. In arguing he had the mandate of the people, Jackson deviated from the approach of previous presidents in refusing to defer to Congress on policy.
In Myth of the Presidential Mandate, Robert Dahl, a professor of political science at Yale University, argued the presidential mandate was “harmful to American public life” because it “elevates the president to an exalted position in our constitutional system at the expense of Congress.
Even if we accept the premise of a mandate, there is little consensus on when a candidate has achieved it.
“How do we know what voters were thinking as they cast ballots?” Julia R. Azari, an assistant professor of political science at Marquette University, wrote in a recent essay. “Are some elections mandates and others not? If so, how do we know? What’s the popular vote cutoff— is it a majority or more? Who decides?”
In “Delivering the People’s Message: The Changing Politics of the Presidential Mandate,” she argues that it’s politicians in weak positions who typically invoke mandates. This century, she wrote, presidents have cited mandates with increasing frequency as a result of the declining status of the presidency and growing national polarization.
… [Trump] lacks public support for pushing through his picks without Senate approval. More than three-quarters of respondents, according to the CBS poll, believe the Senate should vote on Trump’s appointments.
Noel, the Georgetown professor, said that Trump’s rhetorical strategy aside, the president-elect might have to move past the “‘I won, so everybody get out of my way’ kind of politics” and work behind the scenes to seek common ground with moderate Republicans and maybe even some Democrats.
“In the past, people have made strong claims about mandates, but then they’ve coupled that with more cautious policymaking,” Noel said. “If Trump doesn’t do that— if he acts like he believes his own story— then we’re in a different, more Trumpian kind of place.”
As for implementing the Project 2025 agenda— privatizing Social Security or Medicare, expanding executive power, curtailing LGBTQ equality, dismantling federal climate regulations— Trump explicitly disowned their plans during the campaign and has no mandate for implementing any of it.
He won. That’s it. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter how much he won by. He will be the president, the head of the executive branch. The Supremes have given him virtually unlimited power. In my humble opinion, this article doesn’t mean squat as far as stopping him from destroying our government institutions and democracy. It doesn’t make me feel the slightest bit better.