I really do hope that every American who owns a television saw the live newsfeed from the Oval Office, last Tuesday, in which Elon Musk demonstrated in no uncertain terms that he is the actual president of the United States. In fact, a new term has already been coined and will now join the lexicon of political acronyms that includes RINO (Republican in Name Only) and DINO (Democrat in Name Only). Acronym lovers, rejoice: We can now add PINO (President in Name Only).
Donald Trump is now a PINO.
If you want to have a look at the APOTUS (Actual President of the United States), in close proximity to the PINO, please Google that particular media appearance. It really is priceless… unless, of course, it somehow feels as if the behavior of the APOTUS is even scarier than that of the PINO. Choose your own adventure.
For those of you who turn off the television whenever PINO floats across the screen, allow me to describe the joint appearance for you:
PINO was seated behind the Resolute Desk, with APOTUS standing to his right. APOTUS was wearing one of his ubiquitous black T-shirts underneath a dark jacket and couldn’t be bothered to remove his baseball cap while standing inside one of this country’s most important offices, while PINO was attired, more conservatively, in a suit jacket and tie. There were big gray bags under his eyes, an indication, perhaps, that he has been working round the clock to end American democracy as quickly as possible. But have no fear; once he has installed himself as Dictator for Life—or maybe Dictator for Life in Name Only (DiFLINO)—he will be able to catch up on all of that missed sleep.
Meanwhile, APOTUS, who seems determined to humiliate PINO at every opportunity, invited his four-year-old son to accompany him to the press briefing, and it was ironic that the four-year-old, wearing a tiny bespoke suit, was more appropriately attired than his father for the occasion.
As a card-carrying preschooler, the son of APOTUS immediately did what he and his age-mates do best: He stole the show, skittering hither and yon, mugging for the cameras and hogging the limelight.
PINO, who has very low tolerance for dogs, cats, children, and any other life form that hijacks even a sliver of attention from him, was visibly annoyed. He was being upstaged by a toddler and the richest person on Earth. A very particular look came over his face—rather like the look we saw when, at the end of his last presidency, he was nearly laughed off the stage at the United Nations when he claimed to be the best president in the history of the United States—the same thin, brittle smile, identical to the smile he wore when he was roasted by Barack Obama at a long-ago White House Correspondents’ Dinner. One suspects that this pseudo-smile is usually followed by an enormous temper tantrum that he throws as soon as the cameras are switched off. I found myself wondering how many Big Macs his White House valet had to scrape off the wall that evening.
The purpose of Tuesday’s press conference was, of course, to inform the American public of the great service being rendered by his faux DOGE agency. An actual federal agency, as most politically informed Americans understand, must be established by Congress. Presidents, PINOs, and APOTUSs are not empowered to simply create agencies outside of a congressional process. Of course, when a country enters the post-justice era in which we now find ourselves, rules, regulations, and laws become immaterial.
So APOTUS is now the director of a fake agency charged with removing food from the mouths of starving children, along with the life-saving medicines that prevent their parents from dying of AIDS, so that he and PINO can continue to pay no income tax. He has locked lawmakers out of federal buildings while he downloads who knows how many terabytes of highly sensitive personal information, not just that of government employees but that of ordinary citizens. He is directing a crackerjack team of louche college freshmen to help him accomplish this task. How could anything possibly go wrong?
There is no point in giving a specific rendition of what was actually said during the press conference, because as we all know, nobody associated with PINO, including PINO, ever tells the truth. Besides, who really cared, when all eyes were riveted on the four-year-old annoying the hell out of him. When APOTUS spoke, little Mr. Bespoke was lifted onto his father’s shoulders, so the visual impression was that of a Tower of Musk in whose shadow sat the vastly diminished, flaccid PINO. As I mentioned earlier, the whole event was just priceless, crystalizing as it did the true power dynamic of that relationship.
But here is what I find absolutely fascinating: PINO appears to be putting up with it. Since we have long had a bird’s-eye view of PINO’s absolute hatred of being upstaged by anyone, why on Earth is he putting up with it? We have witnessed scores of his employees being fired by tweet, which always reminded me of the episode of “Sex and the City” in which Carrie Bradshaw’s boyfriend breaks up with her via Post-It note. The same technique is being used, via email, by his administration to inform federal workers that they have been terminated, for absolutely no reason, in order to shrink the government.
I conclude that PINO is allowing APOTUS to completely humiliate him because he is, in some form, massively beholden to APOTUS. And because all things boil down to money and greed for both of them, I must presume that PINO is in some way financially dependent on APOTUS. This may be one of the reasons that APOTUS was just given a contract to provide $400 million worth of defective tanks to the United States military. The tanks designed by APOTUS have failed miserably in a number of tests of tankiness: bullet-proof windows that can be shattered by a single rock, for instance, and an inability to climb steep terrain. Musk also has huge space contracts, even though his SpaceX rockets have failed miserably.
It will be interesting to see the evolution of this particular bromance in which two of the most entitled, arrogant, narcissistic, rich men in the country do whatever they please to the citizens of the United States. I have friends who are already betting that the lovefest is fraying around the edges, but in my view, Donald Trump is so beholden to Elon Musk, just as he is to Vladimir Putin, that Musk will have cart blanche to screw America for quite some time to come.
