At the beginning of this month, TIME Magazine published a cover that visually says what most of us have been thinking about the state of things over on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And it should scare the hell out of you if you’re paying attention.
The image is of Elon Musk sitting in a seat reserved only for the President of the United States: The Resolute Desk. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this cover is worth a million, but let’s see if I can break it down in fewer words than that.
Maybe you’ve been partaking in the Mary Jane that is now legal in half of the country, and have forgotten who Musk is and what he does: He’s the richest men in the world with Forbes Magazine estimating his net worth at over $391 billion. (With a B.) He is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX…and is the dude who bought Twitter, changed its name to X and then ruined the platform.
He’s also a South African native with seemingly naked white supremacist bona fides whom Trump has granted an unprecedented amount of governmental power: Musk heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). An initiative of the administration ostensibly designed to reduce wasteful and fraudulent federal spending and eliminate excessive regulations.
Which brings us back to the TIME cover.
Aside from the authoritarian pose and red backdrop being reminiscent of Russian President (dictator) Vladamir Putin, the subtext of the photo suggests that it is Musk, not Trump, who is actually behind what’s coming out of the White House these days...as if to suggest that Musk is pulling Trump’s strings like a marionette doll.
Whether this is true or not, the cover clearly got under the skin of the President. When he was asked about it, he looked like he dropped his ice cream cone, paused, and then asked, “Is TIME Magazine still in business?”
Musk is not in charge, but in his role as the head of DOGE, he is unquestionably causing chaos in the government. So far, he has had a role in shutting down USAID (a government program instituted by Congress), trying to fire any governmental employee that is not loyal to the President, and not just reduce federal spending, but taking control of it. The South African immigrant is 47th’s attack dog, mercilessly wreaking havoc and bringing us to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
Mind you, Musk and Trump have not always gotten along. In July 2022, Musk tweeted “I don’t hate the man, but it’s time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.” But over the past few months, the two have apparently gotten friendship bracelets and become besties...and the TIME cover suggests it could all be a clever ruse by Musk to position himself.
Musk is a successful businessman; I’ll give him that. (Well, at least he is when it comes to his electric vehicles. Not so much when you take X into consideration.) But he is not qualified to take on the task of making our government more efficient. That’s what is ironic about that cover. It features a man who is using the power the president gave him to cause disorder. Yet, he is not actually the one in power. This is all Agent Orange’s doing. He is simply using the Nazi saluting billionaire as cover.