Trump, Musk, and the Politics of Distraction

It turns out that, at least for the moment, the White House was not large enough to hold the massive egos of both Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Their breakup played out like reality television, which could not have been more appropriate, and gave rise to any number of sarcastic asides, such as AOC’s quip, “The girls are fighting.” Speculation soon shifted to whether this was an actual divorce or simply a lover’s quarrel and, if the former, how aggressive would each of them be in trying to punish his ex.

Regardless of how Season One this domestic melodrama unfolds, Trump and Musk and have once again succeeded in dominating media coverage, which seems as important to each of them as adding a couple of zeroes to their net worth.

And therein lies the problem.

While many, if not most, Americans are breathlessly following every twist and turn of Trump/Musk playlet, few seem to be paying attention to what is actually happening in the country. The lead article in almost every major newspaper, including the Wall Street Journal, is about how the break-up happened, why it happened, and what might come next, sprinkled in with such vital national security tidbits as Trump getting rid of his Tesla and Musk insisting that Trump was more deeply involved with Jeffrey Epstein than has been made public. If Trump and Musk had cooked all this up as a means to distract Americans from the nation’s ongoing and deepening crises, they could not have done a better job.

Even leaving aside the ratcheted-up cruelty of Trump’s crusade against Spanish speaking immigrants and Muslims, the disquieting trends both in domestic and foreign policy need a good deal more scrutiny than they are getting. What people should be talking about is, after cutting through the noise and the chaos, what has Trump actually accomplished in his five months in office?

The answer is, not very much. Perhaps the economy has not tanked…yet…but nor has it improved. Prices have not gone up appreciably but nor, despite Trump’s day-one promise, have they gone down. Although the numbers have yet to reflect it—nor has the stock market—consumer confidence is at a near ten-year low, which includes the pandemic, home sales have slowed and, while auto sales have been robust, one reason is the rush to buy vehicles before tariffs force the prices way up, especially for pickup trucks.

All three of these, as well as some other data, such as a falling bond market, are lagging indicators, meaning that, if trends do not improve, their impact may not be felt for months. The United States economy is driven by consumer spending so that the fragility of consumer confidence has the potential of turbo-charging any downturn.

Government services have been denuded, so much so that Trump has been forced to hire back thousands of employees that he or Musk had summarily fired, while thousands more who opted for early retirement are being asked to reconsider. Many will come back because they have not found other jobs, but some will not, and the morale in government agencies remains abysmal. Some of the more senior and knowledgeable former government workers are being actively wooed by other nations, including China. In addition, even after the re-hires, many agencies have nowhere near the staffing to adequately discharge their duties nor will many dispirited employees do more than the minimum amount of work that their job description requires.

Lack of government services will have short-term impact on some vital functions, such as food inspection, disease testing, and support for veterans, but the real cataclysm will not be manifested until an emergency develops, be it disease or disaster, and federal resources are either insufficient or non-existent. As has been pointed out often, the pain will likely be felt most by the middle and lower classes, many of whom are among Trump’s core supporters.

In foreign policy, Trump has performed no better. While the White House is constantly trumpeting its success in getting other nations to renegotiate trade deals, the deals themselves have been slow in coming. Even his supposed victory in getting Keir Starmer to the table seems more illusory than real, since the UK “has insisted that American hormone-treated meat will not start to seep into the UK market, following the tariff deal that boosts the trade in beef in both directions.” Other traditional trading partners, such as Canada and those in western Europe, have been actively pursuing side deals to allow them to buffer the impact of reduced trade with the United States. China, with whom the United States shares mutual commercial need, has effectively stalled while, as has been widely reported, gearing up for a trade war that will bring a good deal of discomfort to both sides, but less to the nation that has prepared itself than the one that has not.

Trump’s Middle East policy toggles between support for Israel and the courting of Israel’s adversaries. The Trump administration began talks with Iran amid reports that Iran has upped its production of enriched uranium, a policy for which Trump has vowed swift action. None has been forthcoming. Trump distanced himself from Ukraine just before Ukraine’s greatest triumph, the destruction of a good chunk of Russia’s long-range bomber fleet.

The list both of Trump’s failures to produce the results he promised and areas where the nation has been seriously weakened goes on and on, while Trump’s focus seems to be stuck on pandering to his base by ridding the nation of the migrant workers who often toil thanklessly at the very jobs that keep prices low and rewriting American history to airbrush out the achievements of everyone except white men.

Trump has dealt with these failures the same way he has dealt with his (many) failures in the business world. Bluster and distraction.

In Elon Musk, he has found the perfect partner.