Since Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, billionaire Elon Musk and a team of young men between the ages of 19 and 24 — most linked to Musk’s companies — have engaged in an illegal coup, attempting to freeze the U.S. Treasury Department payment system, eliminate or degrade over a dozen federal agencies and end government civil rights and diversity, equity and inclusion policies. One member of Musk’s government wrecking crew, 25-year old Marko Elez, resigned after his racist comments on social media including his call for a “eugenic immigration policy,” repeal of the Civil Rights Act and urged Silicon Valley to “normalize Indian hate” were widely reported on news media, but Musk quickly rehired him.
Musk, owner of social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI and who donated over $288 million to Trump and Republican candidates in the 2024 campaign, is now leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, with the mission of eliminating $2 trillion in government waste fraud and abuse. But in response to lawsuits brought by federal employees and Democratic state attorneys general, several federal judges have blocked Trump and Musk’s attempt to bypass Congress and the U.S. Constitution to impose their autocratic plan to reshape government.
In response to a judge’s ruling, Musk and Vice President JD Vance have attacked the legitimacy of judicial oversight of Trump’s executive authority, a fundamental pillar of American democracy, which is based on the constitution’s separation of powers. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Amanda Marcotte, a senior politics writer at Salon.com, who discusses her article titled, “‘Hitler actually had some decent points’: Musk’s covert coup is guided by internet trolls,” which examines the illegal elimination of government agencies and the white supremacy that guides Musk’s hacker army.
AMANDA MARCOTTE: So what we do know is that Musk and this group of “DOGE employees” are trying to get into the computer systems of the federal government. It’s completely illegal. And Musk is going on Twitter and insisting over and over that he can unilaterally just cut entire federal bureaucracies. He’s tried to destroy USAID. He’s on Twitter claiming that he can just single-handedly end the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
He can’t do these things. It’s illegal. Only Congress can do those things.
But Musk is operating under the theory that he basically is the unilateral power now. Congress is irrelevant, that they don’t matter anymore. And to a large extent that even Trump doesn’t really matter anymore. So I can get into it, but we know kind of where he’s getting these ideas and what kind of theory he’s operating under. He went after US AID it seems, because this guy he follows on Twitter——who is an avowed white nationalist who’s spoken openly of his admiration of Hitler——said to.
SCOTT HARRIS: Speaking of Hitler and Nazis, Amanda, tell us a little bit about what we know of some of these six young men in particular, who have been leading this coup d’etat, trying to eliminate many departments of government. There was a guy you wrote about called Edward Coristine. There’s Marko Elez. And I wonder if you would just summarize for our audience a little bit about what their belief systems are and what they’ve posted on social media that should have all of us very alarmed.
AMANDA MARCOTTE: A lot of the six young men don’t have huge public profiles, so I don’t want to speak to that very much. But Elez had a social media account that some journalists attached to him where he posted a lot of very racist things. He said, “You couldn’t pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.”
He openly self-identified as a racist. He said he hates Indian people and thinks they’re stupid and will be replaced by LLMs (Large Language Models or AI programs that can process language and perform tasks). He kind of spoke about wanting mass deportations of legal immigrants. So that’s where that guy is.
And the fact that there’s a bunch of racist trolls online is not surprising at this point. But I will say, what was striking to me was that he resigned after he got outed for these posts. And then Musk very showingly went on Twitter and said he wants him back. And then Vice President JD Vance hopped in and said that he wants him back, too. So what this is, really very importantly, not just about these young men, but about Elon Musk and JD Vance using this as an opportunity to basically say that they think that white supremacy, neo-Nazi views, etc., etc. should not be a problem for somebody that wants to have control over the Treasury Department.
SCOTT HARRIS: Do you think most of the American people are catching up with this story about the kinds of people that are involved in this Trump administration and the takeover over these federal agencies? Certainly, people knew about Trump quoting Hitler and his other vile statements that he’s made in his first term and during this recent campaign. So I guess they can’t plead ignorance.
Do you see what’s going on here with Elon Musk reaching a pivot point of some kind where people will say, “Hey, we do have a Constitution and Congress does matter. Those are our representatives, whatever party they voted for.”
AMANDA MARCOTTE: No, I don’t think people are noticing yet. I think the vast majority of people do not follow the news very closely.
They vaguely see these stories, but unfortunately, Elon Musk, computers, Treasury Department, DOGE—all these words, government efficiency, those are all words that are meant to cause the average American to tune out and assume it’s not an interesting story.
I don’t think that most people are able to grasp that this is a coup. I think that most people are just hearing … like the Republicans are spinning that Musk is in there just trying to make the government more efficient and cut stuff.
And you know, once you start saying, “Well, he doesn’t have the legal authority to do that,” most people are like zoom, like zoning out, tuning out, like looking at TikTok, do not care. Because unfortunately, that just sounds like boring government disputes about law.
So unfortunately, I think right now most people aren’t paying attention and they definitely aren’t paying close enough attention to notice all the Nazi stuff. And even if they do, all they get are denials. So they’re like, “Well, the other guy says it’s not Nazi. So I guess who can say.”
Marcotte is also the author of “Troll Nation: How the Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters.”
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Amanda Marcotte (16:15) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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