We’ve got a fascinating story unfolding with the new Musk email I reported on below. And yes, something can be fascinating while also being grave, dangerous and in its own way terrifying. Over the course of the evening top leadership at the FBI, the State Department, the VA, the Department of the Navy (to its civilian employees) and other parts of the government have explicitly instructed employees in their departments and agencies to ignore the email. Meanwhile the DOJ seems to be instructing its employees to follow it. (And yes, FBI is sort of under DOJ and that’s kind of weird but that’s where we are.)
It’s important to note that these emails are authorized or allowed if not directed by the President of the United States. And yet whole wings of the government are saying to ignore it. I mentioned to someone this evening that they’re treating a presidentially authorized email as some kind of insider threat. And this person says, we’re surprised that Trump is an insider threat? To which I said, yes, I’m surprised that his own appointees are doing so.
This is all a bit comical and also manages to be a certain degree of state disintegration we’re watching in real time. But it also seems clear that Musk has gotten a bit over his skis finally. We’ve been in this world of upside where a lone wolf is on a wilding spree through the federal government, clearly not operating at anyone’s direction but his own. And yet the President is at least okaying it all after the fact. And thus our system can’t really make sense of what’s happening. Yes, it’s almost all illegal even or in a sense especially if the President is authorizing it. But it’s also pretty clear that the elected President is in the backseat of this car if he’s in the car at all.
But here you have seemingly the first time where his own appointees are pushing back and in a fairly public way.
This will get weirder.
