FTA:

Rather than cautioning against it, Musk described this hardship as necessary and inevitable, supporting Trump's blueprint for restructuring the economy by slashing government programs. Musk's remarks, shared in a Telephone Town Hall organized by his America PAC, indicate that he and Trump see economic pain to average Americans as a necessary cost of their policy goals.

"We have to reduce spending to live within our means. And that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity," Musk stated in the call, fully endorsing the strain Trump's policies would place on Americans. Musk's words make it clear that the disruption is not an unintended side effect but an accepted"if not desired"outcome.

What could possibly go wrong?:

FTA: Trump has said he would appoint Musk to lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency," an agency that Musk would use to "trim the fat" from government operations and, presumably, enact sweeping cuts to public programs. The department, referred to by the acronym DOGE is a nod to Musk's favored meme cryptocurrency.

Also:

BREAKING: RFK Jr. says Donald Trump has promised him "control of the public health agencies."

RFK Jr. says "Trump has promised me ... control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others."

Here's what Elon's co-chair of the prospective Trump administration's "Department of Government Efficiency" had to say about America's future at Trump's MSG rally on Sunday:

Cantor Fitzgerald chairman and CEO Howard Lutnick came out and spoke of how his firm was decimated on September 11 when a plane struck just below their offices in the World Trade Center, how they'd given lots of money to the families, and then he finally provided a clear answer to that nine-year-old question: When, exactly, was America great?

The Gilded Age.

The crowd was a bit miffed when Lutnick extolled the virtues of the "turn-of-the-century" economy, and they didn't rouse much when he explained he was referring to 1900. They perked up a bit when he explained this meant "no income tax," though it was more of a smattering of cheers.

"All we had was tariffs!" he explained, probably expecting more of a roar, "and we had so much money that we had the greatest businessmen of America get together to try to figure out how to spend it!" Near-silence. "That's who we were then."

And there it was. We should return to the days when all the money flowed into a handful of pockets, when the Carnegies and Rockefellers got to make all the rules, and the way that billionaires like Lutnick will seek to do that is by getting Trump in there to abolish the income tax--as if any of them pay their fair share as it is. This was Reaganomics on anarcho-capitalist steroids, and the fairly frosty reception it got in the arena was a reminder of how much more effective Trump's economic populism has been for Republicans, even if he ended up signing the same old tax-cut-for-rich-people once elected.