The Billionaire's Puppet: The Buying of the American Presidency

One of the biggest stories in American history is going largely unnoticed

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We are watching in real-time the hollowing out of Donald Trump. It should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention that Trump has struggled for years when it comes to a whole host of things that should disqualify him from the presidency. His racism, sexism, complete lack of morals, empathy, ethics, or care for other human beings have been on full display since he first entered the public eye. Add to that a lack of willingness to actually work to understand anything in favor of lying unabashedly or simply trusting his own instincts, a fully fascistic inherent tendency, and a ceaseless drive to empower and enrich himself at the expense of everyone and everything, and you have a damning profile.

But something has changed. Something undeniable. Trump’s communication skills have dwindled. He has always rambled, but the incoherence at this moment is striking. Then, there is the canceling of events and interviews citing “exhaustion.” Just looking at the man reveals, beyond question, a person who is losing the war to time. Rallies where he stops questions or the program itself to simply stand and listen to music for upwards of thirty minutes, or just…nods off.

Seven years ago, when Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States, his term was marked by laziness and self-centeredness. As he refused to do the work of studying briefings, officials learned to pepper their materials with as many mentions of his name as possible, knowing his narcissism was the only thing that could get him to do his job. Trump’s presidency was a farce. He handed the keys over to the Heritage Foundation and their associated groups, allowing them to direct the policy of the United States while he treated the position as a glorified mascot and lined his pockets with bribes from America’s enemies and money he brazenly stole from the government.

Now, we have a severely diminished nominee whose decline is not just noticeable but undeniable. If there were any justice, Trump would have been replaced by one of his rivals in the primary, where he barely campaigned but still steamrolled the competition. If the GOP had any decency, an intervention would have been staged and we wouldn’t have ever been subjected to him in the first place, much less at this stage. Instead, he stands ready to possibly win the presidency again in a razor-thin election, propelled by the support of a die-hard cult, a building international authoritarian movement, and the determination of one of the richest men in the history of the world.

The Hostile Takeover

We have discussed Elon Musk. How his own cult masks the interests of concentrated capital and portends the rise of neo-fascism. How his embrace of conspiracy theories echoes past oligarchs and industrialists who saw democracy as their mortal enemy. And, how following the rise of Neoliberalism, he used the dismantling of the government and privatization of its functions to make himself disturbingly wealthy and essential to the government’s continued existence.

What we have now is largely unprecedented. In the past we have seen oligarchs and moguls interfere in presidential elections, manipulate communication, and press their thumbs on the democratic scales. But over the course of the last few months Musk has truly outdone himself. Following his purchase of Twitter, he has twisted the corporatized public space into a tireless information weapon, flooding discourse with conspiracy theories, fascistic rhetoric, and enough mis and disinformation to truly flood the zone with shit. Then, as Trump prepared to accept the Republican nomination, he and fellow tech fascists fundamentally bought JD Vance onto the ticket, leading to months of vacuous support for cryptocurrency, meaningless pitches for his quest to “occupy Mars,” and a truly upsetting promise by Trump that, if elected, he will put Musk in charge of federal spending in a democratically unaccountable position.

In addition to spending tens of millions of his own dollars on the campaign, and a recent scheme to award a million dollars randomly to people signing his “petitions,” Musk has now dedicated himself around the clock to pushing Trump’s shambling, dying corpse across the finish line.

And why? Because Musk, as an individual, has a deep belief in Donald Trump?

Of course not. On its face, it is obvious what is happening here. Musk has recognized the utility of Trump as a figurehead of a faux-populist cult and the terminal Republican Party and understands his candidacy, in its unique hollowness, rapacity, and remarkable indolence, and its integrated apparatus of anti-democratic donors and forces, represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strengthen his hold over the economy and political infrastructure of the United States, thereby co-opting one of the most powerful nation states in history and turning it into a property and organ dedicated solely to enriching himself.

The Blueprint

It is an incredible gambit marked with peculiar and noteworthy ambition the likes of which most oligarchs have never dared. Perhaps the closest example in modern history is Cecil Rhodes, the British mining magnate who leveraged his wealth and influence to direct the British Empire, guide the plundering of Musk’s native continent, and eventually become Prime Minister of the Cape Colony as he fashioned a regime that served his own agendas.

Of course, American oligarchs and industrialists have long enjoyed disturbing control over the fate of the United States. Their relationship with the military-industrial complex and, perhaps as importantly, intelligence apparatuses like the CIA, allowed them to guide the country and use its resources as an enforcement tool in their operations around the world and, at times, to scuttle resistance within America. These power plays have often unfurled behind the scenes though, relying on larger geopolitical narratives to smokescreen their activities, and when it has come to presidential campaigns, it has regularly been as a consortium of private interests exercising outsized control.

Here, Musk has embarked on a somewhat related but unprecedented path. After decades of integrating himself into the system and feeding off the succor of U.S. corporate handouts, he now recognizes a unique opportunity: riding the carcass of Trump into extraordinary control of American power.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. The project that saw tens of trillions of dollars redistributed to a financial elite, coupled with an aggressive dismantling of governmental oversight, support, and democratic resistance, was always leading in this direction. In researching my last book, it became apparent that we were entrenched in a cycle that had played out many times prior. Corporations and their associated oligarchs had used governmental affiliations and support to grow themselves beyond the nation states that enabled them, manifesting horrific corruption and the supplanting of national interests with private ones. In the past, this has grown antidemocratic and authoritarian movements which have been the last place of respite for the oligarchs who helped create and support them.

Due to the traits of this iteration of the cycle, as well as the peculiar characteristics of Trump, the MAGA Movement, Musk, and his relationship with the federal apparatus, we now find an oligarch in almost full control of a presidential candidate and, possibly, within reach of incredible control over the government, culture, and communications. It is, to put it in technical terms, a huge fucking problem.

What We Must Do

And, yet, we find once again an environment in which these dots are not being connected. Musk’s actions have received some scrutiny, but they exist in a vacuum. His control over Trump, Vance, and the campaign are barely recognized and hardly in the context of it being orchestrated by a man who has not only trafficked incredibly poisonous conspiracy theories and antidemocratic sentiment but is also a fundamental part of our military and space-faring operations. This conflict of interest, and saying nothing about his concerning alliances with authoritarian regimes around the world, is massively disturbing.

There are plenty of reasons for this. At the surface, characters like Trump suck up all the oxygen when it comes to national politics, which are treated like passion plays involving heroes and villains and prioritize attention-grabbing controversies and crises. The fact that he is a symptom of a larger disease gets lost in the shuffle rather conveniently. Musk’s role and plans are obscured by a desire to not see them. Our capitalist society lionizes individuals like Musk necessarily, granting them an air of heroic invincibility as a side-effect of their amassed resources. Not to mention, his entanglements with governmental operations, creates a giant problem that it is much, much easier to simply ignore. To recognize them would mean addressing them, and that is an issue that simply cannot be broached in this environment lest major change is to follow.

So we find ourselves sleepwalking into an almost unthinkable peril. A sole individual who embodies the consequences and results of neoliberal hypercapitalism is now on the precipice of unrivaled power and control, all without ever appearing on a ballot. His plans and agendas, all designed to benefit himself and a small swath of tech fascists, are largely unknown by the general public, un-scrutinized by our media, and have received almost no criticism by the opponents of the man he is currently using as his proxy. This election is about many things, but one of the most important ones is whether an oligarch should be allowed to hold this much power.

The immediate solution is to reject this at the polls. I have my concerns about the Harris Campaign so far and the current state of the Democratic Party, which has fostered a neoconservative turn and enabled a spate of war crimes, but I also believe a Trump Presidency, representing a new Musk dominion and a neon green light for our oligarchical class to finish off liberal democracy and its associated programs, would constitute a hole from which we might not escape.

Beyond the election, should we be so lucky, it is imperative that we move to ensure this could never happen again. We must rein in dark money in our politics. We must thwart the continued redistribution of wealth to the economic elite and begin reconstituting an environment in which our government is dedicated to serving its citizens rather than private interests and this existential march toward authoritarianism and possibly species threatening crisis. We must fundamentally change the state of play, much like Musk has promised to terraform Mars, and remove the incentives for antidemocratic billionaires and destructive corporations to continue pressing us in this direction, which includes creating a fair tax system, reversing an era of privatization, and fundamentally shifting the ethos of American and so-called “western culture” from zero-sum destruction to a state of play that prioritizes our interdependence and collective well-being.

This is a very large ask, but unfortunately the circumstances require that ask. The emergence of Musk in this situation, and his preparation for ascendance to unparalleled power, are markers of a transition that we cannot afford to recognize. We must move beyond “Orange Man Bad” narratives, see clearly and fully the forces that are at play, and fight like hell to avoid this peril and ensure it never, ever happens again.