By Mathias @Adobe Stock
Incompetent, Confused, Tasteless Braying
BOSTON (AP) reported on “peaceful” protests,” with the mob chanting “Stop the coup” and carrying signs including “I Love Democracy” and “Resist.” Last Friday, hundreds of progressives stomped about frigid Boston, protesting the policies of duly elected President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk.
The Battle to Reclaim Government
In American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson gives a few hefty punches to the protester’s baseless misunderstandings and misconstrued rantings involving Elon Musk. Meanwhile, Boston progressives shed frozen crocodile tears to shield their rampant malfeasance, as TG McCotter writes also in American Greatness.
Only “The End of the Beginning”
Explains Mr. Hanson, Elon Musk is an appointed auditor. He has the legal authority to find waste, not to cut programs. Furthermore, foreign aid is not ending, though what may be restricted are inefficiencies and waste at USAID. Musk has the legal authority to unearth waste, not to cut programs. Foreign aid isn’t ending. Due to USAID’s inefficiencies being exposed, aid may be restricted.
Below, Mr. Hanson expropriates a few stifling progressive shenanigans of the “well-entrenched” Leviathan.
#1) Elon Musk Is Not Cutting Any Federal Program
Musk and his gang, explains VDH, are auditors. They were given legal authority under a presidential executive order creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
- The mandate is to identify waste, abuse, fraud, and irrelevance in the federal budget – especially now when the US is $37 trillion in debt.
- On 4 July 2026, the agency will expire.
#2) No One Elected Elon Musk.
Yes, that part is true.
- Elon Musk, like hundreds of other government officials (4+ million in the executive branch alone), was appointed by an elected president.
- Musk can propose cuts, but the final cuts will come from President Donald Trump, who may or may not act on some, all, or none of the recommendations.
#3) The Danger of Giving a Private Citizen (a billionaire, to boot) so Much Power
- Musk, in fact, has far more legal authority than did FDR’s best friend Harry Hopkins, who moved into the White House and de facto set U.S. foreign assistance policies toward Stalin’s Russia. Hopkins played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.
- Musk’s position is more akin to past captains of industry like Henry Ford, Henry Kaiser, and William Knudson appointed by FDR to run the wartime economy.
- None of them were either elected or confirmed by the Senate. All of them helped to save a poorly armed US after the debacle of Pearl Harbor.
#4) Foreign Aid Is Ending
No, foreign aid is not ending, assures VDH
- In all its manifestations in various cabinets and agencies, foreign aid is reaching nearly $80 billion per year.
- USAID, one of (foreign aid) distributors, may vastly be curtailed or bundled into the State Department. But the important bulk grants to allies like Israel or friends like Egypt or aid in times of famine relief and natural disasters to the needy abroad will remain. And these programs will be strengthened and saved precisely because they will be trimmed of skimmers and scammers.
#5) It’s Illegal to End USAID
In 1961, USAID was created by executive order by JFK in response to congressional legislation codifying foreign aid. It allowed the president to execute the statute at his discretion.
- Nearly four decades later, in 1998, Congress passed another law reifying Kennedy’s USAID as a formal agency but still within the executive branch.
- Neither law mandates that Trump bundle all or even most foreign aid in USAID. He can disperse money as he sees fit throughout the cabinets.Trump can also, if he wished, can keep whatever funds or programs he chooses under the aegis of USAID,
#6) Trump Can’t Impound any USAID Money Legislated by Congress.
Apparently, continues VDH, the legal issue depends upon whose Ox is being gored.
- Neither Congress nor the courts have ever, in blanket fashion, either approved and sustained a line-item presidential veto or outright banned any form of presential impoundment.
- Recently Joe Biden, as both vice president in 2016 and president in 2021, set a precedent that an administration most certainly can impound or delay congressionally passed funding as it pleases.
- Infamously, Biden publicly bragged that on a trip to Ukraine, he had threatened that government by withholding $1 billion in approved US foreign aid unless it immediately fired Biden’s enemy prosecutor, Viktor Shokin.
- That condition was never discussed in any congressional aid authorization (and was the sort of act the left would impeach Trump for in 2020).
- More flagrantly, in 2021, Biden abruptly and permanently stopped all construction on the border wall. He also impounded those congressionally approved construction funds through a variety of gimmicks.
- Not to be forgotten, Joe Biden gratuitously canceled student loan obligations without congressional approval. He also issued blanket loan amnesties and promised to ignore or work around court prohibitions of his illegal acts.
#7) China will be delighted with USAID cuts.
Not so, retaliates VDH. Upset is what China is more likely to be by Trump cuts.
- Beijing finds its own concrete development projects far more effective than USAID imposing American cultural agendas abroad. Beijing likes self-destructive American aid like LGBTQ activism, transgender chauvinism, and anti-conservative American media.
- Does anyone believe China was angry that the USAID created a vast gender studies program at the University of Kabul or had the U.S. Embassy there advertise its pride activism or itself snagged $40 million to engineer deadly viruses?
- China will be quite unhappy that organs like the New York Times and the BBC are having their USAID subsidies ended. After all, they, along with China, so often vilified, shared their existential nemesis—Donald J. Trump.
USAID is not alone. Democrats have subsidized other slush funds to fuel their leftist-leaning political infrastructure. Look no further than the multi-trillion-dollar spending spree, including Biden’s bill (the “Inflation Reduction Act”), to comprehend how the Democrat majority under Biden’s leadership skyrocketed both the federal debt and inflation for their own partisan gain – all done at the expense of the American people.
