One of my favorite words that became popular during the early days of social media is "wishcasting," which means confusing one's fantasy for an outcome with what's likely to happen. I don't know if the word was in use back in Olden Times, but it was made for the era when liberals freely barf up every fact-free thought that pops into their heads.
A popular bit of wishcasting making the social media rounds these days is the leftists' fever dream that President Trump and Elon Musk will inevitably have a personality clash and a falling out as a result of it.
It's obviously not out of the realm of possibility — people who work closely together in high-intensity situations butt heads all the time. There's also the fact that the Trump 45 administration had a lot of turnover. There are a few reasons I don't think the Trump-Musk juggernaut is in danger of being stopped by a permanent rift, however.
The first is one I've written about a lot — President Trump learned from all the chaos of his first term, and his second go-round is a completely different political machine. Fortunately, the floundering Democratic Party hasn't figured that out yet and is still battling Trump as if it were 2017 and its media noise prevarication apparatus was still working. We'll let them struggle with that for a while.
Reason number two is something I've been discussing with conservative friends and colleagues: President Trump is on a mission to be a transformative leader, and reason number one is greatly aiding that. While the clinically insane Democrats are caterwauling about him suspending the Constitution and seeking a third term, Trump is quite obviously working like a man who knows precisely what he wants to do and is aware that he has a limited amount of time in which to do it. He is spending his political capital very wisely.
What really eludes Trump's opposition is the nature of the president's relationship with Elon Musk because it's not one of mere political convenience. It's a concept that is foreign to the lifers in the Democratic Party. Dem politicians get into office early and hang around until about an hour before rigor mortis sets in. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who was first elected to public office half a century ago, is a prime example. Gerald Ford was president when the young Chuckster first became a New York state assemblyman. The private sector is practically science fiction to people like him.
Trump and Musk aren't just close because they both occupy the rarefied air of the world of billionaires, which no doubt plays a huge part in their friendship. Self-made billionaires tend to be visionaries who are given to dreaming big. President Trump came into his second term with one heck of a dream about overhauling the monstrously bloated federal bureaucracy. Because of the aforementioned lessons learned from his first stint in the Oval Office, he knew that the dream couldn't be realized with the help of people who were inside the system he wanted to transform.
Enter Elon Musk, one of the few people President Trump knows who is a LOT wealthier than he is (another bonding point) and — most importantly — a man free of Swamp taint. The very idea of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was never going to work with a politician and/or bureaucrat in charge.
This may be Trump's second term, but he is still a D.C. outsider, which is just fine by him. It's also what the country needs. In Elon Musk, he has a kindred business spirit who also doesn't care if he's being spoken well of at happy hour by the Beltway knobs. The two are enjoying the ultimate insider access while being motivated by a combination of the classic outsider chip on the shoulder and an overwhelming love for what they're doing.
Wishcast all you want, Democrats, these two are gonna be just fine.
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