MONDAY: Elon Musk isn't a nut!

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2025

There's no such technical term: For the record, Elon Musk isn't "a madman" or a nut. As we detailed this morning, there are no such technical terms.

The same can be said for Donald J. Trump. On the other hand, in this morning's print editions, the New York Times was reporting this:

Top Security Officials at Aid Agency Put on Leave After Denying Access to Musk Team

The two top security officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development were put on administrative leave on Saturday night after refusing to give representatives of Elon Musk access to internal systems, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

And the agency’s chief of staff, Matt Hopson, a Trump administration political appointee who had started his job days ago, has resigned, two of the officials said.

[...]

Mr. Trump, returning to Washington from his home in Palm Beach Sunday evening, disparaged the agency, telling reporters traveling with him that it was run by “radical lunatics.”

“We’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision,” he said.

He also praised Mr. Musk as “very smart.”

A few hours later, Mr. Musk said that Mr. Trump believed that the agency should be shut down.

“None of this could be done without the full support of the president,” Mr. Musk said on an X Spaces event. “I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed with that we should shut it down. I want to be clear. I actually checked with him a few times. I said, “Are you sure?’ ‘Yes.’ So we’re shutting it down.”

Mr. Musk has posted a series of messages in recent days expressing fury at the aid agency and voicing conspiracy theories about it.

“USAID is a criminal organization,” Mr. Musk wrote on Sunday in a social media post that many aid workers saw as confirmation the agency would soon be absorbed into the State Department and that some viewed as a potential threat to their personal safety. “Time for it to die.”

According to these public officials, neither of whom is insane, USAID is "a criminal organization." As it turns out, it's an organization which has been run by a bunch of "radical lunatics." 

For the record, the Times was quoting one of several social media posts from the man who isn't a nutcase. Yesterday, Musk authored such posts as these:

"USAID was a viper's nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America."

"USAID is evil."

“USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

"USAID is a criminal organization."

As any very smart person would do, he was trying extra hard to articulate his key point.

Yesterday, Kevin Drum explained Musk's concern about this evil viper's nest. We link, you decide:

Here’s how USAID ended up in Trump’s crosshairs

[...]

What account[s] for Trump's specific fury toward USAID? Most likely, he was influenced by Elon Musk, who has been raging against the agency on Twitter, calling it a "a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America"¹ and later declaring, "USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die." Yesterday, Musk acolytes stormed into USAID headquarters demanding access to security systems and personnel files. They were turned back, but eventually got in after a couple of top security officials were put on leave.

Whew. But why is Musk so exercised about USAID? This is where things get murky, but it turns out Musk is a big fan of a guy named Mike Benz, a far-right provocateur, white supremacist, and all-around conspiracy crank...

Kevin's account continues from there. Meanwhile, there was Chrystia Freeland, on today's Morning Joe, using such language as this with respect to the tariffs which are being slapped on Canada. Over at Mediaite, David Gilmour provided a transcript and tape:

This really is utter madness. And, you know, from our [Canadian] perspective, the key thing here is you guys are engaged in this colossal act of self-harm. These tariffs are going to make life more expensive for Americans. You have put a tariff on the gas we sell you, so gas is going to be more expensive. You have put a tariff on the food that you are buying. That’s a tax on groceries, they’re going to be more expensive. We have now the United Steelworkers, the American Farm Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, all saying this is going to hurt America. Stock futures are down.

You are hurting yourselves. You are taxing regular Americans. And we are going to fight back. And Canada is your biggest market. Canada is a bigger market for US exporters than China, Japan, the UK and France combined.

For Americans. like, your businesspeople, right? The customer is always right, and your customer is really angry at you. The whole country is behind the retaliation the prime minister has announced so now we are going to tax American exporters who are trying to sell us stuff. That means Americans are going to lose jobs.

So this is really—it is self-mutilation. America is hurting itself. We think that it is utterly crazy. And we’re also really, really angry at you.

Presumably, Freeland was speaking metaphorically when she used such terms as "utter madness" and "utterly crazy" with respect to the conduct of Trump.

Who the heck is Chrystia Freeland? We're so old that we can remember when she was a journalist and a regular guest on Hardball.

Freeland was always a bit too bight for that particular program. Today, she's a member of Canadian parliament who hopes to succeed Justin Trudeau as PM. Before she called Trump crazy and mad, she explained how the tariffs will affect our two countries. 

We aren't saying that she's right. We aren't saying she's wrong. 

We promise to stop being snarky about this serious topic. But for today, we'll only say that we were struck by the (obviously colloquial) language Freeland chose to use.