Trump just became a PINO-a President In Name Only.

But Musk might be even more dangerous

In October, I wrote an article predicting that if Donald Trump won, he would become a PINO—a President in Name Only—in a year or two. At the time, my focus was Trump’s apparent cognitive decline/dementia that experts I interviewed for the article—such as Dr. John Gartner--explained would become more acute in the next year. As Gartner bluntly noted, “I honestly believe that if Trump were to get re-elected that he would become completely incapacitated in office.”

That decline is already occurring despite the corporate media ignoring it. One recent glaring example they missed was contained in the Time magazine interview where they named a convicted felon who attempted a coup, “Person of the Year.” The writer noted two things that raised red flags. First, compared to seven months before when he interviewed Trump, this time Trump was “more subdued, less verbose, the same discursive speech patterns but with the volume turned down.” Why? Does Trump have a new medical condition, new drug regiment, etc.? We don’t know because corporate media ignored it.

And second, the reporter noticed Trump had “bruising on his right hand.” When asked about it, Trump responded, “It’s from shaking hands with thousands of people.” But this interview was a month after the election and Trump had been making just about no personal appearances. And he didn’t have bruises during the heart of the campaign when he was shaking hands—although as germaphobe he hates doing that. When I shared this fact online, many noted the bruising could be due to an IV in his hand and/or blood thinners—but of course Trump and his doctors will never tell us the truth.

All of this contributes to why this week Trump did in fact become a PINO—and a small one at that. The Republicans in Congress see a few things. One, Trump has been uncharacteristically staying out of the public eye since winning—and that is likely because of a lack of energy, medical challenges and/or mental decline. They get that.

But the driving factors behind Trump becoming a PINO are political. For starters, Republican officials see Elon Musk ascending in power as a “king maker” who has the money to help elect or defeat Republicans with his immense wealth for decades to come—barring campaign finance reforms. In contrast, Trump can only help Republicans when he is on the ballot and Trump loyalists show up to vote. However, Trump will never be on the ballot again for President—despite his expected effort to ignore or rewrite the 22^nd Amendment which bars a President from a third term.

Hastening Trump’s demotion to PINO was that this week, Musk flexed his political muscle and the GOP followed his lead-not Trump’s. This Musk power grab began early Wednesday morning with Musk publicly slamming the bipartisan budget deal to keep the government open that Speaker Johnson had agreed to with Democrats. There is zero doubt Trump was familiar with the deal given the spineless Speaker Johnson would never agree to anything without first talking to Trump.

But Musk’s tweets did the trick. Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky, said after Musk’s posts, his office was flooded with calls from constituents. "My phone was ringing off the hook," he said. "The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk." GOP Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., asked about Musk's comments on the bill told NBC News: “He’s very influential.”

It wasn’t until 12 hours after Musk repeatedly attacked the deal on Twitter and even threatened to primary Republicans who supported it did Trump join in criticizing the bill—via a statement from JD Vance.

We know Trump is not bashful. If he didn’t like the deal, he didn’t need Musk to lead the charge. Trump’s silence was because he had no objections until “President Musk” created a firestorm and Republicans began to bend a knee to the GOP’s top oligarch.

That is when a desperate Trump attempted to reassert himself as the GOP leader by demanding Thursday that any new deal to fund the government absolutely must include raising the debt ceiling. That was Trump’s new line in the sand as he told Fox News: “Anybody that supports a bill that doesn’t take care of the Democrat quicksand known as the debt ceiling should be primaried and disposed of as quickly as possible.”

Trump reiterated that point on his social media platform—that I refer to as “Whites Only”-- warning that any Republican who supports a funding deal that does not raise the debt ceiling “should, and will, be Primaried.”

So Speaker Johnson did what Trump demanded and proposed a spending bill that had a two-year debt ceiling limit suspension—which Trump publicly endorsed. What happened in the vote? Thirty eight House Republicans—which is nearly 20% of the GOP House caucus--defied Trump and voted “no” thereby killing it.

On Friday, Trump dug in more posting, “If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under “TRUMP.” The idea being if no increase in the debt ceiling, Trump wants to let the government shut down.

From there it got worse for Trump. On Friday evening, Trump’s PINO status was on display for all to see as 170 House Republicans voted for a spending bill that did not raise the debt ceiling. Trump--as media reports now tell us—was not happy that the House Republicans had defied him with one political reporter noting, “Trump is NOT happy that the spending deal doesn’t include the debt ceiling, according to [a] person who spoke with him this p.m.”

There was even a chance Trump was going to try and block the bill in the Senate per that report. But Trump never did—at least not publicly--as it easily passed with only 11 GOP Senators voting no.

Is Elon Musk the President? No. But it’s fun to taunt Trump with that dig. But in reality, the peak of Trump’s power is now--just a month after winning the election and before he takes office. Yet we just saw the House GOP openly defy him. And Trump’s influence will decline daily when he begins to spend political capital on some of the unpopular measures he wants to enact, his approval rating drops and he moves closer to the more traditional lame duck status of second term President.

That is a good thing. But Musk is becoming more powerful and bluntly he is a cancer. I know that is a harsh thing to say but there is no place for timidity in these challenging times. In the future, I will cover more of Musk’s corruption and the danger he poses to not just our nation but all western democracies—as we are seeing with his endorsement this week of Germany’s far right/neo-Nazi infused party known as, AfD.

Again, the next four years will be more challenging than we want to imagine. Alone the fascists win. Together we can defeat them.

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Need some inspiration to fight?! Here’s my interview of firebrand/former US Army Major and Democratic activist Richard Ojeda:

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