November 23, 2024

How much damage can a bellend billionaire who thinks he's Edgelord for the far-right because his self-worth is so minimal that he is damaged beyond repair do while being tied to the incoming shithole administration? A lot. It appears that we have two president-elects now. Leon is as insane of a pick as the rest of Trump's appointees. Even though Xitter was worth far more when he took it over to play footsie with the far-right, as an efficiency czar for serial bankruptcy filer Donald Trump, our economy will suffer.

One of those reasons is that Trump/Musk's sweeping plan to fire federal workers will increase the unemployment rate after President Joe Biden will hand off a booming economy to his successor. Of course, initially, Donald will take credit for Biden's economy.

And now, Leon Musk is using his massive following on Xitter to attack federal employees by name. I shit you not.

Via The Wall Street Journal:

As co-director of President-elect Donald Trump’s nascent Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk has wasted no time posting to his 205 million followers on X about specific government departments he views as bloated.

But this week, Musk has escalated from targeting government agencies to singling out individuals—sparking his online army of followers to launch blistering critiques of ordinary federal employees.

One recent post by the billionaire zeroed in on Ashley Thomas, a little-known director of climate diversification at the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., after another user on Musk’s social-media platform X questioned her role.

Musk’s repost—“So many fake jobs”—garnered 32 million views, triggering an avalanche of memes and ridicule from his followers against the employee, such as, “Sorry Ashley Thomas Gravy Train is Over.”

He spends a lot of time posting on Xitter, the platform he destroyed, where users are fleeing to Bluesky.

Musk’s targets this week included Alexis Pelosi, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s relative and a senior climate adviser at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But that post also included the names of two obscure federal officials with climate-related jobs—including one who had actually left her job at the Energy Department in August.

“These tactics are aimed at sowing terror and fear at federal employees,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 of the 2.3 million civilian federal employees. “It’s intended to make them fearful that they will become afraid to speak up.”

This sounds exactly like Project 2025:

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece Wednesday, the two men envisioned “mass head-count reductions” across the federal bureaucracy. On Wednesday, Musk shared on X a past TV interview with Milton Friedman in which the economist recommended the elimination of a number of federal agencies, including the departments of education, commerce, agriculture and housing and urban development. “Milton Friedman was the best,” Musk said in apparent agreement.

Ramaswamy in interviews has offered an unusually blunt—and likely impossible to implement—strategy for how to slash the federal workforce: firing those whose Social Security numbers start or end with odd numbers. “Boom. That’s a 75 percent reduction done,” he said on a podcast interview this fall.

Musk implemented the same strategy on Xitter by drastically cutting the workforce, but that ended up with no moderation, resulting in a site filled with wannabe Edgelords, similar to Truth Social.

How does a routine federal employee come to the attention of Musk, the world’s richest man?

The controversy erupted when “datahazard,” an X user whose anti-Biden posts have drawn Musk’s attention, questioned Thomas’s job on Tuesday to nearly 170,000 followers.

Musk’s repost sparked a barrage of taunts, with his followers making jeers such as, “A tough way for Ashley Thomas to find out she’s losing her job.”

Michael Skolnik, a longtime civil rights activist, was among those who fired back at the post. “You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and dangerously targeting a person who works an honest job to provide for their family.”

Silly Mr. Skolnik, cruelty is the point. We have two dangerous narcissistic assclowns who constantly seek attention playing the role of president-elect. Musk fired X's election integrity team ahead of the 2024 election. And, of course, Aaron Rodericks, co-lead of the department, was targeted in a right-wing harassment campaign after trying to hire new employees to combat political misinformation. Musk, a conspiracy theorist, or at least he plays one on Xitter, is now one of the users with a massive following who circulates disinformation and propaganda.

He sure seems gleeful about a fuckton of hard-working people losing their jobs. Again, cruelty is the point.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon