Could stupidity and cowardice save America in the end?

Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting was amateur hour at its finest.

Elon Musk, the blundering billionaire who admitted at the meeting that he and DOGE “accidentally” fired the Ebola team at the Department of Health and Human Services, led the discussion, while Trump backed Musk on his threat to federal workers, telling them they’ll be fired unless they reply to the email Musk sent asking what they’d accomplished in the week prior.

Trump noted one million federal workers hadn’t responded and that maybe they “don’t exist.”

Musk then said he’d give them one more chance. Of course, the reason a good deal of them might not have responded is because the heads of agencies—the Cabinet officials in the room—as well as the Trump administration itself, had told employees that they didn’t need to respond, that it was all “voluntary.”

This was the latest example of the conflict and power struggle inside the White House, where “the Trump administration” has a different position than Donald Trump himself, and where Cabinet officials in the room were caught off guard, pitted against Musk. Trump and Musk were sending a warning to them to listen to Musk—and no one else—and every one of them stayed silent, complete cowards.

It was breathtakingly embarrassing and exposed so much about what’s going on as more comes out about the disarray and sheer stupidity. Meanwhile, reports about the economy stressing under tariffs, spending freezes and mass firings are emerging—while Trump seems oblivious to it—as is the fear expressed by some economists that we are headed for a deep Trump recession. And that will affect millions of people, no matter their political party.

Then there are the thousands of Trump supporters, federal workers who found themselves out of a job, making their lives worse even as they supposedly voted to Make America Great Again. They all have families, friends, neighbors and others who voted for Trump and who will be impacted or see what’s happening. The mass firings by the government will affect so many other industries and cause more layoffs as well as a pullback in spending.

The Los Angeles Times focused in some of the fired MAGA:

They voted for Donald Trump for president and for a change in the direction of the federal government. But this wasn’t the kind of change they had in mind.
Laid off by the administration in recent days from their U.S. government jobs, the Trump voters expressed dismay at what they said has been an unfocused, counterproductive and callous slashing of the federal workforce.

Georgia resident Jocelyn Steward, according to her Facebook page, was excited about her new job as a health insurance specialist with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She voted for Trump for three straight elections. She believed job cuts “would focus on early retirements and workers who underperformed.”

But she was duped—and dumped.

“Layoffs aren’t easy on anybody. But there has been zero compassion for anything or anyone in this process,” Steward, a Georgia resident, told the LA Times. ”A lot of these federal workers are doing good work. Please just show a little empathy.”

Now she seems really angry, days after she was fired and after giving the interview, posting on her Facebook page about the letter from Elon Musk to federal workers:

Are you f%%cking kidding me. Now, they want federal employees to share what they did everyday. Mo Fo you fired me last weekend. This is ridiculous.

Twenty-four-year-old Ryleigh Cooper of Baldwin, Michigan, voted for Joe Biden in 2020. According to the Washington Post article in which she’s interviewed: “She did not want to vote for Trump. Cooper hated what he said about women and hated how he treated them...But life felt more complicated these days..."

Struggling to have children, she was told IVF would be her only hope. Unable to pay the exorbitant costs, this young and clearly naïve woman actually believed Trump when he said his administration would pay for IVF.

But instead of getting IVF, she lost her job at the U.S. Forest Service, axed by DOGE, completely devastating her.

Getting fired meant she would no longer have health insurance, including the 12 weeks of paid maternity leave that was a guaranteed benefit of her federal service. Also gone would be the promotion that would allow her to plan for the kids she so badly wanted to have.
She wondered if Trump was going to break his promise to make IVF free, and if it would even matter if he did.

Four days after Trump fired her, Cooper was in bed with her husband and an alert came on her phone:

There was a new executive order to expand access to IVF. She read the White House fact sheet, which talked about Trump’s request for policy recommendations to reduce costs of the service.
But it still wasn’t free, and she was out of a job and out of a plan.
“Delivering on promises for American families,” read the White House’s announcement.
“That’s bulls---”, she recalled thinking, and put down her phone.

I know there’s zero sympathy for these people who stupidly—and selfishly—made their own beds. But again, they are representative of the people—many of the Republicans and independents—showing up at town halls and angrily expressing themselves to GOP lawmakers. Many of them and their families and friends will add to Trump’s and the GOP’s downfall and help Democrats in upcoming elections.

So too will the cowards running institutions that are obeying in advance and cutting medical care or ending classes, all based on Trump’s “DEI” executive orders, even though in many cases it’s quite a stretch and not even remotely necessary. And no law has been passed; they’re executive orders and they’re actually being challenged and, in some cases, have already been put on hold in court.

The latest outrageous example of spinelessness is the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington canceling shows by Black and LGBTQ artists, saying they must adhere to the DEI orders because a portion of their funding comes from the U.S. government. This is flat out censorship:

The Art Museum of the Americas, a cultural venue run by the Organization of American States that is steps from the White House and the National Mall, has canceled two upcoming shows, one featuring Black artists from across the Western Hemisphere and the other showcasing queer artists from Canada.
According to participants in those shows, museum officials canceled the exhibitions to comply with Trump administration orders to stamp out federal funding for “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts.

It’s a ridiculous and dangerous action, because there’s nothing about DEI connected to the mounting of these exhibits. They are simply exhibits about and by Black and queer artists. They’re not being shown for any reasons of “inclusion” or “diversity” but because they’re really interesting and reflect vitally important aspects of history, in addition to speaking to big audiences that want to see them.

Featuring artworks by African American as well as Afro-Latino and Caribbean artists, “Before the Americas” aimed to track the influence of the transatlantic subordinate trade and African diaspora across multiple generations of modern and contemporary artists…
…The exhibit, “Nature’s Wild With Andil Gosine” — which he describes as a “solo show with many artists” — was based on the artist’s 2021 book about queer theory and colonial law in the Caribbean. It had been scheduled to open March 21 and featured works by a dozen artists, many of them queer people of color and most of them Canadian.

There was no reason to cancel these shows. But DEI has simply been interpreted to mean anything not White, heterosexual or male, and so the museum’s director canceled the shows even though the U.S. is just one of 30 countries that contribute to its work.

Artists around the country and worldwide are furious, and this is just one example of institutions obeying in advance and waking people up.

There’s no question Democrats have to amplify everything Trump is doing and push back hard. But they also need to exploit the outrage of the American people.

And the anger is building across the country and across the political spectrum among diverse groups, even among some people who voted for Trump. All of it is a welcome contribution to opponents working to take down Trump and the GOP.

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