The Elephant in the Room

(Do you see what I see?)

Legend has it that a group of blind men were traversing a savanna when they encountered an elephant for the very first time.

“Careful, guys,” the first man said, grabbing the elephant’s trunk. “It’s some sort of snake!”

“Dude, what are you talking about?” asked another as he felt up one of the elephant’s massive legs. “This thing’s the size of a sycamore tree and solid as a rock.”

“Are you guys okay?” a third man laughed, gingerly touching the tip of a tusk. “Show me a dagger-sharp, granite-hard, pointy snake or sycamore and I’ll eat my own cane.”

“Darlings, I think it’s a cape!” the one in the RuPaul’s Drag Race t-shirt squealed, wrapping himself in one of the elephant’s majestic, velvety ears. “It’s giving serious Versace vibes. Can you say slay?”

I think of this little parable nearly every day as I scan news headlines. I mean, we’re all looking at the exact same animal and seeing something entirely different.

Take the joint appointments of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead Trump’s brand-new Department of Government Efficiency. Talk about a dynamic duo! Musk is the man when it comes to technology, innovation, and sticking it to the status quo; Ramaswamy brings to the table a deep understanding of the intersection between business, policy, and regulatory reform. Together, they are likely to take a bold, entrepreneurial approach to overhauling our broken bureaucracy.

Comically, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell called the appointment a “humiliating demotion” for Musk. In a breathless, overly dramatic diatribe (is there any other kind anymore?), O’Donnell marveled at how these two buffoons—one of whom isn’t even a billionaire, he’ll have you know—could possibly be considered fit enough to co-chair a nonexistent committee (or something). All emphasis O’Donell’s, BTW:

“The theory that Elon Musk might become in effect the co-president or the real president while Donald Trump in effect retires to a life of golfing suffered a significant setback tonight when Donald Trump announced that he would give Elon Musk a job that does not exist and will last at most eighteen months. And worst of all, Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, was assigned a working partner who, like Musk, has also never worked in government before: Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s not even a billionaire. Elon Musk didn’t even get his own press release from Donald Trump. He had to share it with Vivek Ramaswamy. Elon Musk got the first shared press release of any of Donald Trump’s appointment announcements. Even the FOX host, who isn’t even the richest person at FOX, got his own press release from Donald Trump when Donald Trump announced he would nominate Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. That’s right, a FOX weekend morning host for Secretary of Defense.”

Where to even start? Setting aside O’Donnell’s mercenary obsession with precisely how rich these people are or are not, the list of agencies that Democrats pulled out of their backholes magicked into existence in the last two decades alone includes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, the Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the White House Gender Policy Council, the COVID-19 Task Force, the Office of Climate Policy, the Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, the Department of Justice Office of Environmental Justice (just… no), and there’s more but I’m tired of typing out ridiculous names. Except I’d be remiss for not at least mentioning the Biden administration’s short-lived, Orwellian, and utterly disastrous Disinformation Governance Board.

How quickly they forget.

As for the unremarkable “weekend morning host” O’Donnell openly scorned, Pete Hegseth served as a US Army officer with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and GITMO. The Princeton (undergrad) and Harvard (grad school) alum holds the rank of major and was awarded two Bronze Stars and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge. He’s also a New York Times bestselling author whose books include The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. Hegseth has called our military “dangerously weak” and hates all things woke what’s not to love? No word on how rich he is.

Read that last line twice.

Then there’s RFK Jr., who Trump just officially tapped to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. [*Pauses to buff scuff marks off coffee table*] This whackjob wants to ensure vaccine safety and make manufacturers liable for any (rare!) harms they might (hardly ever!) cause.

“Each of Donald Trump’s most provocative Cabinet picks has been a calculated punch in the mouth to experts, elites and bureaucrats in Washington’s government agencies,” CNN whined. “But his decision to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, ‘go wild’ on health and medicines as health and human services secretary is his most shocking attempt yet at an anti-establishment tear-down.”

“Kennedy’s rhetoric has unnerved public health officials and immunization experts,” WaPo added needlessly.

Hahahahahaha Kennedy’s Rhetoric: “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody. We are going to make sure that Americans have good information right now. The science on vaccine safety particularly has huge deficits, and we're going to make sure those scientific studies are done and that people can make informed choices about their vaccinations and their children's vaccinations.”

Tell me you’re terrified without telling me you’re terrified.

And let’s not forget Matt Gaetz, the opinionated, tenacious, zero-feck-giving, soon-to-be Attorney General of the US. Liberals loathe him—for good reason. He’s been called a provocateur, a populist, a firebrand, and a flamethrower, and if closing arguments were a competitive sport, he’d have a Trump Tower sized trophy wall. He’s promised to destroy DEI, ban vaccine passports, and hold Fauci’s squirmy, probably size six feet to the fire. One California congressman called Gaetz’s appointment “a middle finger to Democrats.” No wonder the left wouldn’t cry if he got permanently lost on his way to the White House. (Matt, watch your back!)

I honestly can’t.

As the democrats’ and the mockingbird media’s puddle of self-indulgent tears widens with each new Trump appointment, the elephant in the room comes into ever sharper focus. Sort of how we knew exactly who to follow for truth during the pandemic by how heavily they were censored, the more the left kicks and screams over any administrative pick, the more confident we can be that it was probably a solid choice.

Puppy killers are probably brutal on migrant crime.

What do you think of Trump’s appointments so far? I know you won’t hold back in the comments. :)

Let’s Make Reading Great Again!