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Trump is just the Dancing Bear. Musk is the Cutpurse in the Crowd. The Village 2-5-25 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-05

IMHO--

Trump is a Magician’s Assistant

Musk is the Thief

Trump is the Trained Monkey; Musk is the Hacker in Chief

What is a puppet master without his gang of puppet thieves?

Are these the incels looking at your IRS acct, Social Security acct, Medicare/Medicaid, Student Loans, Bank accts, Mortgage, etc? Are these Musk’s Boy Blunders?

x Daily Beast reports Gavin Kliger's father is an attorney for Experian (I presume in-house attorney) www.yahoo.com/news/doge-mu... — Buckleup36 (@buckleup36.bsky.social) 2025-02-04T22:55:40.236Z

DailyBeast: Unmasked: Musk’s Secret DOGE Goon Squad—Who Are All Under 26

Elon Musk’s team of young DOGE disruptors have been unmasked, much to the ire of the billionaire and other MAGA figures. One is a 19-year-old college freshman and heir to a popcorn fortune. Another was hosting Model UN sessions in 2019 and a third was given money by his parents to invest in stocks while at his high school in Silicon Valley. The world’s richest man lashed out at an X account which suggested the six young men, who now have access the Treasury Department’s payment system, among other things, should be “paid a visit” by FBI agents. www.yahoo.com/…

Or Elon, is it you and your minions who have committed the crime?

x Elon’s response to a post simply naming the 6 people he has working for him inside our government. Apparently, it is a crime for the American people to know who they are. — Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) 2025-02-03T13:34:02.561Z

Doge Bags? Doggy Boys?

Criminals following their demented puppet master Musputin?

This is the one time where it is helpful to be a blue dot in a red state.

Call your GOP Senator(s).

At their DC office & every state office you can find.

Call your GOP House Rep.

At their DC office & every state office you can find.

Demand that Musk and his gang be stopped.

Demand that Musk & his boys be arrested.

Call them today, tomorrow, and every day until Musk is controlled, muzzled, whatever.

Burn up those phones.

For my Senators, their DC phones have been busy for at least 2 days.

So I called their Raleigh offices & Greensboro offices.

I will call their mom and their pastor and their butcher if I find them.

Use enlightened self-interest—

This is about everyone’s financial data, security, & privacy,

not just Dems in Blue states.

Talk to every GOP neighbor, boss, postal carrier,

person behind you at the grocery store,

the pizza delivery guy, your hairdresser/barber,

that Trump aunt/uncle you try to avoid at holidays,

everyone you normally avoid having political discussions with,

because this is abnormal political behavior.

You are not the paranoid one. We may all be hurt by this.

I always like to end on a positive note, so here’s Jay Kuo—

From his substack: statuskuo.substack.com/...

Is Somebody Doing Something?! Yes. Let me break it down for you. ...First, the timing of all of this was intentional. It all went down on a Friday night, when there would be less ability among affected employees to communicate and resist; decreased national press attention; and closed congressional offices, courthouses and law offices. They wanted us to panic for several days and make us feel like we were rudderless and without clear options. But today is the first business day after last Friday’s bombshells, and I can report confidently that the anti-Trump/Musk response is well underway. It’s helpful to think of the response as falling into four distinct yet sometimes overlapping categories, each with increasing urgency. These responses include the personal, the political, the legal and the popular.

Personal Responses from front line defenders include:

A top ranking FBI official, James Dennehy, who heads up the largest FBI office in the country based in New York, refused to remain silent. He vowed in a defiant email to his staff to “dig in” while praising the interim leadership of the Bureau. Dennehy wrote, “Today, we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the F.B.I. and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and F.B.I. policy.” Dennehy compared the current situation to when he had to dig a small foxhole five feet deep as a Marine in the 1990s and hunker down for safety.

He notes that the party out of power is limited, can’t prevent a quorum, and can’t stop most legislation from passing. At best they can stall, but ultimately not stop, things like cabinet confirmations.

So it will help us and our cause to stop rolling our eyes when, say, a politician writes a stern letter to a Trump official demanding that the administration cease its illegal activity. That is actually what our senators and representatives are supposed to do. That is how they set the record and inform the press and through them the larger public. As discussed above, politicians don’t bring lawsuits. They usually don’t lead street protests. And the more experienced among them don’t waste political capital on performative stunts that don’t actually fix anything.

That said, Political Responses include:

Sen. Wyden on the Treasury takeover Shortly after news broke that private teams of software engineers had forcefully commandeered access to the federal payment system at the Treasury Department, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) wrote to newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. In that letter, Wyden blasted the move as “politically motivated meddling” that “risks severe damage to our country and the economy."… Sen. Blumenthal and the FBI purges Senior Democratic leaders have not remained silent as a purge of top FBI officials has unfolded. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who sits on the Judiciary Committee and directly questioned FBI Director Kash Patel, released an official statement about the firings: “This reported mass purging of professional law enforcement is surreal and sickening. Less than twenty-four hours after President Trump’s nominee to run the Federal Bureau of Investigation testified to me that there would be no political retribution against agents, apparently dozens – maybe even hundreds – of federal law enforcement officials may be fired. I am appalled by this vile retaliation against agents who sought to hold accountable people who stabbed cops with flagpoles and crushed officers until they broke bones. The silence from my Republican colleagues is disgusting and deafening.”

Lawsuits—

We already have seen several legal actions against DOGE, with four cases alleging that the entity has violated transparency, conflict of interest and other relevant federal laws. These suits are seeking to kneecap DOGE from even being allowed to operate. We have also seen lawsuits brought by blue state attorneys general (led by Leticia James of New York) and by nonprofits seeking an injunction against the federal government-wide pause on financing and grants. That entire effort by the Trump White House to freeze funds met with such pushback that the original memo implementing the freeze was rescinded, and a federal judge, who reviewed Press Secretary Karoline’s Leavitt’s misleading post on social media claiming that the freeze was still in effect, expanded the injunction beyond the memo to include the entire administration.

Publicly, including all of us who will be calling, texting, faxing, etc—

..Indivisible and MoveOn have called for daily protests outside of OPM each morning. They have also organized a protest set for Tuesday evening at Treasury demanding Musk and his team be ejected...Trump will use any sign of civil unrest as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and turn U.S. military forces against peaceful protestors. But the threat of possible overreach by Trump should not and likely will not deter protestors, and if Trump chooses to escalate in this fashion he may lose further public support.

I will be careful out there, but I won’t be silent.

We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For.

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/5/2301469/-Trump-is-just-the-Dancing-Bear-Musk-is-the-Cutpurse-in-the-Crowd-The-Village-2-5-25?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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