It turns out the Las Vegas Tesla cybertruck guy had a political motive after all. This is from Josh Marshall, who is a pro who is careful with facts:

…there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iPhone.

Those documents denounce Democrats and demand they be “culled” from Washington, by violence if necessary, and express the hope that his own death will serve as a kind of bell clap for a national rebirth of masculinity under the leadership of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy Jr.

Did you miss that stuff?

Yeah, me too!

It’s also still true that the Livelsberger possibly was suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injury, and his second marriage was falling apart. But it seems peculiar (cough) that news outlets aren’t reporting this part of the story. Some news outlets have reported that these notes were found on his phone, but I haven’t found the parts where he said some of this:

Military and vets move on DC starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity.
Occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands.
Lock the highways around down with semis right after everybody gets in. Hold until the purge is complete.
Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.

Or this:

Consider this last sunset of ‘24 and my actions the end of our sickness and a new chapter of health for our people. Rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy, and ride this wave to the highest hegemony for all Americans! We are second to no one.

All the news stories I’ve found about the notes just say he wanted his death to be a “wake-up call.” And that’s it. You can find the texts from Livelsberger’s phone here, courtesy of the Nevada Current.

It may be that news outlets didn’t want to inspire more armed insurrection, but I think the public needs to know that this guy was a Trump-loving terrorist. There will be more.

Here’s another outrage: I didn’t mention this earlier, but last month a guy in Virginia was found to have a huge stockpile of explosives in his home. FBI agents who searched the home found more than 150 homemade bombs. This was the largest seizure of homemade weapons in FBI history, the agency said. He also had an unregistered short-barrel rifle and has been stockpiling ammunition for that. Further,

[Detective] Cardwell testified that Spafford, in conversations with the informant, allegedly expressed a desire to “bring back political assassination” and had been using a photograph of President Joe Biden for target practice at a shooting range where he was pursuing a 300- to 400-yard sniper qualification. 

Brad Spafford, the bomb maker, has been connected to a far right movement called No Lives Matter that apparently just wants to burn everything down. If convicted of everything he appears to be guilty of, he could face decades in prison. But here’s the kicker — a federal judge released him on a $25,000 bond. Um, what? I understand he’s supposed to stay with his mother and not possess any firearms. Let’s hope he doesn’t kill anybody before the trial.

In other news: Ann Telnaes, the Washington Post cartoonist, has left WaPo after it killed one of her cartoons. This is it:

I guess Jeff Bezos was offended.

President Biden has awarded Presidential Medals of Freedom to Hillary Clinton and George Soros, which should make the MAGAts happy. It’ll give them something to be mad about. He also honored Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. — so not the Lesser — and the late George Romney, Mitt’s father, who was governor of Michigan.

We’ll keep Mike Johnson as Speaker for a while longer. He appeared to be two votes short on the first vote, but then a couple of holdouts changed their minds. I understand some of the Freedom Caucus creatures only voted for Johnson to avoid electing Hakeem Jeffries. Trump had endorsed Johnson, possibly to avoid there not being a Speaker to certify Trump’s election on January 6. And that was barely enough.

There has been whining from the creatures that Johnson isn’t the leader the House Republicans need. But as David Kurtz points out at TPM, House Republicans have been ungovernable for a while now.

If you trace the current era of Republicanism to the tea party era that started in 2010, then we’re 14 years into the kind of chaos being demonstrated again today on the Hill, where the GOP is unable to govern itself let alone a country.

I suppose that if Speaker Mike Johnson pulls out a re-election win, you could argue no harm/no foul. But the structural incentives that create this kind of recurring chaos will remain. It’s a mix of things we’ve talked about for years: a close margin in the House that gives the hard-right members more clout; performative destruction as a form of politics that eventually eats its own; extremism both collectively and individually that is rewarded with high media profiles and adoration from the right-wing base.

Consider the last few Republican speakers, going back to the 1990s. Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and now Johnson. There’s a pack of mutts for you. During the same period the Democratic speakers have been, um, Nancy Pelosi and then Nancy Pelosi again.

We’re learning a bit more about the Las Vegas Tesla cybertruck guy. Now it’s being said he shot himself in the head shortly before the Tesla combusted. The  deceased was Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty soldier who is said to have sustained a head injury in the military and who also apparently had a history of spousal abuse. His second wife had just left him. He also was a big Trump supporter, his family said. The motive here may have been that he wanted to go out in a way that would be noticed. As of now there is no apparent connection between Livelsberger and the New Orleans truck killer, Shamsud-Din Jabbar. That probably was terrorism.

Well, 2025 is off to a volatile start already. I woke up this morning to a news story that lightning struck the Washington Monument and Capitol Building last night. If I were a superstitious person, I’d think this was an omen. Lightning also struck the Empire State Building. I can verify there was thunder last night here in New York. Which is weird for midwinter in New York. An omen of climate change?

Then we learned that in the early morning hours a guy drove a pickup truck into crowds in New Orleans, then got out of his truck and started shooting. Most recent news updates say that 15 people are dead as a result of the attack. Trump immediately began whining about migrant criminals. It turns out the shooter was born in Texas.

And a Tesla cybertruck exploded outsideTrump’s Las Vegas hotel. It’s not clear that this was intentional. The driver was killed; he appeared to be carrying fireworks. It may be awhile before we know what was up with the driver.

I’ve been working on a piece about Jimmy Carter’s version of evangelical Christianity, which is light years different from the MAGA version. It’s online now at Patheos, if you’re interested.

It’s sad the country is in such a mess now, as he departs. I haven’t heard any details about the funeral. I hope that doesn’t become a political mess. But everything does these days.

Greenland is preparing to defend itself from MAGA:

Let’s hope that not even Trump is stupid enough to send troops to Greenland.

Moving on … an online war has broken out among the MAGAts. As you may recall, a big part of Trump’s campaign pitch was that he was going to save Americans from all those evil immigrants. But there are a whole lot of immigrants — plus first-generation children of immigrants — being appointed to his administration. And some of them want to expand immigration. In particular, the techbros of Silicon Valley want the government to issue more H1b visas and green cards so that Silicon Valley companies can import more technonerds from India to work here.  This is not sitting well with the nativists. This is from Axios:

Catch up quick: The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy.

Krishnan’s appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, particularly given his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards.

Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war Thursday morning with a post on X blaming an American culture that “venerated mediocrity over excellence” for the growth in foreign tech workers.

“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” Ramaswamy wrote, calling for a 1950s-style “Sputnik moment” to prioritize “nerdiness over conformity.”

“That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence,” he said.

Between the lines: Elon Musk’s X is the town square for the MAGA movement, and by stepping into that square and firmly criticizing American culture — while praising the immigrant work ethic and parenting model — Ramaswamy threw down a gauntlet.

Musk also weighed in, saying  that the number of “super talented” and “super motivated” techies in the U.S. is “far too low.” And why do I suspect that “super motivated” means “willing to work longer hours for less money”? Hmmm.

Here’s Ramaswamy’s entire X rant about the deficiencies of American culture, if you want to read it. After Ramaswamy posted this, White Supremacist Nick Fuentes accused Ramaswamy of trying to lure “500 million Indians to move here,” essentially accusing Ramaswamy of being an agent of the Great Replacement Theory.

When Trump appointed Indian-born venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, alarms went off among the nativists. Laura Loomer has been blowing up social media over it.

Describing workers from India as “third-world invaders,” Loomer also took issue with Musk and Ramaswamy defending the tech industry importing “super talented engineers” from overseas.

“The average IQ in India is 76,” Loomer tweeted at one point, along with several other posts disparaging Indians and their home country.

The techbros have money, which gives them an edge with Trump over the likes of Loomer and Fuentes.

Another wrinkle is that the nativists, including Loomer, who criticized Elon Musk on X have all been stripped of their blue-check verification badges. Loomer wrote (on X),

Looks like Elon Musk is going to be silencing me for supporting original Trump immigration policies.

I have always been America First and a die hard supporter of President Trump and I believe that promises made should be promises kept. Donald Trump promised to remove the H1B visa program and I support his policy. Now, as one of Trump’s biggest supporters, I’m having my free speech silenced by a tech billionaire for simply questioning the tech oligarchy.

Elon has decided to retaliate by removing my blue check and demonetizing me.

I guess he doesn’t really believe in Free speech after all.

None of these people ever believed in free speech for everybody, of course.

Update: Now Elon Musk is throwing MAGA under the bus. On X he called MAGAs who are criticizing him “contemptible fools” who “must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem.” And Steve Bannon has declared war on Elon Musk.

Steve Bannon has joined the MAGA war between hard-line immigration opponents and tech executives like Elon Musk, taking the side of xenophobia on his War Room show Friday.

“H-1B visas? That’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking American jobs and bringing over essentially what have become indentured servants at lower wages,” the former Trump adviser turned pundit said, referring to the visa program that allows immigrants in specialized fields to work in the United States temporarily. 

“This thing’s a scam by the oligarchs in Silicon Valley to basically take jobs from American citizens, give them to what become indentured servants from foreign countries, and then pay ‘em less. Simple. To let them in through the golden door,” Bannon added. 

Trump has been silent about the whole mess.

Stuff to Read

Stephen Robinson, Public Notice, The Press Is Ignoring the Real Liz Cheney Scandal

Joyce Vance, Educate or Not

Try to forget politics for a few hours, anyway.

You’d think Christmas week people would settle down and not do much, wouldn’t you? But nooooooo. There are new outrages every hour. I can’t write about them all.

For example, if you had “Trump threatens to take back Panama Canal” on your bingo card, you’re ahead of me. Apparently Trump thinks itty bitty Panama is picking on the U.S.

President-elect Donald Trump has demanded Panama reduce fees on the Panama Canal or return it to US control, accusing the central American country of charging “exorbitant prices” to American shipping and naval vessels.

“The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous, highly unfair,” he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona on Sunday.

“This complete rip-off of our country will immediately stop,” he said, referring to when he takes office next month. …

… If shipping rates are not lowered, Trump said on Sunday, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question”.

As far as I know, Panama isn’t charging U.S. ships any more than it charges other ships. The fees are a form of tariff, I understand. Also Panama needs to restrict traffic sometimes because of water level problems, probably related to climate change. BTW, Newsweek is reporting that the Trump Organization is fighting tax evasion charges in Panama. Gee, do you think there’s a connection?

And then, Trump brought back one of his comedy routines from the first term, in which he offered to buy Greenland from Denmark.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in a statement announcing that he had chosen Ken Howery to serve as ambassador to Denmark.

If he’s concerned about security in the North Atlantic, you would think he would take a greater interest in NATO. And in maintaining good relationships with NATO countries. That would make sense. But it’s also believed there are billions of gallons of oil under all that ice of Greenland, which may be what Trump is really concerned about.

The Matt Gaetz ethics report is now public. Here it is. And I say the Justice Department has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Remember last week, when President Musk tweeted, or x’ed, a bunch of nonsense and blew up the bipartisan agreement to keep the government funded? Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect explains why:

Elon Musk blew up a near-complete bipartisan budget deal with an avalanche of tweets contending that it was too costly, luring Donald Trump into demanding that Republicans kill it. But Musk’s real reason—a story that David Dayen broke in the Prospect—was that the agreement included painstakingly negotiated limits on American tech investment in China. Had that provision passed, it would have been costly to Musk’s extensive Chinese Tesla operations and future AI plans.

Between Tuesday and Thursday, the budget deal collapsed. Trump, following Musk’s lead, threw in a new demand that the deal tackle the debt ceiling, always a politically tricky vote. But neither Democrats nor Republican fiscal hawks would give Trump that.

In the end, legislators of both parties wanted to get home for Christmas, and both houses overwhelmingly passed a simple “continuing resolution” keeping the government funded at roughly present levels through March, plus disaster relief and farm aid. Musk succeeded in stripping out the China provision.

I guess if you’re rich enough to buy a government you are entitled to bespoke legislation.

So have you heard the one about how Trump is suddenly opposed to the debt ceiling and wants to get rid of it? Yep, yesterday he called for Congress to raise, suspend, or even completely eliminate the debt ceiling, which (I’m sure you remember) is a limit on how much Treasury can borrow to pay debts. And Trump wants it gone before he takes office.

Republicans in Congress are now facing a crisis. For the past several years they’ve merrily demagogued the debt ceiling by portraying it as a limit on how much Congress can spend, not on how much Treasury can borrow to pay for debts already incurred. And then every time it has to be raised they play games and threaten shutdowns in exchange for cuts to programs they don’t like. A lot of Democrats have wanted to get rid of it for years, although apparently not enough Democrats. If the debt ceiling is eliminated, Republicans won’t get to play their favorite “holding the federal government hostage” game any more, or at least, they’ll have to work a lot harder to play it.

(The debt ceiling was created during World War I as a housekeeping shortcut. Before 1917, every time Treasury needed to borrow money to pay the bills, Congress had to vote on it. By setting a debt ceiling as a sort of blanket authorization, they saved themselves a lot of time. But now will the Freedom Caucus go to war over every vote to let Treasury issue some bonds, or whatever? The House is dysfunctional already.)

Jeff Stein writes at WaPo:

“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 said.

Trump even went as far as pushing for the permanent repeal of the national borrowing limit. Democrats have long called for abolishing the cap, saying Republicans have used the limit as a weapon to force them to agree to spending cuts. Republicans have traditionally supported keeping the debt limit in place as a check on federal spending, although the limit bans borrowing, not spending. The government typically borrows to pay for spending that Congress and the White House have already enacted into law.

So what is going on in Trump’s demented head?

I take it Mike Johnson then started making noises about raising the debt ceiling but not abolishing it altogether. Today House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed this on Bluesky:

GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check.

Hard pass.

— Hakeem Jeffries (@hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social) December 19, 2024 at 8:38 AM

Why is this happening? Alan Rappeport writes at the New York Times,

As he prepares to push an agenda of tax cuts and border security, Mr. Trump fears that a debt limit fight next year could interfere. His plans are expected to cost trillions of dollars, much of which will most likely need to come from borrowed funds. A drawn-out debt limit fight next year could force Mr. Trump and Republicans to bow to the demands of Democrats and could consume the congressional calendar.

“This is a nasty TRAP set in place by the Radical Left Democrats!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday night. …

By addressing the debt limit during the final weeks of the Biden administration, Republicans could prevent Democrats from weaponizing it against them once they are in power. And, as Mr. Trump has made clear, he could then blame Mr. Biden for increasing the borrowing cap.

And all this happened after Elon Musk detonated another bomb in Congress by demanding the death of an already made agreement that would have kept the government funded for at least a few months. Now we’re likely to have a shutdown right before Christmas, and you know how popular that will be. Paul Krugman writes in his substack column,

Musk is demanding — apparently successfully — that Republicans in Congress renege on a deal they had already agreed to, a continuing resolution that would keep the federal government going for the next few months. Why? Because, Musk says, of the outrageous provisions in that CR.

Except none of the items Musk is complaining about are actually in the bill. No, Congress isn’t giving itself a 40 percent raise. No, the bill doesn’t fund a $3 billion stadium in Washington. No, it doesn’t block future investigations into the Jan. 6 committee. No, it doesn’t fund bioweapons labs. …

…Second, you shouldn’t trust claims about the budget coming from Some Guy on the Internet. You might have imagined that the world’s richest man could have a couple of fact-checkers on retainer to help ensure that he isn’t making clearly stupid assertions. But nooo.

In a barrage of posts on X Musk pushed misinformation about a more or less routine, place-holding bill that was basically a way to keep the ship of state afloat until Trump takes charge. Maybe this was in part a power play, an attempt to make Republicans in Congress show fealty to a man who clearly imagines that he’s the real president — and Trump, by meekly endorsing Musk’s position, did in fact convey the impression that Musk is leading the guy who is supposed to be in charge by the nose. But this political theater will have real consequences, for America, for Trump, and for Musk himself.

People are already calling Musk the “co-president” and sometimes “the First Lady.” Krugman continues,

Maybe Musk himself doesn’t expect to experience any hardship, but put it this way: I’m glad that I won’t need to renew my passport any time soon, that I don’t expect to be trying to get through airport security for a while, and especially glad that I don’t rely either on food stamps or on small business loans. For all of these things have been disrupted in past government shutdowns.

Do Musk and Trump know any of this? Almost surely not.

Beyond the specifics, my guess is that antics like the potential shutdown will do much more damage to the Musk/Trump administration than they realize. (There’s also this other guy — JV Dance or something? — but he clearly doesn’t matter.)

First, since the election financial markets have clearly been betting that Trump will do very little of what he promised during the campaign — that we won’t really have a trade war, just some minor trade skirmishes, that we’ll have symbolic deportations rather than a mass roundup of immigrants, and so on. Markets have, in effect, discounted the disastrous consequences that would follow if Trump honored his own promises.

But a government shutdown in response to completely false claims about what’s in an innocuous short-term funding measure suggests that the peddlers of misinformation are high on their own supply. Trump may really believe that foreigners will pay tariffs, that U.S. trade deficits subsidize the rest of the world, that there’s a reserve army of American workers available to fill the gaps deportation would create. I don’t want to put too much weight on the latest market fluctuations, but it is starting to look as if investors are questioning their own complacency.

And while you’re at Krugman’s new substack site, be sure to read Health Insurance Is a Racket.

Update: Just a few minutes ago some House Republicans said they have a new budget deal that they can vote on today. But no details have been released.

Update Update: And the new bill inspired a big “hell no” from House Dems.

Update Update Update: The new bill failed in the House, 239 no, 174 yes.

Also in the news: A Georgia Appeals Court disqualified Fani Willis from the Trump RICO case. I guess we all knew that was coming.

A Deep Dive: There’s a long and nerdy article at Lawfare about the Republican Party and whether the current MAGA version of it is a break from the past or a continuation of it. If you don’t mind long and nerdy, it’s worth reading.

.

First, do read Josh Marshall at TPM:

In a clearly choreographed series of announcements over the course of late last week, one tech CEO after another announced they were contributing $1 million to the Trump inaugural committee. This comes after the earlier endorsement controversies at The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. Then over the weekend ABC News agreed to give Trump $16 million and issue him a personal apology to settle his ongoing defamation suit. The critical factor here is that the suit — over George Stephanopoulos’ use of the term “rape” to describe the E. Jean Carroll jury’s finding against Trump — is not only almost impossible to win under current First Amendment law but over claims that are affirmatively accurate, as no less than the judge in the case confirmed.

Someone asked me over the weekend why I thought ABC settled the case on such adverse terms Were they trying to prevent embarrassing facts coming out in discovery? I told this person that while I didn’t know specifically and couldn’t categorically rule that out, I was basically certain that wasn’t true. The story here is basically identical to the $1 million initiation fees from the tech executives. Trump makes clear that he’ll make trouble for anyone who doesn’t make nice and let him wet his beak. 

There’s more, but you get the gist of it. And also see David Enrich at the New York Times, Trump and His Picks Threaten More Lawsuits Over Critical Coverage. It begins,

The legal threats have arrived in various forms. One aired on CNN. Another came over the phone. More arrived in letters or emails.

All of them appeared aimed at intimidating news outlets and others who have criticized or questioned President-elect Donald J. Trump and his nominees to run the Pentagon and F.B.I.

The small flurry of threatened defamation lawsuits is the latest sign that the incoming Trump administration appears poised to do what it can to crack down on unfavorable media coverage. Before and after the election, Mr. Trump and his allies have discussed subpoenaing news organizations, prosecuting journalists and their sources, revoking networks’ broadcast licenses and eliminating funding for public radio and television.

Trump is even threatening to sue pollster Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register for erroneously predicting Harris would win Iowa.

Some of these news organizations might finally understand why all the “sanewashing” of Trump was maybe not a good idea. Freedom of speech and the press is about to be seriously challenged.

Elsewhere: Paul Krugman has moved from the New York Times to Substack. See Will Trump Be Called On His Inflation Lie? Krugman notes that the public turned against the Biden Administration in part for not bringing the price of groceries down fast enough.

Donald Trump centered much of his campaign on catering to this public perception, promising, for example,

From the day I take the oath of office, we’ll rapidly drive prices down and make America affordable again … Prices will come down. You just watch. They’ll come down fast.

And low-information voters believed him.

Now that the election is over, however, we’re seeing headlines like this:

This was totally predictable.

The “very hard” quote is from the Time magazine interview with Trump.

If the prices of groceries don’t come down, will your presidency be a failure?

I don’t think so. Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. But I think that they will. 

And then Trump rambles for some time about the broken supply chain and shipping containers being left at docks unclaimed, or something. I’m not sure he understands what the supply chain is. And I don’t believe the supply chains are being disrupted all that much at the moment. But as Krugman says, even if the prices of eggs and gasoline and everything else shoot up like a rocket, Trump supporters will either deny he ever made the promise or pretend they don’t notice the price increases.

Even so, especially if Trump starts a trade war with Canada and the price of gasoline shoots up, I want somebody to manufacture lots of press-on stickers with Trump’s face and the words “I did this” that we can stick on all the gas pumps.

If you visit Krugman, also read Crypto is for Criming.

Also, too. I guess we were due for another school shooting. This one was at a K-12 Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin. Four dead, five wounded.

A bit late for that, Mitch. One of the most surreal things I’ve seen today is this piece by Mitch McConnell at Foreign Affairs. Mitch is practically begging Trump to not pursue isolationism but instead allow the U.S. to remain guardian of the free world. Hey, Mitch, he’s your monster. You helped create him. Now he’s loose in the world, and you’ve passed on every sensible opportunity to rein him in. What he does from now on is partly on you.