While President Donald Trump has always seemed somewhat out of place in Washington, that’s nothing compared to what we’re now seeing with his pal Elon Musk. Working under the auspices of the president as a “special government employee,” Musk — the world’s richest man, who spent well over a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump and other Republicans in the 2024 election cycle — is carrying out the administration’s mission to radically reshape the federal government. And he’s doing it from a gaming PC at a desk in the White House compound.

I’m a bit ashamed to admit that a not-insignificant factor in how infuriating I find this turn of events is just how absurd it all looks. Yes, Trump destroyed our traditional notions of the presidency, perhaps irrevocably, and in his second term, he has adopted a theory of executive power so expansive as to approach a dictatorship. But everything about Musk’s unelected position in the administration is particularly galling. This creature of the internet, whose brain has been so poisoned by being Extremely Online that he communicates in ancient memes and “jokes” that would flop at any comedy club, is showing up to Cabinet meetings and Oval Office press conferences dressed in a long black coat and a gray-on-black “Make America........

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