After five years in a Russian prison, American Marc Fogel is finally back home. The White House and the State Department are both adamant that Fogel’s release was not part of an exchange. But all signs point to Russian money launderer Alexander Vinnik being released from custody in California, and the Kremlin said there was an exchange.
We don’t know what we don’t know. But it’s never a good sign when the American leadership is less truthful than Vladimir Putin.
Happy Wednesday.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, accompanied by U.S. President Donald Trump (R), his son X Musk, and White House staff secretary Will Scharf (L), speaks during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on February 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
by William Kristol
It was an unusual scene yesterday in the Oval Office. Elon Musk stood and held forth for a half hour to the assembled press corps, while Donald Trump sat at his desk, occasionally chiming in, but mostly looking up at Elon with what seemed to me to be increasing irritation.
With the president looking on, Musk was asked to justify his minions’ wanton rampage through the ranks of our civil servants. He said:
We do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth. . . . The reality is they’re getting wealthy at the taxpayer’s expense. That’s the honest truth of it.
Here’s a tip based on many years of watching politicians and, for that matter, of watching my fellow human beings: When someone says “that’s the honest truth of it,” that person is probably not telling the honest truth. Especially if that person is someone like Musk.
The truth is that Musk has no idea what the net wealth is of various government employees. Unless, that is, he’s had his apparatchiks take a look at those employees’ SF-86 security clearance questionnaires or their IRS records. Which would be illegal—an illegality for which we don’t, so far at least, have any evidence.
So Musk is just making this up. But why should the world’s wealthiest man let the truth stand in the way of a casual slander of government employees if that can help his assault on our government?
Musk of course now works for that government as well. When asked about the secrecy surrounding his efforts, Musk claimed that, “All of our actions are maximally transparent. No one has been more transparent than DOGE.”
This is a ludicrous claim. DOGE posts painfully little about the savings it’s found. Musk has attacked journalists for seeking to discover who are the subordinates he’s employed. And he is also refusing to authorize the release of his own financial disclosure report, which he is required by law to submit to ethics officials to guard against conflicts of interest.
So no maximal transparency with regard to Musk, who actually does stand to accrue tens of billions of dollars in net worth, unlike the fellow employees he maligns. But what we do know is that on Monday, President Trump fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics just months into his five year term.
Nothing to see here.
And fewer reporters to see it. Yesterday, the Associated Press White House reporter was denied access to the Oval Office, because the AP continues to follow history and international convention by recognizing the international body of water on our southern coastline as the Gulf of Mexico. (It also acknowledges in its reporting that President Donald Trump has ordered it renamed for the purposes of the U.S. government to the Gulf of America.)
As Tim Miller put it in a post, “The AP has been banned from the White House for refusing to use the Gulf of Mexico’s preferred pronouns.”
But really, how pathetic is it to have a president of the United States think our greatness depends on renaming a body of water minding its own business off our coast? As Jay Nordlinger of National Review remarked:
For many generations, we have referred to that body of water as “the Gulf of Mexico.” Suddenly, the Leader says, “Call it something else!” and we’re all supposed to fall in line? I think of a term I learned from the populist Right: “sheeple.” Let’s not be.
But there are sheeple everywhere, not just on the MAGA right but in corporate America. Google and Apple have now fallen in line. The Gulf of Mexico will show up on our phones as the Gulf of America. Greatness!
Speaking of greatness, today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.
On August 22, 1864, Lincoln invited the 166th Ohio Regiment to stop by the White House on its way home from the battlefield. Lincoln spoke extemporaneously and thanked them for their service. He continued:
I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them in a few brief remarks the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children’s children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has. It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright—not only for one, but for two or three years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.
It’s dispiriting to see Trump and Musk temporarily occupying that big White House. But it’s heartening to remember that when the Trump-Musk era is consigned to the ash heap of history, the example of Lincoln will remain.
A FREE PASS TO HARASS: A source sends along guidance that was issued Tuesday by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s human resources office in which it alerted employees that pausing some previously “mandatory training requirements” and removing those courses from its dashboard.
Among those put on ice was one for managers and supervisors titled: “Harassment Prevention: A Commonsense Approach for Managers.” Another training given the pause button was for federal employees on “The No FEAR Act.” That would be the “Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act”—a 2002 law seeking “to discourage federal managers and supervisors from engaging in unlawful discrimination and retaliation.”
The Trump administration has made no secret that they find HR training and HR in general rather tedious and, frankly, woke; even those seeking to prevent harassment. So perhaps the real surprise here was a separate part of the announcement: “Ultimately, there will be new equivalent courses in place of these, and more information will be provided once the new offerings are finalized.”
PRIVILEGES FOR THE RACIST: Despite the Trump administration’s repeated claims that Elon Musk’s DOGE employees had “read only” privileges with respect to the Treasury Department’s secure payments system, which handles trillions of dollars in federal outlays every year, an internal investigation found that one member of the team actually had “read/write” privileges, meaning he could change data, add more money to some line items and withhold money from others. Politico reports:
Treasury Department officials said Tuesday that the agency last week “mistakenly” and “briefly” gave a member of Elon Musk’s team the power to alter a sensitive federal payments database, prompting an internal forensic investigation that remains ongoing. . . .
Senior Treasury officials wrote in sworn declarations that Marko Elez, a 25-year-old former SpaceX and X engineer, was erroneously granted “read/write” privileges to a secure payments system on Feb. 5.
Elez resigned from the Treasury Department a day later, after The Wall Street Journal surfaced racist social media posts, and Treasury officials said he has not been reinstated to his previous role.
Elez is the Musk hanger-on who last year wrote racist social media posts including “Normalize Indian hate,” and “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” and “I just want a eugenic immigration policy, is that too much to ask.” Musk had announced plans to re-hire him and JD Vance came to his defense. But, as of now, the Treasury Department has saidhe is not an employee.
HOW DARE YOU DO YOUR JOB: CNN reports on the latest instance of the Trump administration just casually deciding without cause or, seemingly, legal basis that they’re gonna fire folks in the government:
The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday that it fired four Federal Emergency Management Agency officials over payments provided to New York City to house migrants, arguing without evidence that the officials circumvented leadership. . . .
The payments appear to stem from an existing program that was the target of Republican attacks during the 2024 presidential campaign. The Shelter and Services Program is administered by FEMA, in partnership with US Customs and Border Protection, to aid cities sheltering migrants. It is a separate pot of money unrelated to disaster relief. In fiscal year 2024, Congress appropriated $650 million for the program, according to the agency.
It’s not enough, apparently, that the Trump administration is claiming the power to make law and spend money in contravention of statutes passed by Congress and signed by the president. Now the administration is firing executive branch employees for executing the laws passed by Congress and signed by the president. One doesn’t have to squint to see a wrongful termination lawsuit coming.
PROSECUTOR, INDICT THYSELF: Trump’s former personal lawyer, Emil Bove, is leading the purge of anyone who worked on January 6th–related cases at the Department of Justice and FBI. He should recognize at least one of the names on his lists—his own. NBC explains:
On Jan. 6, 2021, Bove was helping lead the counterterrorism section in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan when a pro-Trump mob attacked the U.S. Capitol. Over the next several months, he worked closely with FBI agents as they hunted down suspects in the New York area.
Two former colleagues who worked alongside Bove on Jan. 6 cases in New York say they never heard him express qualms about the sprawling Capitol riot criminal investigation, which grew into the largest in American history. . . .
If Bove felt the Justice Department was overreaching, he never mentioned it at the many meetings devoted to pursuing Jan. 6 defendants, [an FBI agent] and the former prosecutor who worked with Bove say.
Jason Manning, a former federal prosecutor who worked January 6th cases, told NBC News that Bove “knows better” than to lead the purge he’s currently leading. But . . . does he?
