So TIME Magazine has named Trump “Person of the year.” Their reason:
“For marshaling a comeback of historic proportions, for driving a once-in-a-generation political realignment, for reshaping the American presidency and altering America's role in the world."
I will not waste my time complaining about the magazine’s abject surrender to Trump’s criminality, mendacity and attempts to blow up American democracy as we know it --- by now we should be used to the Legacy Media and the “liberal” establishment taking a knee to “Don” Donald.
For a good “take” on the surrender of the American media see Lucian K. Truscott IV, “ABC News capitulates to Donald Trump. Is this the future of American media? If past is prologue, a second Trump administration could crush the First Amendment.” Salon (December 17, 2024) available at https://www.salon.com/2024/12/17/abc-news-capitulates-to-donald-trump-is-this-the-future-of-american-media/. Meanwhile, too many Democrats are claiming they are willing to work with the incoming Administration as if Trump were a normal politician.
No, my complaint with TIME is of a different sort. I think the magazine got it totally and almost obviously wrong.
Who was the REAL person of the year? Obviously, it was TESLA billionaire, destroyer of Twitter, king-maker in the Presidential campaign ELON MUSK. By throwing his hundreds of millions of dollars around with total abandon, he transformed Twitter (now X) from a fairly open-sourced place where thousands of points of view could contend equally into a right-wing disinformation cesspool that now permits those brainwashed into Trumpism to never see “a discouraging word” on their feed.
There is a very long and detailed Wikipedia entry about Musk’s takeover of twitter available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_under_Elon_Musk.
One of the themes of this detailed analysis is the rise in hate speech and the failure to call out disinformation once Musk took over. The Center for Countering Digital Hate had claimed that Twitter had failed to act on almost all (99%) of the hate content being posted. In July 2023, … [Musk] sued the organization claiming the group made, “… inflammatory, outrageous, and false or misleading assertions about Twitter". The lawsuit was so absurd that a Judge dismissed it in less than a year.
Musk’s ownership and remake of Twitter was the start of the process that insulated Trump world from the truth. This is actually very serious. The existence of a right-wing information silo where, for example, none of the consumers of this news knew anything about the Inflation Reduction Act, the Recovery Act, the Chips Act can help explain the widespread ignorance of Trump voters. They get only the news that Trumpworld wants them to get.
Musk got around to officially endorsing Trump for President in July of 2024. By the time of the election, he had contributed $277 million to Trump and Republican candidates and campaigns. Some of his money went to bribe Pennsylvania voters into registering to vote --- with a promised $1 million lottery prize as the ultimate bait. True to form, he actually chose the winners --- failing to conduct a real lottery. Some participants have already sued him for that fakery.
[For details see Hafez Rashid, “Elon Musk’s Genius Lawyer Admits His $1 Million Lottery Is Total Scam,” The New Republic, November 4, 2024, available at https://newrepublic.com/post/187879/elon-musk-lawyer-1-million-lottery-scam]
So why was Musk person of the year? Because without his support for general right-wing disinformation on X which used to be Twitter and without his ability to take advantage of loopholes in campaign finance laws that in effect permit infinite contributions to “Political Action Committees” where the fig leaf is that they cannot “coordinate” with a campaign, I don’t think Trump would have won. I believe that Musk is the KINGMAKER for the 2024 election. Everything TIME magazine laid at Trump’s doorstep was really Musk’s doing.
[To give just one example out of many, see Sarah Haake, “Here's what happens when the world's richest man buys the Presidency.” Raw Story, December 14, 2024 available athttps://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/musk-buys-presidency/?u=5ac14f57c867ede606a642e7ab55ee98a3a275cf2b656f1998b0780ee7e13cd0&utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Dec.14.2024_10.00pm]
The ability of the rich to control elections should come as no surprise to most Americans --- the majority know that the superrich have outsized influence in our political system. To give one example: in 2021, VOX took a poll about Americans’ attitudes towards billionaires and one of the questions related to political influence: 61 percent say they feel that these ultra-wealthy people had too much influence in the 2020 election. [available at https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/30/22357510/poll-billioniares-data-for-progress-vox-wealth-philanthropy-inequality]
If TIME Magazine had had the intelligence to puzzle out the role of Elon Musk as kingmaker in the 2024 elections, they would have done a tremendous service to the public. They would have stated what the majority of Americans believe is obvious --- that billionaires like Musk have outsize political influence.
They would have taken some of the false shine off of Donald Trump. He is not a political genius --- he is very lucky to have hooked up with Musk. It also might have helped if TIME had noted that this election was actually very close and hardly a mandate for political realignment. The closeness of the election makes the contributions of people like Musk even more significant.
Finally, Time could have done a public service by selecting Musk as person of the year. That selection would have made Trump so mad, he probably would not have permitted Musk to be the power behind the throne of Trump’s second term. Since Musk is poised to take a meat axe to the federal government, anything that would derail his power grab would be a great national service.
Since recording this commentary, Musk has proven that he is the power behind the throne. Speaking from his position as co-chair of a non-official organization called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) he threatened Republican members of Congress with primary challenges if they voted for a bi-partisan deal that Speaker Johnson and Minority Leader Jeffries had agreed to. After he spoke, Trump and Vance got into the act also telling Republicans that they had to force a large debt ceiling increase now as part of any bill to fund the government. As this written version was being put to bed, it was very unclear what Congress would be able to accomplish before going on Christmas recess.
The reason Trump wants to get the debt ceiling raised immediately is to “make room” in the debt ceiling for the massive tax cut that he promises to enact. If the debt ceiling is not raised now, it will have to be raised while Trump is President and he wants the optics of BIDEN raising the debt ceiling. Once again, he is playing chicken with the economy in effect threatening --- raise the debt ceiling or there will be a government shutdown. The other thing Musk (and thus Trump and Vance) want(s) is to strip out of the compromise bill disaster relief for the people in the Southeast (mostly Trump voters) harmed by the hurricane in September and some other very worthwhile expenditures.
[ This story can be followed in Newsweek: “Senators Baffled as Trump, Musk Throw Last-Minute Wrench into Spending Plan,” December 19, 2024, available at https://www.newsweek.com/senators-react-trump-musk-government-spending-bill-2003235. The article noted that Musk had led the way before Trump and Vance got involved. He was quoted as saying, “'Shutting down' the government (which doesn't actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill…” What he didn’t say is those critical functions will continue but the people providing them won’t get paid.]
The role of big money in politics has long been studied by Political Scientist Thomas Ferguson. A summary of his views and a recent interview are available at https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/political-investments. The piece is entitled “Political Investments” and it was released December 17, 2024. I highly recommend his work which in fact dates all the way back to an interesting book he co-authored in 1987 called RIGHT TURN.
FLASH – as of 5:50 PM on Thursday evening, there was a “new” compromise bill on the House floor. If it passes the House Friday, it must still pass the Senate and be signed by President Biden. It does give Trump what he wants by extending the debt ceiling limit past the 2026 midterm elections (which despite Trump’s reason for wanting it suspended is actually a good thing --- the debt ceiling shouldn’t even exist!) and does give $100 billion in disaster relief but some of the other items were knocked out. If it passes in a “decent’ form, it will mean that Musk’s and Trump’s actions were just for show.
FINAL FLASH --- as of 7:30 AM on Friday, the House has failed to pass anything. By Friday afternoon either there will be a government shutdown or some last minute deal. Whatever happens, MUSK succeeded in blowing up a bi-partisan compromise that had already been worked out. And then Trump FOLLOWED HIM. If this is any indication of what’s in store for us during the next four years, MUSK will have proven himself not just the person of the year, but the power behind the throne of Trump’s second term. STAY TUNED.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.