Tag Archives: kakistocracy

The New York Times reports: Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide in Manhattan in December, has been hired by one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious venture capital firms to join its “American Dynamism” team. Mr. Penny, a Long Island native and former architecture student, will work in a group that supports American interests, …

Wired reports: Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chairman of the analytics firm …

Mediaite reports: A whopping 13,000 federal employees reportedly received an abusive email on Thursday after a new broadcast system was quickly exploited. In an email with the subject header, “Resign,” all 13,000 federal employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reportedly received the abusive message, which read, “Aren’t you tired of working for a complete cunt?” “I’m sorry this …

USA Today reports: The U.S. Senate confirmed Sean Duffy on Tuesday as secretary of Transportation, clearing the way for another of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet officials to start working on plans to improve traffic safety, cut regulations on construction projects and restore public confidence in Boeing. Duffy was confirmed by a vote of 77 to 22. In nominating Duffy to …

The Washington Post reports: The relationship between billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and billionaire Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk is warming up, a Friday morning exchange on Musk’s social media app X suggested. Two days after the tech titans dined together with President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Bezos broadcast his agreement with Musk’s opinion that it was necessary to …

The Washington Post reports: President-elect Donald Trump had dinner Wednesday with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (who owns The Washington Post) at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and the two were joined by billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump transition team spokesperson confirmed.The meeting marks the latest trek by tech executives to Trump’s home in South Florida to appeal to the incoming …

The Daily Beast reports: James Carville might be onto something. Two weeks after the Democratic strategist suggested Tucker Carlson was behind Trump’s wild-card Cabinet nominees, the Wall Street Journal has reported that Carlson was indeed the one who killed Mike Pompeo’s chances in the new administration. Trump insiders originally believed Pompeo, who served as secretary of state during Trump’s first …

The Huffington Post reports: President-elect Donald Trump announced this weekend that he’d tapped his onetime defense attorney, acolyte Alina Habba, for a role in his second term. thoughts. Habba will serve as a counselor to Trump, a role that veteran Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway (of “alternative facts” fame) occupied during the returning POTUS’ first term. With Habba as his lawyer, …

Axios reports: President-elect Trump is looking to fill his Cabinet and administration with familiar faces from one of his favorite right-leaning television networks. A dozen current or former Fox News employees have made Trump’s cut for his “central casting” Cabinet, as have frequent network guests. As in his first term, Trump appears to be treating hiring for top government posts …

Axios reports: It’s not hyperbole to call this a government of billionaires. Whether it acts as a government for billionaires — as Democrats argue is inevitable — could test and potentially tarnish Trump’s populist legacy. Besides Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy, at least 11 billionaires will be serving key roles. They’ve been picked to lead the departments of Treasury (Scott Bessent), …

The Guardian reports: Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he was nominating podcaster and former PayPal chief operating officer David Sacks to be his White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar, continuing a pattern of rewarding big donors with political power. Sacks, a venture capitalist and Silicon Valley insider, hosted big spenders at his San Francisco mansion in June to …

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, spent over a quarter of a billion dollars in the final months of this year’s election to help Donald J. Trump win the presidency, federal filings revealed on Thursday. The sum is a fraction of Mr. Musk’s wealth. But it is nonetheless a staggering amount from a single donor, …

CNN reports: Donald Trump has selected his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, to serve as the next US ambassador to France, the president-elect announced Saturday. Charles Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020 following a 2005 conviction on federal charges. Chris Christie, who led the case as the US attorney for New Jersey, said in 2019 that Kushner committed …