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MuskWatch: What Exactly Is Going on with DOGE?
DOGE is ostensibly supposed to be about government efficiency. After all, it's right there in the name: Department of Government Efficiency. At best, the people running that particular sh**show have decided that "efficiency" really just means "fire a lot of people." At worst, this is all just a smoke show meant to obscure the real agenda. Evidence in support of the latter view continues to pile up.
Yesterday was yet another meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference. (Seriously, they seem to have one of these things every week.) Since the meeting was in Maryland, and thus close to Washington, DC, Elon Musk decided this was an excellent time for a little political theater. So, he made a last-second, barely publicized appearance, in order to brag about his cost-cutting efforts, in conversation with NewsMax anchor Rob Schmitt.
It was... um, really weird. If you would like to watch for yourself, you can do so here. Musk bounded onto the stage while the adoring crowd roared its approval. Then, Argentine president Javier Milei—who is also crazypants, mind you—came out and presented Musk with a chainsaw decorated with gold accents. The general idea here is that it's a trophy (gold) being given in honor of cutting costs (chainsaw). Musk waved the chainsaw around for a short while, and then commenced the interview, which was only semi-coherent. Put it this way: Within 10 minutes of his sitting down on the interview couch, the word "Ketamine" was trending on eX-Twitter (Musk admits to using the drug, and is widely suspected of being an abuser/addict). If you would like to see an example of his barely being able to answer a question, this clip is the one that got widest circulation on social media yesterday.
There are, we would say, two takeaways from this curious event. The first is that, justifiably or not, Musk is becoming something of a modern-day Robin Hood to the MAGA faithful. That is going to make it much harder for Donald Trump to cut him loose, should their relationship become frayed. The second is that if Musk was just trying to cut spending and/or make the government more efficient, there would be no need for all of this face time. Clearly, there is more to it than just that.
We recognize, of course, that the "more to it" could be "we're doing stuff, and want you to know about it, so you'll keep voting Republican." That's pretty standard political stuff. And giving every taxpayer a big rebate check, while claiming it is "their share" of the DOGE savings, would clearly be designed to help on that front. But we continue to suspect there's much more to it than just vote-getting.
At this point, let us turn to two rather egregious errors—or lies—that Musk has put forth in just the last week. The first, which we've already written about a bit, involves Social Security. The South African has now made the claim, several times, that some vast number of people over the age of 100, often far over the age of 100, are receiving Social Security checks. He's given different figures at different times, but most commonly he's claimed that there are 10 million people over the age of 120 who are still receiving Social Security payments. This is not only nonsensical, it's impossible. In fact, by law, Social Security payments automatically cease when a person reaches 115. Since only 30 Americans have ever made it to that age, it's a pretty good chance that any given 115-year-old recipient is not legit.
How, exactly, did Musk come to this faulty conclusion? Because he and his team work in secret, it's hard to be entirely certain. However, there appear to be two dynamics at play. The first is that the Social Security Administration databases were executed in the now-pretty-ancient COBOL programming language. And, for reasons that are pretty inside baseball, COBOL databases tend to treat blank date fields as if they were filled in with the date May 20, 1875. If you'd like to know more, this article has the details.
The second dynamic is that what might be called the "Social Security Era" (1937- ) and the "Not Everyone Has a Birth Certificate Era" (4 billion years B.C. - ca. 1950s) overlap, so there are many people who are in the system who do not have a verified birthdate. Ipso facto, the system thinks they were born on May 20, 1875, and so are about to celebrate their 150th birthday. These people are not receiving—and many of them never received—Social Security payments. They are in the system because the same system that tracks payments also tracks Social Security numbers. In truth, the number of people 100+ who are getting Social Security payments right now is about 40,000, while the number of people 110+ is about 250.
Now let's talk about the second error/lie of the past week. On Monday, someone (presumably Musk) fired up the official DOGE eX-Twitter account and posted this:
The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item (standard financial process).
In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going. Thanks to @USTreasury for the great work.
That tweet, whoever it was from, is the work of a veteran manipulator. It was clearly designed to produce responses like this one, posted to eX-Twitter by a MAGA Maniac about an hour later:
DOGE revealed that $4.7 trillion in U.S. Treasury funds is unaccounted for and cannot be traced.
In simple terms, this means taxpayer money has disappeared without a trace.
Many ordinary folks are stunned and furious about this—and they have every right to be. People should be outraged.
The right-wing mediasphere was also all over the news (Joe Rogan did an hour about it, for example), while everyone else has basically (and justly, we would say) ignored it.
Notice the (by-design) evolution from the first tweet to the second one. The original says that tracing the money without that flag is "almost impossible." "Almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. There is, of course, a massive difference between "almost impossible" and "impossible." Further, it is laughable that, for want of a three-letter code, the money cannot be traced. Transfers of wealth, particularly in the modern era, leave a trail behind. On top of that, whether in the modern era or not, one of the purposes of accounting is to make sure that trail exists in duplicate or triplicate, and cannot easily be wiped away. And yet, despite all of this relatively basic logic (and that's before we even mention how absurd it is that two-thirds of the entire federal budget could disappear into the ether), the DOGE claim had morphed into the money being "unaccounted for" and having "disappeared without a trace."
In the past, we have made clear that we think the legend of Elon Musk is overblown, and that he's not the once-in-a-generation genius that some would have you believe. But he's not stupid, either, and we find it hard to accept that he really thinks there are ten million supercentenarians getting Social Security checks, or that the Treasury really doesn't know where that $4.7 trillion went.
What, then, is the motivation for such tall tales? Well, again, it could be to pump up the work of DOGE, and to convince voters that the Trump administration is doing things. However, as quite a few folks have observed, the budget bill being worked on by House Republicans right now is projected to include tax cuts, mostly for wealthy people, of $4.5 trillion. That's rather similar to $4.7 trillion, as if Musk & Co. are trying to set up the argument that "Hey! The tax cuts are a wash, since we recovered an amount of lost money even greater than that." Yes, it's a bit conspiratorial, but it's not THAT conspiratorial. Certainly, nothing that's happened in the last week, particularly not the whoppers coming from Musk and DOGE, has done anything to dissuade us from the notion that DOGE is mostly just a smokescreen meant to distract voters from the hammer that the GOP is about to take to the budget, the deficit, the national debt, and the social safety net.
There is one other thing to note on the DOGE front. In response to one of the anti-DOGE lawsuits, Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House's Office of Administration, filed a statement in which he declared, under penalty of perjury, that Musk has nothing to do with DOGE:
The U.S. DOGE Service is a component of the Executive Office of the President. The U.S. DOGE service Temporary Organization is within the U.S. DOGE Service. Both are separate from the White House Office. Mr. Musk is an employee in the White House Office. He is not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service or U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization. Mr. Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.
Presumably, Fisher is planning on a pardon, should he be charged with perjuring himself. Nobody can take seriously the assertion he makes here. Further, Trump already forgot the lie that his underlings are trying to perpetrate, and on Wednesday told attendees at an event that "I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency, and put a man named Elon Musk in charge."
What is the point of this obvious sophistry? There's really only one answer, and that is that the administration knows it is breaking the law six ways to Sunday, and is trying to create a moving target, to make life harder for plaintiffs and judges. The White House has also been playing games with the question of whether DOGE is an "agency" or a "department," for exactly the same reason. This suggests rather strongly that Trump, Musk & Co. know the party cannot continue forever, and that they have to maximize the impact of DOGE while they can.
We were going to have a full Crazypants Report today, but we decided that this DOGE deep dive (DDD?) was somewhat pressing, and we don't think that we (or the readership) can handle a bunch more additional whackadoodlery on top of this. We'll definitely have one on Tuesday, though, as we've already got 18 potential entries, and we're not even into the weekend, when the administration generally tries to sneak the craziest pants stuff through. (Z)
Senate News: Patel Confirmed to Lead FBI
FBI Director Kash Patel. You might want to sit down for a moment while you let that sink in. Yesterday, the Senate made it official, confirming the 21st century's answer to J. Edgar Hoover 51-49. All the Democrats and independents voted against, along with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME). Somehow, some way, Collins miraculously managed yet again to buck the party line in a way that didn't actually have any impact. What are the odds? Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had expressed reservations about Patel, but ultimately voted for confirmation, sparing J.D. Vance from having to hustle over to the Senate chamber to cast a tiebreaking vote.
"One can scarcely imagine a worse candidate to lead [DEPARTMENT or AGENCY]." That's a sentence we could have written, and did write, quite a few times over the past couple of months. And it most certainly applies to Patel. Like Hoover before him, Patel has every intention of using the Bureau as a cudgel against those he deems to be "enemies," whether of himself in particular, or of Donald Trump/MAGA in general. That said, Hoover preferred to be subtle, operating behind the scenes like a ninja (albeit armed with incriminating information/blackmail, and not a katana). Patel is like a bull in a china shop, having bragged openly that he looks forward to the "weaponization" of the FBI.
If that is not bad enough, Patel is also an outspoken election denier. Most Republicans have learned that pushing back against the results of the 2020 election tends to anger voters, while declaring those results to be legitimate definitely angers Donald Trump. So, they generally try to avoid the subject as much as possible. However, Patel is still beating that dead horse. So too is his boss, AG Pam Bondi. And her boss, Trump. It is good for democracy that elections are run by states, which means that there are at least some limits on what this trio can do to act on their delusions. However, it is also bad for democracy, and in particular for minority/women/trans/student voters, that red states know that they can subvert the Voting Rights Act of 1965 at will, in the name of "election security," and the federal government will be pleased to look the other way.
Patel's confirmation was not the only big news out of the Senate yesterday. Everyone knew this was coming, of
course, but McConnell took to the floor of the chamber and gave
a brief speech
in which he made it official: He will not run for reelection in 2026. That will bring an end to a Senate career
that started all the way back in 1984. Think: L.A. Olympics, The Cosby Show, the debut of the Macintosh,
the Oakland Los Angeles Las Vegas Raiders winning the Super Bowl, Ghostbusters and St.
Ronnie of Reagan. It's been a long time (and he nearly made it to the NEXT L.A. Olympics).
After the news broke, Axios had the headline "McConnell retirement sparks Kentucky political frenzy." Their dictionary must have a different definition of "frenzy" than ours does. On the Republican side, former state AG Daniel Cameron jumped in, which everyone knew he would do as soon as McConnell made it polite to do so. And beyond Cameron... well, that's actually it, so far. Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) is making some noise about getting in, but he's not crazypants enough for Kentucky Republicans, and there's a lot of opposition to him from groups with the money to try to undermine him (for example, Club for Growth, which has already endorsed Cameron). Beyond that, most of the Republican members of the House have made clear they are staying put. If Barr decides against making a bid, and Donald Trump DOES NOT back a non-Cameron candidate, then the Republican primary could actually be pretty quiet.
On the other side of the aisle, the Democrats got what might be called "silver lining" news. By that, we mean that Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) announced that he's not going to run. That will make Democrats, who have dreams of poaching a red-state Senate seat—and, just maybe, winning back the Senate—very sad. However, that also tells us that Beshear is most certainly going to run for president in 2028. Many Democrats see him as the Party's great, white hope. Hence the silver lining.
With Beshear taking a pass, that means the only Democrat who is officially in is state House Minority Leader Pamela Stevenson. She declared well before McConnell made his announcement yesterday. It is possible that Beshear aide Rocky Adkins, who previously served in the state House, will toss his hat in the ring, too, although he hasn't gotten in yet. If he does declare, then we'll have the fairly common Democratic primary dynamic of a Black candidate (Stevenson) against a milquetoast white guy (Adkins). In any event, McConnell's announcement resulted in a grand total of one candidate actually declaring a run for the soon-to-be-vacant seat. Again, does not sound like a "frenzy" to us.
And as long as we are on the Senate beat, there are two other stories worth passing along. The first is that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) decided to burn the midnight oil last night, because he wants to get a budget bill through the Senate before Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) can get a competing bill through the House. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has no problem staying up late, and introduced a whole bunch of amendments to the bill. For example, one amendment would forbid any cuts in tax rates if there is also a cut in Medicare or Medicaid. None of the amendments will pass; the point is to put Republicans up in 2026 (e.g., Collins) in the position of having to vote for unpopular things.
And finally, we'll note something that is not relevant to 2026, but could be in 2028. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has, as readers will recall, been rebranding himself. He was once a Bernie-style progressive, but now he's going for Manchin-style centrist. Given how the winds are blowing in Pennsylvania, you can understand the thinking, although one might ask: How well did "I can see both sides of the issue" work for Manchin? Or for Kyrsten Sinema? Both of those folks are out of work these days, if we are not mistaken.
Thus far, the results for Fetterman v2.0 are not promising. When he was meeting with Donald Trump, and otherwise worshiping at the altar of "centrism," he was lauded by right-wing media and voters, and slammed by plenty of folks on the left. This week, the Senator pushed back against DOGE, declaring that while cutting waste is a good thing to do, violating Americans' data privacy is not, and that "A party of chaos loses—always." So, now he is being excoriated by many of those same right-wing media and voters who were singing his praises last week. If Fetterman is not careful, he could end up a man without a party, not unlike Manchin and Sinema did. A challenge from both the right and the left (as happened in Arizona, with Sinema) is most certainly not out of the question.
Recently, Fetterman has gotten a concrete reminder that his new shtick is not playing well with the people who got him to the Senate in the first place, as he's been losing key staffers by the bushel. He had already lost his chief of staff, his communications director, and three other members of his comms staff prior to this week. On Wednesday, his new communications director (who lasted about a month in that post, but had been with the Senator since the beginning) and his legislative director said they would be leaving, too. Publicly, of course, all the departing staffers are saying nice things. However, it is not a secret that they are unhappy with Fetterman's rightward turn, and in particular his extreme hawkishness on Israel.
And so, despite the fact that the Senate has yet to pass any real legislation, and may not pass much stuff beyond the budget this year, there's still plenty of drama in the upper chamber. (Z)
Hochul to Adams: You've Been Very Naughty, Eric
Eric Adams is definitely in the running for the title of "Most Corrupt Officeholder in the History of New York City." That's really saying something for a city that, over the years, has elected such luminaries as William Magear Tweed, George Washington Plunkitt, Richard Croker, and Rudolph Giuliani. But Adams not only engaged in garden-variety grift, taking bribes from Turkey, he also turned around and sold the city out to Donald Trump in order to save his own skin. Most sleazeballs don't add that extra level of shadiness.
As we have written many times, this creates a dilemma for Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY). She very much wants to be reelected in 2026, and she does not want to step on the toes of any voter who would like to see Adams canned (many prominent Democrats, especially the progressive ones) or any voter who would like to see Adams stay (some moderates and Black voters). The Governor would probably have cover if Adams' federal criminal case is actually dismissed (since she would be "the last bastion of justice") but, at the moment, Judge Dale Ho is taking his time as he decides what to do.
This being the case, Hochul yesterday announced a plan that is meant to be very middle-of-the-road. She said she is not going to exercise her right to remove Adams, at least not right now, but that she is going to install "guardrails" to make sure he keeps his nose clean. So, she's going to hire a "special inspector general" to supervise him; she's going to grant additional powers to the city comptroller, the public advocate and the New York City Council speaker that will allow them to do end runs around the Mayor in some cases; and she's going to expand the "oversight" powers of the state comptroller.
This is likely only a temporary reprieve for Adams. Hochul very clearly gave herself room to change course, and she could do so based on what happens in federal court, or simply based on how the political winds blow in the next few weeks or months. Further, even if the Governor does not take action, there is another means by which Adams can be removed. As we have noted a couple of times, New York City's charter allows for the convening of a five-person committee made up of the city's corporation counsel, the city comptroller, the speaker of the City Council, the borough president of Queens and one deputy mayor selected by the mayor. If four of five vote for removal, then the matter heads to the City Council. If two-thirds of them (34 people, assuming all members are present) agree with the committee, then the mayor is out on his rear end.
We are also not so sure that Hochul has actually solved her problem here. Truth be told—and since we are not New York voters, we think we have a freer hand here to share our views—we have been generally unimpressed with the Governor's leadership. She seems, too often, to be in the thrall of the corporate types, such as when she gave $850 million in public money to the billionaire owners of the Buffalo Bills. Even more commonly, she seems generally to lead from behind, guided primarily by what choices will produce the least amount of political fallout. Her 6-month pause of congestion pricing in New York City is one example of this, and her handling of the Adams situation is another. Like John Fetterman (see above), in trying to be everything to everyone, the Governor might end up being nothing to anyone. Her approval rating is in the high 40s, which would be OK for a president these days, but is actually pretty bad for a governor. In fact, among governors who are up next year, Hochul is only outpacing Dan McKee (D-RI), Tina Kotek (D-OR) and Kim Reynolds (R-IA).
Incidentally, on the subject of congestion pricing, the Trump administration announced this week that the new fees would be canceled. It is exceedingly questionable whether the White House actually has the legal authority to do this, particularly the way they did it (without any clear policy justification). It is also a pretty good illustration of how Trump would appear to be out of touch with his former home city. Though there was much carping about the plan before it was implemented (hence the delay from Hochul), it has apparently worked out very well, indeed. Traffic levels and travel times are way down, there are fewer car crashes, and the city is bringing in money that it needs for infrastructure improvements. We will see if the White House fights for the cancellation, tooth and nail, or if a more dialed-in New York Republican—say, one of the House members from Long Island—suggests the administration should quietly drop the matter. (Z)
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: James A. Isn't the Most Famous Garfield
Garfield, to most Americans, undoubtedly brings to mind the comic-page cat, who has also appeared in books, movies, and TV shows, and on t-shirts, mugs, keychains, potholders, toilet paper cozies, and any other object that will squeeze some money out of the character's merchandising rights. We don't begrudge creator Jim Davis for getting every cent he can out of his creation, but he is definitely yin to the yang of Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson (who not only refuses to merchandise his creation, but who ended his strip at the height of its popularity because he felt he'd said all he had to say).
In short, poor James A. Garfield ranks second among notable American Garfields. Maybe even third, behind actor Andrew Garfield. That's what getting shot and killed a year into your term will get you. What does this have to do with anything? Well, that brings us to last week's headline theme. Our first hint, after noting that last week's puzzle was a toughie, was "you should really start by looking at the calendar," while the second hint was "think of a scoreless tennis match." And now, reader A.E. in Cleveland, OH with the solution:
In honor of Valentine's Day, each headline includes the name of a group/team/film featuring someone named "Love."
- Tariffs: Trump Acts Like the WWE Hall of Famer That He Is—WWE HoF Inductee Mick Foley, a.k.a. Dude Love
- Federal Workforce: A Lot of People Will Soon Be Office Packers—Green Bay quarterback Jordan Love
- Trump and Adams: A Corrupt Relationship Blossoms—Musician Darlene Love
- In Congress: RFK Jr. Approved; Cassidy, McConnell Can't Find the Special Sauce—Rock band G. Love and Special Sauce
- Jockeying for Position: 2026 Races Continue to Heat Up—Miami Heat player Kevin Love
- I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Eddie Murphy Is "The Nutty Professor"—Features villain Buddy Love
- This Week in Schadenfreude: Tesla Starts the Year in a Hole—Musician Courtney Love
- This Week in Freudenfreude: Time to Head to the Beach, Boys—Musician Mike Love
Finishing the set, the movie Garfield, from this item's headline, features Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Here are the first 50 readers to get it right:
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A reader asked us to reveal what time the 50th correct answer was received. This one was tough, and so we didn't get 50 correct ones until... Monday at 5:44 a.m. PT. Note that, to make the list, a reader just has to provide the theme. The list of how each headline qualifies for the theme is optional.
As to this week's theme, it may be easy, or it may be extra tricky—we don't know. It relies on one word per headline, and would fit into the Trivial Pursuit category "Headlines." And speaking of headlines, the hint is that you could not possibly solve this one with JUST the headlines.
If you have a guess, send it to comments@electoral-vote.com, with subject "February 21 Headlines." (Z)
This Week in Schadenfreude: In Support of Censorship?
Censorship, on the whole, does not work very well. OK, maybe it is effective in a place where the government is all-in on suppressing "troublesome" ideas, and has near-unlimited power, like China or North Korea. But in the U.S., it primarily serves to make things that might otherwise be uninteresting into "forbidden fruit." Don't these adults who engage in thought policing remember when they were kids? We 100% guarantee that a bunch of the people who are now geriatric U.S. Senators once plotted, planned, and schemed—with success—to lay hands on dad's Playboy magazines, or a copy of Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex, or maybe some wrongthink book like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or 1984.
We've already written about some of the books that have been banned as a result of the Trump administration's new guidelines for federally operated public schools (mostly, schools on military bases). A lot of them have to do with LGBTQ issues, either directly, or through symbolism and allegory. Others are anti-racist, or are (very) vaguely pro-feminist. The general point is to get rid of anything that is within a country mile of DEI.
The thing is, the instructions that have been issued to school librarians are very, very broad. Further, while those instructions make specific reference to "gender ideology," they also say that books on "discriminatory equity ideology topics" should be removed. That is a pretty broad description, and could apply to books about race and racism, but could also apply to books about class and classism.
For example, there is a book that was purchased by many base-school libraries about a youngster who, although white, was born very poor, and who grew up in poverty. He did work hard, and he did get an education, so he managed to escape his humble roots. Still, the book features some not-too-pleasant vignettes. Further, the purpose of the censorship appears to be an effort to avoid hurting the feelings of people who were born white, male and economically stable. So, a book like this could be read as a criticism of those individuals who are not poor, and could make them sad.
Of course, not every librarian interprets the guidelines in the same way, so not all of them are yanking books about poor, white folks. But a number of them are, just to be safe (although some of them might well be engaging in malicious compliance). In any event, the book described in the previous paragraph, which is no longer available to students at some military-base schools, is Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by one J.D. Vance. Hmmmm, now that we think about it, maybe censorship isn't so bad, after all. (Z)
This Week in Freudenfreude: U.S. Hockey Falls, 3-2, to Canada
Canada has been in the news quite a lot, recently. There's the normal stuff that should be in the news, like the declining popularity of the Justin Trudeau administration, and the upcoming election that will choose his replacement as prime minister. And then there is all the 51st state nonsense, which has produced many stories about how irritated the Canadians are, and many (dumb) stories about what would happen if Canada actually was annexed by the U.S.
As chance would have it, this rocky time in U.S.-Canada relations coincides with "All Star" season for two of the four major North American sports leagues, the NBA and the NHL. For those readers who do not follow sports (which is a lot of the readership), pretty much all of the sports leagues have had trouble maintaining interest in their All-Star games, which are supposed to be a major showcase for the leagues and their best athletes. There are numerous reasons for this, but the biggest is that the athletes (and their team ownership, and often their fans) aren't particularly enthusiastic about risking injury in what is, in the end, an exhibition contest. So, they have tended to play at something less than full effort in recent years. The NFL eventually canceled its All-Star game outright, while the NBA and NHL have tried to find ways to spice things up, and regain some of the competitiveness seen in the past.
The NBA's latest round of experimentation, which unfolded last weekend, did not work out so well. On the other hand, the NHL appears to have hit the jackpot. Instead of playing one game with the league's best players, the All Stars were instead divided into four teams, each representing a hockey-playing nation: the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Finland. The teams played a round-robin tournament and the two teams that advanced to the title game, held last night, were, as you can surely guess, the U.S. and Canada.
The NHL knows, full well, that once you make a player into a representative of their nation, that ups the ante. However, when this plan was put into motion many months ago, the league had no idea the sort of backdrop Donald Trump would create with his rhetoric and his tariffs. There's already a rivalry between the U.S. and Canadian national hockey programs, and all the political stuff just upped the ante. And although Canada is a hockey powerhouse, the imbalance in military power gave last night's matchup a definite David and Goliath feel.
Further, just in case the various news reports swirling around the tournament were not enough, various actors involved made absolutely certain to inject politics into the thing. Canadian fans, for their part, booed during the playing of the U.S. national anthem. This infuriated several of the very Trumpy players on the American team, particularly brothers Brady and Matthew Tkachuk. So, in the first U.S.-Canada matchup of the tournament (which happened last Saturday), the Americans started 3 different fights... in the first 9 seconds of the game. In case it wasn't obvious, the Tkachuks later confirmed that the fights were pre-planned.
NHL Hall of Famer Bill Guerin, who is GM of the American team, and who is also very Trumpy, strongly encouraged the President to be a part of the championship game. Guerin, knowing that Trump rarely eschews an opportunity to engage in a little jingoism, actually hoped that The Donald might attend in person. Instead, Trump addressed the team via phone before the game, and also posted this message to his one-man social media platform:
I'll be calling our GREAT American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State. I will be speaking before the Governors tonight in D.C., and will sadly, therefore, be unable to attend. But we will all be watching, and if Governor Trudeau would like to join us, he would be most welcome. Good luck to everybody, and have a GREAT game tonight. So exciting! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP
Nobody who follows sports objects to a little good-natured rivalry and/or ribbing. Indeed, for games like these, it's somewhat customary for the respective leaders to place a little bet involving local products. So, if Trump wanted to bet a case of Florida oranges on the Americans, against a case of maple syrup from Trudeau, then that would be fine and dandy. But this kind of garbage? Can't he EVER show even a tiny modicum of class?
As a result of all of this, pretty much every person in Canada was pulling hard for their team. And so were a fair number of Americans. The game itself was excellent, for those who like the sport. The Canadians scored first, then the U.S. tied it, then the U.S. took the lead, then the Canadians tied it. With the score even at 2-2 at the end of regulation, that meant sudden-death overtime. The overtime lasted for 8:18, until the U.S. forgot to defend Connor McDavid, the best hockey player in the world, and McDavid stuffed one into the net for the win.
Regardless of which team a person might have been rooting for, it would be hard not to appreciate how much this meant to the Canadians. Many in the audience were in tears. Some of the players were clearly bleary-eyed, too, while all of them were clearly thrilled to have defended their nation's honor. Team Canada also put on a lesson in how to win with class, shaking hands with the Americans, and then each accepting a first-place medal with heads bowed and with no showboating. We can think of at least one person who could learn a little something from that.
Anyhow, congratulations to Team Canada, eh, and have a good weekend, all! (Z)
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