Musk, Trump degrade federal workers as they put them out of work. It's sadistic.

Musk, Trump degrade federal workers as they put them out of work. It’s sadistic. | Opinion

Posted by author February 12, 2025 Jobs

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Musk’s boy-who-wishes-someone-loved-him childishness is part and parcel of the vicious ‘own the liberals’ mindset driving President Donald Trump and seemingly all around him.

I’d guess most Americans, over the course of their lives, have either known someone who was laid off from a job or experienced a layoff firsthand. It’s not pleasant. There’s nothing funny about it.

So right now, I ask you to imagine you’re a U.S. government employee whose career is being ended by unelected billionaire Elon Musk, the de facto president of the United States currently demolishing the federal government, probably illegally.

Imagine you’re a scientist whose life’s work is being halted with no explanation or consideration. Imagine you’ve devoted years of your life working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, helping poor people in another country ‒ and now you’ve suddenly been axed and uprooted.

I ask you to imagine these things and then imagine looking at the social media profile of the guy canning all these American workers and seeing he ‒ President Musk himself ‒ briefly changed his name on X to “Harry Bōlz” and added the description: “Circumcisions at a discount, now 50% off!”

That’s hilarious. If you’re 12, and detestable.

Americans are losing their government jobs. Musk laughs.

But this is, by appearances at least, the most powerful person in America, and he is running around acting downright gleeful about thousands upon thousands of Americans losing their jobs.

Musk’s boy-who-wishes-someone-loved-him childishness is part and parcel of the vicious “own the liberals” mindset driving President Donald Trump and seemingly all around him. It is clearly what congressional Republicans want. And it is vile, bordering on sadism.

Understand this: Trump won, no question, and he has every right to fulfill the conservative dream of shrinking the federal government. (It would be nice if he and his hench-billionaire went about it legally, but I suppose that would make it less fun for them.)

But whatever mandate the Musk/Trump administration thinks it may have, we’re still talking about the lives and employment of American people. And those American people don’t deserve to be humiliated, to have the value of the work they’ve done denigrated, or to have the guy firing them running around making “harry balls” jokes like a rich prat.

Musk is a man-child messing with real people’s lives

It’s one thing to hate big government and believe that Democrats have made it too bloated. It’s another thing altogether to direct that hate toward the people who work in government.

Musk recently posted on social media, without a lick of evidence, of course: “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

He also wrote: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”

If Musk thinks USAID is a waste of federal money and should be eliminated, fine. He’s the president. (Don’t tell Trump!) But have some compassion for the thousands upon thousands who work there and will likely soon be collecting unemployment. Losing a job is a catastrophe for most families. It’s not a damn joke.

Yet I imagine Trump is sitting back laughing. And I know this is what Republicans in Congress want, because they’re certainly not doing a thing to temper any of it.

So-called Americans wishing ‘trauma’ on other Americans

The legality of shuttering federal agencies without congressional approval and eliminating jobs willy-nilly remains to be seen and will be sussed out in the courts. But even if some of these federal workers whose jobs are in peril remain employed, think about the trauma this is putting them and their families through.

I know you’ve seen what that’s like, either firsthand or via a friend or loved one. It’s hell not knowing if your income is going to suddenly cease.

Russell Vought, Trump’s new head of the Office of Management and Budget, is infamous for once saying of federal workers: “We want their funding to be shut down. … We want to put them in trauma.”

That is the sadism I referred to earlier ‒ wishing trauma on other Americans. It’s unbecoming of a government official, it certainly doesn’t align with any faith teaching I’ve ever come across, and it’s not how any American worker deserves to be treated.

Unless MAGA is allergic to decency, a little is needed right now

You can dislike a big, dumb liberal loudmouth like me all you want. And again, it’s this administration’s prerogative how it wants to LEGALLY reduce the size of government.

But if you lost your job and the guy who fired you was running around calling himself “Harry Bōlz” and making weird circumcision jokes and bragging about tossing your department in the wood chipper, you’d be good and rightly pissed.

You can support what Trump/Musk are doing and still ask that it be done with a measure of human decency.

Or maybe decency isn’t allowed in the highest Republican circles.

What do I know? I’m just a big, dumb liberal who refuses to celebrate the suffering and degradation of other Americans at the hands of an unelected rich snot.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk