I watched a short clip of Trump's new deportation czar, whose name I can't remember, answer a question about the deportation budget, which he estimated at $86 Billion, to start. He said, "to start", that's not me being cute. And it was "billion" with a "b", but to be fair a short online search reveals estimated amounts that range all over the map. I can only conclude from that that none of them have a clue what this will cost and dare not say so out loud.
Sounds like a windfall for security contractors though. It will be fun reading future investigative stories about how they landed those contracts, if there are any journalists left to write them. Sooner or later though, the American public might awaken and be awfully ticked off to find out that their government blew that much coin to find and deport carpenters and landscape gardeners, while leaving the mob, bikers, crypto-cons alone and never touch those fintech fraudsters who take people's deposits and then disappear. It might annoy people that their government can't or won't do anything about those crimes. Mr. Trump might run out of distractions eventually but I doubt he cares.
I see in the news that there is another MAGA/Musk/Trump/Bannion internecine battle royale going on at the moment, this time about immigration. It is spectacularly lame. There was some surprise expressed that Trump might be backing Musk against MAGA in this one, although it's murkier than that. It's a social media based battle, might not eve be real, hard to tell. But if that is what is going on, it fits. Musk has money so Trump is attracted to that naturally. Ticking off his base might not matter so much now. Since he already had their votes when he needed them, at this point they are no longer any use to him. That's what being transactional means. I hope no one was expecting loyalty to a cause or idea. I mean, come on.
Meanwhile the barely coherent orange puppet at the top keeps making public comments about annexing Canada or Greenland or "taking back" Panama, well the canal anyway. I watched a couple of those clips too and from the cheers I gather that there are at least some Americans who think that the US has the right to do those things.
Happy New Year.