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Remix by Ash
Musk via (Photo by Marc Piasecki/Getty Images) Trump: Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Donald descends on free speech as Elon’s honeymoon period hits a billion-dollar snag

America is in its Divorced Dad era, and we wish somebody else had custody.

It’s another exhausting week in America as our duly elected leader and his not-so-elected fart-sniffing buddy make enemies across the globe for the… what, 30th time? We’d say Trump thinks he’s good at poker, except the man never knows when to hold or when to fold; he only seems to vibe with upping the ante.

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He’s spent the week tossing tariffs around like they’re his patented insults, and, unsurprisingly, the global markets are reacting to his clear instability. The president’s vitriol is rapidly shifting the economy toward a recession, and Trump’s recourse is simply to avoid the topic. Instead, he’d prefer to talk about how everything he doesn’t agree with is “illegal.”

Green card holder and legal U.S. resident Mahmoud Khalil is just one of the people caught up in Trump’s new definition of the word “illegal.” Now that Trump decides what is and isn’t legal, anything can land you in hot water, and the Columbia alumnus is feeling the burn. Trump’s newfound power to bend and outright break laws isn’t going to help people like Khalil, it’s only going to help POTUS and his rich buddies — and no one will benefit more than Elon Musk.

The South African billionaire is firing American civil servants left and right, and the outrage it’s caused across the world is finally hitting Musk somewhere he actually cares about — his wallet. His companies are tanking across the globe, and his darling baby Tesla is getting hit the hardest. But don’t worry, the noble elite have a plan to fix everything by outsourcing it to robots, obviously.

It’s just another week under the United Oligarchy of America. Only 201 weeks left to go.

First, they came for “illegals.” Then, they came for Mahmoud. Next….

Mahmoud Khalil arrest and protests
Screengrabs via @DemocracyNow/YouTube & @WhiteHouse/X

Donald Trump and his followers employ language unlike any other presidential administration: unfounded confidence substitutes for logical eloquence, and words don’t always mean what words are supposed to mean. Just look to Karoline Leavitt’s poor understanding of economics and her fragile ego as proof that many phrases with distinct definitions are used interchangeably.

For instance, it is a quintessential MAGA cliché to indiscriminately slap the word “criminal” onto all undocumented migrants when, in reality, most are working people intent on making an honest living. What the undocumented lack is not so much the ability to abide by the law, but any superhuman capacity to speed up the excruciatingly lengthy process that is the U.S.’s Kafka-esque system for obtaining the proper documentation. As “the most famous undocumented migrant,” Jose Antonio Vargas, noted, the majority of Americans don’t have a clue about all its inner workings. Furthermore, being in the country illegally does not constitute a criminal offense. Overstaying one’s Visa is a civil violation, only becoming a felony if you re-enter the country after deportation.

Now, the word “terrorism” is being used to disguise the deeply concerning constitutional violation – namely, of the First and Fifth Amendments – that Columbia University alumnus Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest constitutes. Higher Education facilities have the duty to educate their students, but also to protect them, especially if what they face legal ramifications for amounts to free speech and civil disobedience. But the looming threat of being stripped of government funding may have led Columbia to fail Khalil after he reportedly asked for help on the day preceding his arrest.

The green card holder’s detention and the attempt to revoke his legal status constitute a clear escalation in Trump’s targeting of civil liberties. And if this kind of totalitarian overreach remains unchallenged, it will only continue to intensify and expand its target list. In Trump’s own words, the pro-Palestinian activist’s arrest is but “the first of many.” Hope lies in the people’s willingness to show bravery in the face of political repression, and join forces to prove that the voices of the many resound far louder than those of the few. In the words of the wisest bald diva in television history: “Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

Elon Musk is speed running “how to lose friends and alienate people,”with the added bonus of losing more wealth than 99.99% of the population will ever have

Elon Musk watches a Cyber Truck plunge from falling stock prices. Remix by Ash
(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) Tesla stock via MartketWatch

It’s been just over two months since the Trump/Musk dream team antonym started floundering its way through government, but the floodwaters of garbage never seem to recede.

With the chaotic abandon of an unsupervised toddler with a red pen and a pristine white wall, Elon Musk has slashed the governmental workforce by more than 10,000 Americans daily since January 2024. Nearly 63 thousand federal workers across 17 agencies have lost their jobs in only 52 days — an eye-watering 41,311% increase from 2024 — and that’s not even counting the folks who quit in protest. After multiple waves of mass firings, President Trump has finally gone on record to say that sweeping administration cuts are all just recommendations that no one actually needs to follow. But now that 60k workers are standing in the breadline, his “assurance” really just sounds like empty platitudes.

Of course, now that the optics look incredibly bad, Musk won’t take the credit. Instead, he and Trump are playing a “fun” game of finger-pointing when it comes to who heads DOGE, and the person who’s “it” alternates at least once a week. Tell us again, Donnie, is it de facto Vice President Musk, or startled vacationer Amy Gleeson spitting in the faces of civil servants today?

While Musk casually shrugs his shoulders in apology over his inability to “bat a thousand all the time,” we have to wonder how the investors over at Tesla are feeling as they watch those moments of swing-and-a-miss tank their stock prices. The revolutionary car company’s stock has plummeted since December, dropping a truly nauseating 53% of its value. It’s twisted financials all the way down, as the app formerly known as Twitter flails in the wind in the face of Musk losing his position at Tesla. The company’s ability to produce profit was part of Musk’s bid to nab X, so we imagine he’s starting to feel a modicum of the rough seas of poverty that those thousands of civil servants are now drowning under.

Speaking of X, the social media site had a hell of a week after suffering from multiple cyber attacks. Musk went online to whine about how huge the effort was, and how “a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved” in the attacks. It’s just one of many ways Musk’s involvement in the government seems to be biting him in his oversized and very pale behind. Of course, as soon as Musk decided it must be a country to blame, he immediately started pointing the finger at none other than the incredibly war-torn Ukraine, citing IP addresses originating from the country.

My days as a teen “hacker” tell me that any basic VPN can make an IP address appear from basically anywhere in the world. So, Musky, can you think of anyone who might want to make Ukraine look bad? Anyone? Bueller? Experts were, of course, quick to tell Musk to shut his uneducated pie-hole before his disinformation makes things worse for the already beleaguered people of Ukraine, but with a God complex that impressive, we’re sure that advice went in one ear and out the other.

His following of sycophants, one that now includes a number of EV-hating Republicans, can’t find any fault with Musk these days. The man is like the Pied Piper of dirtbags — he knows exactly what song and dance the Republican bootlickers came to see. He’s hand-feeding them garbage platitudes about how “being a mom is a real job,” after trying to cut parental leave for mothers at X from 20 weeks to just 14 days. Oh, and let’s not forget how the literal richest man in the world is trying to shortchange one of his baby mommas on child support.

We should be surprised, but at this point, shortchanging women is just one of many qualifications necessary to join the MAGA bandwagon.

To get the rest of the tea, which this week includes Donald Trump’s National Treasure moment, along with his unhinged fix for the economy and distaste for laws that don’t benefit him, be sure to sign up for WGTC’s They Said What?! Newsletter.


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Nahila Bonfiglio
Nahila carefully obsesses over all things geekdom and gaming, bringing her embarrassingly expansive expertise to the team at We Got This Covered. She is a Staff Writer and occasional Editor with a focus on comics, video games, and most importantly 'Lord of the Rings,' putting her Bachelors from the University of Texas at Austin to good use. Her work has been featured alongside the greats at NPR, the Daily Dot, and Nautilus Magazine.
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Ash Martinez
Ash has been obsessed with Star Wars and video games since she was old enough to hold a lightsaber. It’s with great delight that she now utilizes this deep lore professionally as a Freelance Writer for We Got This Covered. Leaning on her Game Design degree from Bradley University, she brings a technical edge to her articles on the latest video games. When not writing, she can be found aggressively populating virtual worlds with trees.
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Omar Faruque
Omar is a seasoned writer specializing in all things entertainment. His approach to life and writing is the same: find the story in everything, and make sure to enjoy the ride. When not behind his keyboard, Omar is living his best life, whether that's channeling his inner superhero, trying to replicate anime recipes in his kitchen, or settling into his favorite coffee shop corner with a good book.
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Margarida Bastos
Margarida has been a content writer for 3 years. She is passionate about the intricacies of storytelling, including its ways of expression across different media: films, TV, books, plays, anime, visual novels, video games, podcasts, D&D campaigns... Margarida graduated from a professional theatre high school, holds a BA in English with Creative Writing and an MA in Text Editing/Publishing.
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Christian Bone
Editor and Writer
Christian Bone is a Staff Writer/Editor at We Got This Covered. Since graduating with a Creative Writing degree from the University of Winchester, he has been cluttering up the internet with his thoughts on movies and TV for over a decade. The MCU is his comfort place but, if you asked him, he'd probably say his favorite superhero film is The Incredibles.