Hillary Clinton has a sobering update about the man elected president and the unelected oligarch pulling the strings

As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for his second and final term as President of the United States of America, he and his unelected billionaire best friend forever Elon Musk gleefully preside over a government shut down.

Government shut downs aren’t exactly new in the U.S., and Trump even currently holds the record for the longest government shut down to date. Never one to be outdone — even by himself — he’s back at it ahead of his inauguration, with a shut down that could continue right through the holiday period and up to the January inauguration date itself.

Speaking on X — the social media platform that’s fast becoming Musk’s personal mouthpiece — Hillary Clinton gave a scathing indictment of the billionaire brothers-in-arms that puts their shocking behavior into the proper context.

Clinton, who stood for election during the historic 2016 election which saw Trump take office the first time, spells out the chilling reality of the shut down and its orchestrators. Trump, who purports to be a billionaire himself, and his unelected billionaire buddy and hopeful oligarch-in-waiting Musk are playing political games with absolutely zero consideration for the millions of real people affected by their nonsense.

Thanks to support from the Republican party, Trump’s shut down is underway. Trump is holding the U.S. Congress to ransom because he’s seeking a massive boost to his spending capabilities when he takes office next year, with seemingly no thought to how it will affect millions of ordinary Americans in the meantime. What a merry Christmas.

As Clinton says, this shut down stops America’s troops being paid; it stops vital benefits being paid to low-income families — during a cost of living crisis — at a time of the year where things are already difficult; and essential workers will have to work in some cases without pay. This is simply not the time to be playing with people’s livelihoods, but neither Trump nor Musk has any reason to care.

They are, after all, some of the richest men in the country world. For them, money is abstracted away from the lifeline that it is to ordinary working people. They don’t worry about having money to eat or heat their homes. They don’t need to worry about paying for vital, life-saving healthcare. They don’t worry about paying rent. Billionaires don’t even worry about money for luxuries. For people like Musk and Trump, money is the currency of power.

Musk, after all, has not stood for election anywhere and has a seat at Trump’s table because he can pay for it. The outspoken billionaire has been open with his intentions to interfere in democracies around the world using his money, as he offers money to the U.K.’s Nigel Farage and endorsements to Germany’s controversial Alternative für Deutschland party.

Whatever his goals are, Musk has an agenda, and he’s willing to pay for it. This is not the behavior of man with the interests of the people in mind. Hillary Clinton’s stark reminder of what the shut down actually means in practice shows that. While Musk and pay-for-play President Trump play games with people’s lives, even going so far as to blame the Biden administration for whatever unfolds, it’s the millions of real people on the ground who will suffer.