President-elect Donald Trump is presiding over a fractured Republican Party even before taking office, argued Amanda Marcotte in a Salon analysis published Monday. The dysfunction comes amid mounting Democratic attacks portraying Trump as subservient to tech billionaire Elon Musk, whom many blame for last week’s near-collapse of a bipartisan spending deal.
The spending bill narrowly avoided a holiday government shutdown, but not before chaos revealed cracks in the Republican coalition. “Democrats handed Musk — sorry, Trump — the first major loss of his presidency, a presidency which technically doesn’t start for another month,” wrote Marcotte.
The final funding bill restored all the major provisions Musk reportedly tried to strip out, leaving the GOP divided and weakened. “The fight left the Republican coalition divided and weakened. It also revealed that an aging, tired Trump is currently controlled by his biggest donor,” Marcotte observed.
Trump’s strategy, which relied on media narratives portraying him as strong and invincible, has been undercut by the recent turmoil. “It’s clear that the GOP is being held together with safety pins,” Marcotte wrote. “MAGA was never coherent ideologically but held together by Trump’s cult of personality.” Now, with Democrats recovering from earlier losses, they are striking back with a message designed to exploit those fractures.
The Democratic messaging isn’t just trolling Trump with jokes about Musk, argued Marcotte—it’s a broader ideological narrative targeting Trump’s vulnerabilities. “Democrats are … using this to drive home a simple but important message: Trump and Republicans are puppets of predatory billionaires,” she wrote.
The “President Musk” moniker has resonated, helping frame Trump as a figure more interested in enriching himself and his wealthy allies than addressing issues like inflation that affect ordinary Americans. Marcotte contends this strategy could be Trump’s Achilles heel, undermining his coalition by exposing contradictions within his populist appeal.
“The ‘President Musk’ jokes flew fast and furious,” she noted, reinforcing the idea that Trump is serving billionaires at the expense of his base. The events of the past week underscore a broader lesson for Democrats, Marcotte concluded:
“All it takes is a little discipline and a little spine, and Democrats can get Republicans to hate each other so much that getting work done feels impossible for the would-be fascist leaders.” This strategy of leveraging GOP infighting could shape the battles of Trump’s upcoming term before it even begins.