The other day I posted the following:

Musk has been the greatest gift to Trump. First getting him elected, now helping create room for Trump loyalists, and drawing attention away from the truly awful ways the administration is undercutting the rule of law. Trump will discard Musk when he stops being useful.

50 percent chance that Musk will be in prison with his fortune seized. Might want to look into what Putin did with the oligarchs who didn't fall in line.

Some people took offense at this thinking I was advocating for Musk to be arrested. No, what I have in mind is a scenario which goes something like this:

Six months to a year from now, the US economy is in shambles due to a combination of AI putting pressure on the labor market resulting in decreased consumer spending combined with bad economic policies such as tariffs. It’s not exactly a repeat of the Great Depression but it rhymes. In the meantime a few things are going well, such as securing the borders.

What will Trump do? He will take credit for everything going well and blame everything going poorly on someone else. And who will that be? Musk. Likely along with everyone else associated with tech up to and including JD Vance. At that point though, to demonstrate his power and to silence all other opposition, Trump won’t simply remove Musk from government. He will allege some kind of sabotage from the inside. Serving his King as in his children’s books, Kash Patel will cook something up and Musk will find himself in prison awaiting trial with a big civil asset forfeiture, “to make good to the American people.” Vance will be given a choice to either play along or have his own set of problems. In all of this Trump will very much take a page from the playbook of the dictator he appears to admire most: Putin.

Am I saying this is guaranteed to happen? Absolutely not. It’s a scenario. But I believe it is entirely possible. My 50 percent number in the tweet is high for show but I am putting this at at least 10 percent probability. One of many ironies here is that a big contributor to Trump’s success has been Peter Thiel, beginning with his speech at the Republican convention and continuing with his support for JD Vance. It’s ironic because Thiel holds himself out as a student of Girard’s who has an entire theory on the scapegoat mechanism. Who do you think will be the scapegoat if the economy crashes if not tech’s avatars in/near government.

So what should Musk, Vance and other techies in and around the administration do? They should stop dismantling the parts of democracy protecting them, assuming it's not too late for that. The heads of key agencies are Trump loyalists. If you wind up laying off all the decent people below them in the quest for savings that will result in a complete loyalist takeover. Retaining/attracting people who believe in efficiency and the rule of law will be key. Beyond that they should work to strengthen the judiciary across the board, champion states rights, and work hard towards election integrity. You know the kind of checks and balances that prevent a President from becoming a King.

PS. ChatGPT hilariously refused to draw a picture based on this post and I had to coax it into doing so, whereas Grok happily complied producing the illustration above.