If Taoiseach Micheál Martin does indeed visit the White House next month to uphold the St Patrick’s Day tradition, he might consider presenting – in addition to the customary bowl of shamrock – a DVD gift of the Irish music show that has starred in the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) exposé of federal waste and fraud.
The reference to the notorious “Irish DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] musical” – which was in fact a set of live-streamed performances at the US ambassador’s residence performed in 2022 – was raised in conversation when President Donald Trump and Elon Musk sat down for a powwow with conservative host Sean Hannity in the White House.
“The president’s favourite,” Hannity said in listing the evidence of waste and fraud uncovered by the Musk-led DOGE team.
Musk said: “I’m sure you’ll love that the taxpayers' money was spent on a DEI musical in Ireland – or a transgender opera in Colombia. It sounds like, ‘How can these things be real?’, but they are actually what we have done. It sounds like a comedy sketch or something.”
The hour-long exclusive aired on Tuesday night at 9pm on Fox News. As the trio spoke, Bernie Sanders, the tireless voice of the left, was on the rival channel CNN, sounding the alarm bells about the US’s slow march towards autocracy.
Even in the diminished world of television ratings, as an experiment in channel-hopping, the two cable channel stalwarts offered a snapshot of the seismic drift between the competing ideologies for America’s hearts and minds. What the news ratings won’t show is how many Americans were watching the new season of the dark comedy drama The White Lotus at the same hour.
The election year was exhaustive and exhausting. Winter has been cold. There is a sense that the public has tuned out in vast numbers.
The Trump/Musk double act was a coup for Hannity, who counts the US president as a friend and is a true believer in the Maga movement. There was no mention of Ukraine, Gaza or foreign policy at all. It was never going to be a provocative hour, but he did at least draw, from Trump, a vow that social security and the crucial programmes of Medicare and Medicaid would not be touched.
But the purpose of the hour was to further establish exactly what Musk, described by Hannity as “the left’s newest bogeyman”, is up to as he rummages through the files of Washington’s federal offices. Invited to tell the audience about his fabulous career, Musk demurred that it would take a while and swerved to an analogy.
“I think the way you think of me is, like, I’m a technologist and I try to make technologies that improve the world and make life better ... And I’m here to provide the president with technology support.” He opened his black blazer to reveal a logo reading “Tech Support” on his T-shirt. The three men laughed.
It’s this whole sort of like thing called Trump Derangement Syndrome ... you can’t reason with people
— Elon Musk
Trump and Musk said nice things about one another. “Not once have I seen him do something that was mean or cruel or wrong,” Musk said of the US president, who in turn praised the younger man’s intellect. “I wanted somebody really smart to work with me in terms of the country, a very important aspect” - another small death blow, surely, to the esteem of US vice-president JD Vance.
All three agreed that the mainstream media was trying everything to split the pair up. The only awkward moment was when Musk began to enthuse on the extreme reactions Trump can generate in American society.
“I used to be adored by the left,” Musk said cheerily. “Less so these days.”
“I killed that,” Trump agreed, pleased. “I really did a number.”
“It’s this whole sort of like thing called Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Musk said. “You don’t realise how real this is until ... you can’t reason with people. I was at a friend’s birthday party, just a birthday dinner. It was just a nice, quiet dinner and everyone was behaving normally and I happened to mention, this was before the election, a month or two before, I happened to mention the president’s name ... and it was like they got shot with a dart in the jugular that contained meta-amphetamine and rabies, okay?”
Trump pursed his lips at this point and looked momentarily troubled as he considered the vivid image presented by his companion.
“Guys, you just can’t have a normal conversation?” Musk said, to conclude his anecdote.
The moment passed. The Hannity interview was a chattier reprise of the appearance Musk made in the Oval Office last week and an attempt to assure viewers that the Democrat fearmongering was just that.
Clearly, Sanders wasn’t watching. “This country is moving very rapidly under Trump into an authoritarian form of society,” he told Kaitlan Collins over on CNN.
“You know the founding fathers way back in the 1770s, these were nobody’s fools. They had fought the king of England, an autocrat, and they said we don’t want that in the new country. We are going to set up three equal branches of government; Every kid in the sixth grade knows who they are, but Trump does not and what Trump is trying to do now every day is to usurp the powers of Congress to challenge the powers of the court. It is a very dangerous moment.”
Sanders is clear-eyed about what he believes to be the long-game agenda of the Trump administration.
“They want massive cuts to the programmes for the working class in this country in order to give tax breaks to the very rich and then they want to move to the privatisation of every important government agency.”
Nor had he any doubt as to who is running the DOGE.
“Elon Musk is clearly running the show. The wealthiest person in the world who has enormous conflicts of interest, who is helping to fund right-wing extremist organisations all over the world, who is looking forward to getting massive tax breaks from Congress - he is running the show.”
And Sanders believes the true fight against all of this will not take place in the chambers of Capitol Hill, but in a grassroots peaceful protest movement. To that end, he is embarking on a national tour, starting in Nebraska and Iowa where he hopes to spread the message, week by week. Sanders is aged 83, but it was easy to see that the idea of starting a people’s movement was firing him.
Will it work? On Monday, a nationwide protest drew unremarkable crowds to capitol buildings across the states. It will be a slow burner.
Back on Fox, Musk was still explaining that his mission to root out shocking waste stems from a desire to help and that everything is above board.
“Also, I’m getting a daily proctology exam here,” he said, repeating his Oval Office line. “It’s not like I’ll be getting away with something in the dead of night.”
“Welcome to DC,” Hannity said. “If you want a friend, get a dog.”
“I do have a dog,” the richest man on earth said. “But I also have a friend.”
