WASHINGTON — Do not underestimate the dire times we are in. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are testing the limits and finding few as they dismantle government institutions with little care for Congress, the courts, or your grandmother in a nursing home where Medicaid pays the bill because she has run out of her lifetime savings.
Gov. JB Pritzker was in Washington Tuesday to address the Center for American Progress, a Democratic-allied think tank, with the focus on how to resist Trump and Musk as they consolidate power. Pritzker has long been a friend and a donor to the center.
“The meme lords and the minions in the White House conceive of themselves as kings and nobles who have the divine right to order the world in a way that best suits them and their fellow kleptocrats,” Pritzker said. “People’s lives are a game to them. I really think that’s how they think.”
He added this gut-punching assessment. “Things are bad. And they are going to get worse.”
I agree. There is no bottom, no basement to what is happening to our nation right now.
I ask Trump supporters: Did you vote for him to make Canada the 51st state or to raise questions about the boundary line for our northern border? To start a trade war? Did you vote for Trump to take over the Kennedy Center Board and book shows? To slash agencies and jobs first and find out what services are vital later?
To make Russia a key U.S. ally? To obsess about Joe Biden? To gut the Voice of America and kick the Associated Press out of the White House pool? To tank the stock market? To encourage white Afrikaners from South Africa to emigrate to the U.S.? To further enrich Musk, the world’s richest man, by trying to sell Teslas from the south lawn of the White House?
Democrats are frantically trying to figure out what to do. Protesting at Tesla dealerships or charging stations — I get it. It’s a place to go and be seen and heard. And unlike Trump, treated by his backers like a deity, Musk is a mortal who can be dumped or stripped of power if, like Icarus, he flies too close to the sun and his wings melt.
The lawsuits challenging Trump’s actions — many led by Democratic attorney generals like Illinois’ Kwame Raoul, are the most promising. But Trump and Musk, aided by their bootlickers and sycophants, claim that they don’t have to follow judicial orders they don’t like. Maintaining our democracy as we know it may well end up in the hands of the Supreme Court — and pray for what happens to our nation if Trump and Musk disagree with a majority ruling.
Democrats are looking for a leader — a Moses-like figure — who can lead them.
This is an incredible opportunity for someone to step forward who can figure out the tactics, the strategies to somehow curb Trump or at least slow him down.
I don’t know who this person is right now. Is it Pritzker, still mulling whether to run for a third term — and certainly looking at a 2028 White House run? Or ex-Chicago mayor and former Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who may also be considering a 2028 play? Credit our two men from Illinois who are skillful in using their enormous and powerful bully pulpits for speaking out when others are fearful to say anything or have, like former President Barack Obama, opted out for now.
Someone — or some group — has to emerge with a plan. Democrats have to be practical and live in the real world. This is a time for pragmatism — painful for some, I know. Pragmatism has it’s limits and is not always successful.
Pritzker on Tuesday told the story about how, during the COVID crisis, when companies were price gouging, Pritzker asked Trump, then president, for help in getting emergency supplies.
“He would send life-saving equipment, if only we would agree to praise him on the Sunday talk shows,” Pritzker said. “That is literally a deal that he put in front of me. I was desperate. My hospitals were filling up, and time was of the essence, so I agreed that I would do that if he sent me what we needed. …Needless to say, he never delivered for us.”
A potent issue that may break through is Medicaid, the state-federal partnership that provides health care coverage to low-income and disabled adults and nursing home costs for people drained of income and assets because of the high cost of their long term care.
In my analysis, Pritzker’s way of talking about how Trump and Musk are coming after Medicaid may sink through. Medicaid, Pritzker said, is “not just for poor people. It’s your grandmother in her nursing home. She’s going to have to leave the nursing home and come home and you’re going to have to take care of her.”