Republished with permission from Steve Schmidt

I always told you that I’d tell you when Donald Trump was ever right about something. Though Elon Musk never should have been in the administration in the first place, Trump has earned a “good boy cookie” for stopping Pete Hegseth from briefing Musk about America’s most top secret Chinese war plans.

During these divided days and growing crisis let us be grateful for small victories and the better ones to come.

Donald was right about Elon, and Elon was right about Donald.

They are what they are, and exactly as they appear. There is no mystery, and nothing deeper than what is seen in plain sight.

What is it that the American people have witnessed for 138 consecutive days?

What happened during those days?

Was it a mystery?

A cover-up?

Will Jake Tapper be regaling America with another exposé three years from now?

What the American people and the whole world has witnessed is madness.

Sheer madness.

Here is an excerpt of a speech from Senator Claude Malhuret of the French Republic in March:

The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs and duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy.

Like an engine kept in the red by a merciless driver, the Musk-Trump axis of malice exploded into bits, but that was always inevitable.

The explosion has ended the game for Donald because his production thus far has been reliant on spreading fear, and Elon Musk has demonstrated that there is no price for crossing Donald.

What Musk has done is rip down Oz’s curtain, and shown the whole world that Trump is soft, weak and bought off.

What Trump has done is used up Musk, and sucked him dry, while exposing the South African Nazi for who he truly is.

Each man is a mirror of the other. They are a national malignancy. The damage that they did to America, they did together.

They are truly they and them.

There is no escaping the responsibility and accountability for the catastrophe that they have set in motion together. It will become clearer by the end of the summer when the economic impact of Crazy Donald’s tariff insanity starts being truly felt.

What Trump and Musk did together was celebrated far and wide by the MAGA Congress and MAGA media.

Here are few examples:

“In DOGE we trust.”

Representative Tom McClintock (R-CA)

“The DOGE efforts and the other things that are happening in the administration are very important for the American people because ultimately what we’re going to be able to do is downsize the size and scope of the federal government.”

Speaker Mike Johnson

“It’s what I did when I was governor. It’s what I did in my business life. You go through and you’re constantly looking at how to spend your money better. So, it’s what they ought to be doing. It’s what everybody ought to be doing. Every—you know, everybody ought to be going through the budget and saying, ‘how can we save money’?”

Florida Senator Rick Scott

And this from Jesse Watters at Fox News:

It has all turned to dust within 5 1/2 months.

It does raise a question though about whether they might be wrong about anything else.

I guess we will just have to wait and see.