Trump may not be a secret CL, but Elon Musk is a very public one, and he is a prominent supporter of the man on golf cart. He has been telling the world that he can find trillions of dollars of waste in the federal budget; one assumes that means everything except the defense budget, the money required to prosecute Trump’s enemies, and subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX. Mike Johnson has also made some comments about putting a blowtorch to the administrative state. Could we actually be seeing the CL revolution in the making–an American Milei moment?
There are just four tiny problems with this hypothesis. First of all, America is not Argentina; we have two percent inflation and four percent unemployment. Second, Trump has no history as a budget cutter. Third, if the Republicans win control of both houses, they will have tiny majorities, and some of the centrists will be unreliable on budget issues. Finally, unlike Milei, Trump has done nothing to prepare the electorate for enormous budget cuts. The public reaction to what Musk insists is just a dash of temporary pain will be intense, indeed.