Early in Trump’s first term, Steve Bannon told the world he was Thomas Cromwell to Trump’s Henry VIII. I was so offended by the analogy that I devoted a lengthy post to it; Bannon is no Cromwell, and while Trump shares some of Henry’s worst qualities, he has none of the best ones. In the end, Bannon was expelled from Trump’s inner circles, Trump accomplished very little in office, and the analogy went away.
Trump 2.0, as many predicted, is a completely different beast. The obvious difference between the two is the presence of Elon Musk, who brings tremendous energy and focus to the task of destroying America as we knew it. It would be fair, then, to apply the Cromwell analogy to Musk.