People think he rambles a lot, but it has a purpose to it. What I’m worried about is that after meeting with the Project 2025 guy, that rambling might be receiving some calibration as well as a long series of other meetings to see if they go a new route.

I don’t think he is really that ill simply because JD Vance would have been picking up a lot more of the slack if that were the case to position himself as the new president.

Then there’s also the possibility that he is part of the caste of the country that does actually benefit from having no government oversight or presence during a shutdown. It makes people and groups that much more dependent on the private market alternatives these oligarchs own.

Maybe he isn’t making any comments because this is where he wants to be right now. He still controls ICE, the execute and the supreme court can still continue reshaping the US, and he’s in a point where he has essentially just hit the pause button on any changes in congress until he can decide how to revert and influence that. He’s at the point where people who protest the extended shutdown can be incarcerated as the “radical left” “homegrowns” for whom the shutdown helps prevent any recourse as well, he’s putting any loyalist he can into ICE and it has a bigger budget than the rest of the military, he’s plunging and farming the value of the US economy which he and his oligarch friends can weather and later buy up on the low. It seems like he might have settled for this as a win condition, so he’s no longer making appearances to push things into other agendas for now.

States need to step up if the government remains shut down, this is the perfect opportunity and excuse for them.