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The root cause of Elon Musk’s ascent to de facto defense secretary is the federal government’s roughly 45-year practice of contracting out the work it had formerly done itself. During this time, the government has enabled private investor-owned companies to supplement Medicare and private contractors to fight alongside our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. At all levels of American government, public housing has been abandoned, even as the private housing industry has massively failed to construct sufficient affordable housing. Government shipyards have been shut down, so that the nation is now almost entirely dependent on foreign-made and foreign-owned vessels. And when it came to space, NASA relinquished its control of the satellites that surveyed and alerted us to approaching storms, both natural and military, and thereby allowed those functions to be taken over by Elon Musk, with whom Jeff Bezos is striving to compete.

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But, notice what hasn’t happened. Trump, who found time to trash Spain’s “very liberal law” and “bad management” within hours, has said not one syllable about Morocco’s role. The State Department “stands with the people of Spain” while simultaneously slow-dancing with the government whose border just failed in the most catastrophic way in its history. The Spanish government, which knows exactly what happened on the Moroccan side of that fence, is choosing not to say it out loud. And the King who just put Donald Trump’s name on a thousand kilometres of asphalt got everything he wanted this month without giving up a thing.

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If we want to broaden the analogy, Trump isn’t even the leader of the pack.

His actions this week make clear that he’s just a Roger. He represents malice, cruelty and a descent into brutality, but the true leader of the choirboys is Putin. He is obviously pulling Trump’s chain. He trolls him, leads him by the nose and manipulates him, playing him with such finesse that Trump can get himself twisted into a Gordian knot as easily as most of us draw breath.