Trump looks 'ready to touch the third rail' with politically toxic ideas: analysis

President-elect Donald Trump for years has differentiated himself from Republicans by ruling out cutting or privatizing popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

But as Salon's Heather Parton writes, Trump's decision to empower X CEO Elon Musk to lead a "Department of Government Efficiency" leads her to believe that major cuts to these programs are firmly on the table for his second term.

"Musk... has been clear that he believes the government has to be cut to the bone immediately which he admits will cause 'hardship' that we will just have to bear," Parton explains.

She adds that Musk this week promoted a thread on X from "far-right senator from Utah, Mike Lee... in which he claims that Social Security is a scam that the government mismanages and must be reformed so that people can 'invest their money and avoid 'dependence.'"

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She argues that Musk and fellow Trump ally Russell Vought could essentially run a kamikaze mission to slash Social Security without even having to sell it to the public.

"Musk expects people to suffer in order to save the country from bankruptcy which he has decided is imminent," she writes. "Vought and his right-wing Christian nationalist allies want to completely decimate the 'administrative state' so they may just declare that the program is insolvent and cut the benefits across the board."

She also believes that Trump, who has a long documented history of lying to voters, wouldn't care that his allies are shattering one of his essential campaign promises.

"Donald Trump certainly won't care," she concludes. "He never has to face another voter and that is the only reason he ever promised to keep his hands off of the programs in the first place. Trump can do somersaults on the third rail now and it can't hurt him at all. His party is another story, but he doesn't care about them either."