Letter to the Editor: What Elon’s salute epitomizes about the entire Trump administration
Graphic via: TNP Staff
The following column is a submitted Letter to the Editor from Zach Donaldson, a senior at Ohio University studying Political Science.
Please note that the views and opinions of this letter do not reflect those of The New Political.
It was a hand gesture that was the talk of the world. Hours after the inauguration, President Trump’s advisor straightened his hand, pointed to the sky and completed with a grunt, something eerily like a Nazi salute.
As expected, social media was set ablaze. The left’s labels of fascism seemed to ring all the truer as world leaders condemned Mr. Musk’s emulation of history’s most brutish dictator. The right jumped to defense, with nonsensical retorts ranging everywhere from declaring it a Roman Salute (the gesture the Nazis got it from) and declaring his autism to be the culprit (though delivering Nazi salutes isn’t a symptom I could find anywhere in my research). Of course, the people who knew it best – neo-Nazis – praised it exactly for what it was.
Will we ever definitively get a consensus without a shadow of a doubt on what Elon meant? No, because despite the best evidence in front of us, most mainstream figures would likely not confess to being fascist sympathizers. Should it be a soundbite and continued conversation worth any more discussion? Absolutely not, and as people who wish to resist this administration’s bad-faith efforts, we must fight the temptation to direct our limited resources against world-class gaslighting.
The days-long discourse over Elon’s salute is precisely what the Trump administration wanted. At the end of the day, the final rendering of those salutes doesn’t change the basic facts. The facts are that Musk is heir and beneficiary to a known pro-Apartheid family of South Africa, a supporter of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and a fan of anti-semitic jokes.
Indeed, President Trump and his cronies' political success has not only survived but thrived through a long and targeted campaign of information overload, bait and switch. DEI plane crashes, the horrors of drag show readings and cutting your kids' genitals off at school are grievous lies and not even the most foolish of his staffers and strategists believe them. They work because what they exist to do is enrage and distract while the substantive long-lasting damage can evade coverage.
In the past two weeks, President Trump has raised Tariffs by 25% on our regional allies, unilaterally cut into the federal workforce and successfully confirmed a Fox News host to lead the nation’s defense. Egg prices are not getting any lower, and our citizens are not any more secure.
We cannot keep using the same tactics and expecting different results. Leading with every fundamentally insane soundbite and headline President Trump wills into existence is a recipe for continued failure.
For better or worse, the average American could care less about adhering to the highest modern moral standards of dialogue, character and action – much less expecting it from their leader. Voters care about their safety, feeding their family and having a life with more access to opportunity than they did four years ago – and that is their complete right. We need to focus on seizing this populist moment, catalyzing candidates that speak to those demands and supporting civil society that can keep the guardrails of our economy and democracy in place.
Our President is akin to the annoying kid in class who won’t stop shooting spitballs, sticking gum under the table and kicking the legs of the girl in front of him. We as America, need to act like his teacher. If you feed him the attention he desperately wants, he’ll get some airtime out of it and maybe trick a few impressionable kids into joining him. If you stick to the lesson plan and hit what your students need – enough of them will realize what a clown he is until he fades away.
And lord should we pray for this lesson to be over.