Andy Ogles Wants A Third Term For Trump— Is Nashville Embarrassed Yet?

Thursday, Elon Musk was yucking it up making jokes about having been called out for his Heil Hitler arm gestures a few days ago. There he was, revealing in his devotion to Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goring, probably bad marketing for Tesla outside of the most fascistically inclined German states, Thuringia and Saxony. Fascists who came to Musk’s defense include his neo-Nazi father, Israeli extremist <>Bibi Netanyahu and Argentine crank Javier Milei.
Meanwhile, Ken Thomas and John McCormick were reporting for Wall Street Journal readers about the disintegration of the short-lived DOGE partnership between Musk and Ramaswamy. Although Ramaswamy is trying to shore up his dignity and political career by claiming he made the decision to leave so he could run for governor of Ohio next year, it is widely known in DC that Musk persuaded Trump to fire him, at least in part by emphasizing that Ramaswamy called Trump’s base “retards.”
“Musk’s vision for DOGE— along with his relentless, 24/7 online promotion of its goals— has quickly won out in President Trump’s first days in office,” wrote Thomas and McCormick, “as Ramaswamy has decamped for his home state of Ohio… Musk has been working this week from a West Wing office, according to a person familiar with the situation.”
Tensions and philosophical differences between the two billionaires, who first met in 2023 when Ramaswamy was still challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, didn’t take long to emerge.
People familiar with the situation said Trump’s inner circle of aides had become annoyed with Ramaswamy’s outspokenness on virtually any topic, a tendency that had also aggravated the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.
“There were always going to be tensions between two CEOs who have built successful companies,” said a person familiar with DOGE. “Everyone saw the writing on the wall.”
A frequent poster on Musk’s X platform, Ramaswamy also angered some Trump supporters and aides in late December when he let loose with a long message as part of a debate over H-1B visas, suggesting some U.S. technology companies hire foreign workers in part because U.S. culture has “venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”
The split was also predicated in part by DOGE’s increasing attention on achieving spending cuts, which Musk has championed, and less of a focus on cutting regulations and bureaucracy, which had been helmed by Ramaswamy, according to another person familiar with the discussions…
DOGE, which has largely operated in secret helped by encrypted messages on Signal exchanged by staff, has quickly faced lawsuits. One filed Monday by the advocacy groups Public Citizen and State Democracy Defenders Fund as well as a labor union, the American Federation of Government Employees, argued that DOGE was failing to comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act because its meetings have been held in secret and records haven’t been available to the public.
One aspect of Trump’s executive order— in a nod to a key Musk priority— urges agencies to implement the DOGE agenda “by modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” Musk’s effort, which will give him considerable additional insight into a government he does significant business with, is expected to be completed by July 4, 2026.
One of the people said the executive order “surprised a lot of people” because it brought DOGE, which was originally envisioned as an outside entity, into the executive branch. The executive order was developed only in the past two weeks, the person said.
“Elon was for it, Vivek was against it. I don’t think it spoke to the original mission, the vision for DOGE, as articulated by Trump two months ago,” the person said.
One of the people familiar with DOGE said there had initially been a “rough understanding” that Musk and Ramaswamy would be “equal partners” in the project, although there was an acceptance that Musk would be a “senior partner” because of his global stature and relationship with Trump.
The thinking had been that Ramaswamy would focus on deregulation and constitutional arguments for reducing government, both topics he had spoken about for years in his writings and on the campaign trail. Musk would focus on the technology piece of the mission and the use of artificial intelligence to reduce the federal workforce.
Once the decision was made that DOGE wouldn’t be an outside entity, Ramaswamy knew it would conflict with his goal of running for governor in Ohio because of the disclosures and other requirements associated with being part of the federal government.
I think we all know that billionaires have egos as vast as their fortunes. Musk and Ramaswamy’s short-lived partnership at DOGE— nominally designed to “streamline” government operations— appears to have crumbled under the weight of those egos. The disintegration of their alliance is a perfect microcosm of what happens when two outsized personalities try to coexist in the same sphere of influence, only to sabotage the very thing they set out to achieve, doomed from the start by Musk’s apparent propensity for betrayal. The partnership, once touted as a dream team of billionaire “innovators” aiming to disrupt governance with their self-styled brilliance, quickly turned into a battlefield of competing egos and diverging visions. Musk’s obsession with control and his tendency to seek adoration at all costs meant DOGE was destined to orbit him and his priorities. The growing chasm between the two of them wasn’t just ideological; it was personal. Both billionaires, deeply accustomed to being the center of attention, found themselves vying for dominance in a partnership that was supposed to be based on “equality.” Musk’s ego, bolstered by his global stature and Trump’s patronage, predictably left little room for Ramaswamy to carve out a meaningful role.
Ironically, Musk’s own oversized ambitions may also doom DOGE in the long run. The lawsuits piling up against the project, including one alleging violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, point to the recklessness of Musk’s “move fast and break things” approach to governance. His decision to bring DOGE inside the executive branch gives him unprecedented access to a government he regularly does business with— a conflict of interest that even his allies will have to struggle to justify. DOGE may limp along under Musk’s singular vision, but its original promise of innovation through partnership has already been sacrificed on the altar of self-aggrandizement.
And if you think that’s dysfunctional… ever hear of Andy Ogles? He’s a far right whack job from the Nashville area who represents a highly gerrymandered district and is best known for being a serial liar nearly on a par with George Santos. Yesterday, he removed the spotlight from Musk by introducing a constitutional amendment to allow Trump to run for a third term!

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