If I were in charge of the required watching aspects of this daily class, I would require everyone to watch last night’s Rachel Maddow Show, which I am sure you can find on YouTube. Or at least watch the first half of it. The theme of the show, I suggest, lies in a word that I don’t think she used: “Meritocracy”.

Yes, only in a meritocracy, devoid of DEI, can you wind up with a military Joint Chief of Staffs Secretary, who is a retired reserve Air Force three star general, and only in a meritocracy can you wind up with FBI Deputy Director (the individual who actually runs the agency) who has never worked for the FBI and has spent the past several years continually badmouthing it, and only in a meritocracy can the Director of National Intelligence be someone who has never worked in Intelligence, and only in a meritocracy can you have a Vice president who believes that the main purpose of courts is to be ignored.

Now that I think about it, unfortunately, Rachel Maddow didn’t speak of any of that yesterday, either. She spent most of her time talking about Elon Musk, the man who certainly does not run DOGE, because that agency (okay, it’s not an agency, it’s not an anything, is it?) is run by Amy Gleason, who apparently found out about her newfound job while she was vacationing in Mexico. She lives in Nashville.

Well, if you believe that Gleason runs DOGE, you probably believe that the St. Louis Cardinals are the team that gets to vote for the next pope. But, maybe Gleason would be better at running DOGE than Musk is. After all, she couldn’t be any worse, could she?

Maddow talked about the infamous emails that Musk sent out telling people to describe their jobs in five easy sentences or, if they don’t, they will be assumed to have resigned. She goes through the (1) original emails, (2) denials of the emails’ authority, (3) instructions to ignore the emails, (4) second instructions restating the seriousness of the emails and restating the need to respond or pack your bags, (5) and an amazing email from the leadership of one agency that said that any responses should not be specific as to any matter one is working on and, in composing the responses, each federal employee should write their response as if they were expecting it to be read by an enemy foreign power.

She also spoke about the government releases showing just how much in savings DOGE has achieved, and how so many of them have been taken down, because they were unbelievably in accurate. One which said “billions” instead of “millions”, one savings which was multiplied by a factor of three, and on and on, even when replacement information turned out to be in error. And then there were the nuclear weapons regulators, the FAA safety regulators, the bird flu scientists, the federal officials who test the safety of surgical robots. All of these who were fired, and who the government had to rehire (or try to rehire) because either the nature of their positions or the work they were doing was not taken into account.

And then there is good old Ed Martin, nominated to be the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, who says that he will be Donald J. Trump’s attorney and he will go after Trump’s opponents who say things unkindly about him, free speech be damned.

So, if the president thinks he is running a meritocracy…..But of course, he doesn’t. He knows exactly what he is running.

And, by the way, tell me about this deal being completed to give the United States half of the mineral wealth of Ukraine. What does that mean? What is Ukraine getting for it? Is this a deal, or – as Cong. Eugene Vindman said yesterday – is it gangsterism? It’s important to know the answer to this question. Will this guarantee that the U.S. will turn back to the support of Ukraine? Is Ukraine turning over to us half of the mineral rights in the part of Ukraine now occupied by Russia? What is this deal? And Vindman was right – if this is a deal that benefits both countries, good for the Trump administration. But if this is the result of gangsterism or bullying, shame, shame on us.