Trump is going to do all the absurd things he said he’d do. Who knew!

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a minute. President-elect Donald Trump has started appointing screwballs for important government positions, making plans for immigrant detention camps and leaning, authoritarian-style, on Republicans in Congress to obliterate check and balances?
Are you telling me the man who said he was going to do all these crazy things is actually going to do all these crazy things? What the heck?
I was told by many Trump supporters that he’s a showman who talks tough, but when he gets into office again he’ll govern like a sensible conservative, just like he didn’t do the first time around.
And now I find the next president is, in fact, going to let a certifiable nutball like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” on American health and medicine? I mean, when Trump said he was going to let Kennedy “go wild” on American health and medicine, I assumed he was kidding around. And besides, I was mad that eggs are expensive.
But now it looks like vaccines are going to become optional and Americans will be told the best way to protect against infectious diseases is to put a clove of garlic in your ear and avoid processed foods.
Opinion:Republicans should let Trump use recess appointments. They asked for this.
I am shocked – shocked, I tell you! – that a presidential candidate who spoke in run-on sentences that sounded like they were written by a dumb version of Jack Kerouac on a Benzedrine bender might have actually been telling the truth about his intentions.
Trump has appointed unelected billionaire weirdo Elon Musk to a fake department he claims will slash and burn the federal government in the name of imagined efficiency. And since nobody on Trump’s transition team apparently knows what “efficiency” means, Musk can’t do it alone, so Trump paired him with another wealthy weirdo, Vivek Ramaswamy, who talks like he should be selling Veg-O-Matics on late-night TV infomercials.
I mean, just because Trump has spoken highly of Ramaswamy and had Musk more or less by his side since before the election, saying he would put Musk in charge of government efficiency, I never expected that … ohhhh, OK, this is starting to make sense now.
Apparently Trump DID mean all the noodle-brained things he said over and over and over again during the campaign. Things that included being a dictator, but just for the first day of his administration. And rounding up millions upon millions of immigrants and stashing them in detention camps. And punishing his political enemies, and giving police officers greater immunity protection, and implementing massive tariffs and pardoning the convicted Jan. 6 attackers.
I guess I just thought him saying those things, and the media reporting on those things, and pundits warning that Trump will definitely do the things he keeps saying he’s going to do … well, like I said, eggs were expensive, and I figured, “Nah, he’s not gonna do all that.”
Boy do I have expensive eggs on my face.
This guy’s gonna do all that and a whole lot more.
Opinion:Do you know what Trump’s administration needs more of? Actual conservatives.
But don’t worry, I won’t complain about it now. The last thing I need is Attorney General Matt Gaetz coming after me.
And besides, I’ve got to stock up on garlic cloves to keep my family safe from infectious diseases before Trump’s tariffs make garlic unaffordable. Of course that might not matter once Musk and Ramaswamy do away with the Department of the Treasury and force all of us to use cryptocurrency and go broke.
It’s strange how all the things we were explicitly told would happen are now going to happen. It really makes you think.
Or at least wish you had done so sooner. 
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk