When I posted yesterday about the Trump administration having rapidly moved into chaos territory, I wondered whether I might be overstating the matter. I need not have worried. Today saw a sudden explosion of social media posts between Trump and Musk where they go at each other like two bratty children who once jointly bullied everyone else but now suddenly find themselves at each other’s throats.
I was initially skeptical that this feud was genuine. I had a suspicion that Musk was worried because his Tesla company was in free fall because of anger over his cavalier wrecking of many agencies of government. This was supposedly to cut costs and eliminate the nearly two trillion dollar deficit but now has analysts saying that at best it might cut just $150 billion in the short term and even that might disappear when the final accounting is done, while the long term costs will be considerable. Since many of the people who buy electric vehicles are doing so over concern of the environment and are thus more likely to identify with liberal politics and the Democratic party, I thought that Musk might be trying to ingratiate himself with those same people. That might still be true but the level of venom that Trump and Musk have publicly spewed forth in such a short time suggests that this is not some manufactured conflict where they are still buddies behind the scenes. It is hard to realize that just a short while ago, Trump was acting like a shill for Tesla cars, promoting them at an event at the White House.
What ostensibly triggered this fight was when Musk attacked Trump’s pet project, his ‘big, beautiful budget’, because he claimed thst, far from closing the deficit, it would add $2.4 trillion to it. I find it hard to believe that Musk really cares about the deficit so I found the alternative explanation, that he was angered that the bill would eliminate tax credits for EVs and thus further harm Tesla, more plausible.
But Trump, angered by this unexpected opposition to his bill from an unexpected quarter, lashed out as he always does, and threatened to cut the massive contracts that the federal government has with Musk’s other interests like his satellite company Spacelink and rocket company SpaceX. Then Musk said that he would stop his Dragon spacecraft program that the US government has become dependent upon, although he later seemed to back off on that threat. This shows the danger that observers have long warned about, that giving the private sector control over vital elements of the space program puts the government at the mercy of extortioners. This is something that Trump, who uses extortion routinely to try and get his way, should have realized..
Musk has also called for Trump to be impeached and further alleged that Trump was involved with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Meanwhile Trump ally Steve Bannon is calling for Musk to be deported because he thinks Musk is an ‘illegal alien’. There have been questions raised about whether Musk worked illegally when he first came here on a student visa.
Long before he became one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors and campaign surrogates, South African-born Elon Musk worked illegally in the United States as he launched his entrepreneurial career after ditching a graduate studies program in California, according to former business associates, court records and company documents obtained by The Washington Post.
That is the kind of thing that Trump has used to deport people.
For a more detailed list of this childish back-and-forth, see here. All we needed to make this even more of a circus was for Kanye West to chime in and sure enough, he did.
Arwa Mahdawi for one is enjoying this pie fight between two really horrible people.
At first when Musk parted ways with the Trump administration I thought the public divorce might be smoke and mirrors: a mutually beneficial PR exercise. Trump got rid of a creepy weirdo who nobody liked and kept causing him problems. Musk got to show his worried investors that he was putting all his energy back into the companies he’s supposed to be running. Rumours of a fallout, I thought, were greatly exaggerated.
…It’s also possible that, as a simple woman, I can’t comprehend the testosterone-infused intricacies of what’s going on with Musk and Trump. Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec helpfully tweeted: “Some of y’all cant handle 2 high agency males going at it and it really shows. This is direct communication (phallocentric) vs indirect communication (gynocentric).”
Still, while there may eventually be some sort of reconciliation, I for one am enjoying the drama. I think we all are. Well, maybe not Kanye West AKA Ye. On Thursday the disgraced rapper tweeted: “Brooooos please nooooo […] We love you both so much.” As Musk might say himself: bet you did Nazi that coming.
It is tempting to just say “Not my circus, not my monkeys” and enjoy the show that we are witnessing.
But it boggles the mind that major policy decisions are being made by two people who are ego-maniacs, vicious, greedy, and shallow, and one of whom is also drug-addled. It will be interesting to see whether and how this will wind down.
I love that Musk doesn’t realize that by basically declaring Trump to be a child molester, and that he knew about it, he’s declaring that he knew about this crime, and did nothing to reveal it until after the criminal became inconvenient. This is called conspiracy after the fact, and is a crime. Thank you for confessing, Elon Musk.
the leopards are now eating each others faces
why am I reminded of this?
https://condenaststore.com/featured/five-stages-of-white-house-employment-peter-kuper.html
Just goes to show that men are too emotional for senior decision-making roles…
I think that ship has sailed… Also, while I don’t doubt that the political aspects have some significance, I think people may be over-stating the case. The fact is that Tesla has decisively lost its (almost) first-mover advantage in the EV space, and there are now many competitors bringing similar* products to market at much lower prices. Do many people really make major purchasing decisions involving durable goods costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars based on whether or not they like the CEO? Or are most people a bit more hard-nosed about it?
(*) And, I am given to believe, arguably better, on at least some axes -- although I know stuff-all about cars.
Trump has a history of throwing people under the bus once he deems them no longer useful.
Mano, “Not my circus, not my monkeys” refers to petty or otherwise inconsequential buffoonery that somehow sucks people in and gets them to passionately defend vs. people who stay out of it. A good example of this is reality shows and people who get over-invested in the details. Or sportzballz teams and the fans who paint their bodies in team colors and throw fits if they feel others aren’t showing the proper reverence.
When it comes to the leader of the USA, people have to care about what happens because it directly affects their wellbeing. Yes, under this misadministration it *is* a circus, but the fallout is very real for the USA and the rest of the world.
This will end one way or another, but Muskrat is pretty much toast (though he’ll still have his billions to comfort himself). Dump never forgets a slight, and this sort of public pushback from those erstwhile hangers-on who he’s thrown under the bus is new to him. Usually the people he disowns don’t have the resources or their own following to make many waves, in such an immediate blow-for-blow manner (only the occasional court battles, which are his bread and butter and drag on until the public gets bored and the victims settle or get swamped with appeals). They also don’t have their own huge social media platform.
Even when the dust settles a bit, he’ll find ways to shove the knife deeper and twist it with glee. If I were Muskrat, I’d also be watching my back, given the violent brownshirt cultists Dumpling can quietly call to action with no fear of repercussions.
Ridana @#9,
While Trump is thin-skinned and vindictive, he does have a history of welcoming back those with whom he has had vicious fights in the past like, for example Marco Rubio. Rubio even once made allusions to the smallness of Trump’s penis, a massive insult in the frat boy world that Trump inhabits.
The question is how far the other person will go in groveling to get back in Trump’s good graces. Rubio revealed that he has no shame whatsoever in the amount of sucking up he was willing to do and that seems to have worked for him.
“Do many people really make major purchasing decisions involving durable goods costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars based on whether or not they like the CEO?”
Short answer: Yes.
I live in “The Capital of Silicon Valley” (motto of San Jose) and it is a rare day when I do not see two or three so-called Cyber trucks. I think I can safely say the owners of those monstrosities are (or at least, were) Elon fanboys.
Longer answer: I estimate that roughly 1 in 8 cars I see on the road here are Teslas. I am not exaggerating. I don’t think all those owners are slobbering Musk fanatics, but until recently Musk had cultivated an image of being the guy who had figured out how to save the planet and have fun while doing it. There are a lot of people here with so much money that they can buy or lease luxury cars the way ordinary people buy a new dress or an NFL licensed jersey: they may spend a week or so thinking about it, but pulling the trigger is not really a huge deal. I think those people found it easy to buy into Musk’s hype back then, and they will easily find another pied piper to follow when their Tesla lease is up.
Dunc @#4,
I know of one person who was in the market for an EV and had decided on a Tesla. But before he actually bought one, Musk went on his rampage and he changed his mind. He is still looking for an EV but is sure it won’t be a Tesla.
When there are alternatives available, one’s views of the CEO can be a decisive factor even for a major purchase.
As I said, I don’t doubt that it’s a factor for at least some people, but I’m not sure that either “the subset of residents of San Jose willing to buy a Cybertruck” or “people Mano knows” constitute a statistically significant sample of all potential EV purchasers in the markets where Tesla operates.
The thing you have to remember about the Cybertruck in particular is that it’s really distinctive, so you’re inevitably prone to availablity bias when trying to decide whether or not there are significant numbers of them out there. How many other non-Tesla EVs are you just not noticing? And even if you’re right about San Jose, does that say anything at all about the rest of the world?
The Cybertruck isn’t even street legal in most of Europe, so of course they’re not going to sell many here, regardless of what anybody thinks of Musk.
I disagree with the assertion that only one of them is drugs-addled.
@moarscienceplz
on the other hand: i do know that people choose not to buy them. I’m organising a home battery, one option is Tesla. I mentioned that i don’t want their stuff, and the sales guy said he hears that a lot
For a lot of these things there isnt much difference, so a public dickhead ceo can tip the balance
When there are alternatives available, one’s views of the CEO can be a decisive factor even for a major purchase.
That’s a sobering thought, considering Henry Ford.