The feud continues, although both the Trump and Musk camps are putting out signals of a possible détente. It may be that they’ve decided to not go nuclear and destroy each other. For now.
There’s more evidence the Silicon Valley tech bros are walking away from Trump.
Trump’s slim win in 2024 was no doubt due in large part to Musk, and not just the eye-popping quarter-billion-plus Musk spent to push the old man’s orange carcass over the finish line. It’s because Musk and other influential figures, especially those associated with Silicon Valley or who pretend to be former liberals, were able to convince a chunk of more secular, largely male voters to throw their lot in with the Christian nationalist base that is the backbone of the MAGA movement. But while these two groups joined together based on a shared animosity towards racial minorities and women, it was always a far more uneasy alliance than Musk or Trump wanted to admit. And now it’s getting shakier as two narcissistic billionaires are at odds. …
… But while I have no doubt Musk is way more concerned about his bottom line than about government spending — his ostensible reason for hating the bill — his anger would be impotent if it didn’t tap into existing tensions between the newfangled technofascist wing of the GOP and more traditional Republicans.
“The Silicon Valley tech world does not like this bill,” Tim Miller of The Bulwark explained on his podcast Wednesday. It’s not just Musk, but many wealthy leaders who are deeply invested in the energy and tech areas that President Joe Biden’s administration invested so heavily in. They stabbed Democrats in the back as a thank-you for that money, and now are shocked they are being similarly betrayed by the Republicans they joined up with.
Stay tuned.
I didn’t watch the Chancellor Merz-Trump meeting yesterday, so I’m hearing about it in bits and pieces. I found a transcript for those of us who can’t stand to watch. You’ll notice Trump did almost all of the talking. Among other things, after yesterday there is no question that everyone in Europe realizes Trump is an idiot. If they didn’t know it before, now it’s undeniable.
At one point, Trump actually said this:
“When I was telling the Chancellor, this is where it is. People come in here, even from Germany. They come in and they walk into the Oval Office, and it’s just a special place.
“It’s — you know, World War I, it started and it ended here, and World War II, and so many other things. Everything big comes right from this beautiful space. It’s now much more beautiful than it was six months ago. A lot of good things are happening in this room. And I’ll tell you, it’s not — he’s not the first. People leave my administration and they love us. And then, at some point, they miss it so badly. And some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile.”
So much to unpack. First, World War I started in the Oval Office? That would have messed it up rather badly, I would think. I thought it started in Sarajevo and ended in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. (Unless you count the treaty of Versailles, then it ended in Paris.) And as I remember, the war went on for about three years before the U.S. got involved.
But this underscores my theory that Trump learned everything he knows about American history from watching John Wayne movies. John Wayne never made a World War I movie. Therefore, World War I is a total blank for Trump. He’s heard of it, but he doesn’t know anything about it.
Europeans know World War I history. Poor Chancellor Merz had to sit there and not gag.
I assume Trump knows a bit more about World War II, since John Wayne made lots of movies about it, but of course it didn’t start or end in the Oval Office, either. Maybe John Wayne should have made a documentary — What You Need to now About World War II. As we learned a few weeks ago, Trump seems to think the entire war ended on VE Day, May 8, 1945. That would have been news to the Allied and Japanese troops fighting the Battle of Okinawa at the time.
Then we go on to Trump’s comment about how everyone who comes into the Oval Office loves it. I think they’re probably trying not to laugh at the tacky gold crap Trump has splashed all over it. But the part about becoming hostile only makes sense in the context of Elon Musk. Trump was talking about Musk just before these remarks. He’s decided Musk’s hostility to Trump is a reflection of how much he misses the glory of the Oval Office.
There’s more to comment on, but I need a rest after that.
Update: So this just happened — the Department of Justice is bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador, as they could have done all along. He’s been charged with smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S. and will stand trial for that.
I think WWII ended on a battleship in Tokyo Bay, I know this because I have a relative in the famous photo of the event. Bone-spurs has a family tradition of avoiding service so he would not know facts from oral tradition and shared memories of sacrifice. Looks like our current "leader" comes from a tradition of grift, graft and yellow TACO times and calls out everyone else for being not loyal enough.
F the embarrassment king. His cult members live under a fantasy troll-bridge while rest of us try to build a republic in reality. This post-factual, post reality world bites. The guy is exhibiting dementia symptoms every time he opens his mouth and the culties are still pretending that the emperor has clothes. Our enemies are loving it. Welcome to slow-burn collapse accelerating.
Yep, on the quarterdeck of the U.S.S. Missouri, now anchored at Pearl Harbor. I've never been to Pearl Harbor, but my daughter and I once toured the U.S.S. New Jersey, which is anchored on the Delaware River next to Trenton. Awesome.
Yeah, all of the cool stuff we and our forefather built and then visit to pay homage to is now being insulted as useless so that the oligarchs can weaken the republic's mechanisms and go on a crime spree. The unfortunate part is that the cult can't see the embarrassing truth about senility, blatant payola, and building institutions is much harder than breaking them apart.
I see a future where the USS NJ's awesome 9 x 18in guns are sold for scrap. The cult will risk trashing this history to know the feeling that there are not Mexicans working as dishwashers in San Diego.
That's something I really don't get. Trump even campaigned on overturning the green energy grants, and the first thing he did in 2017 was try to undo everything Obama had done, just because Obama had done it. Did they really think he was going to be different in his second term? On what basis?
It just doesn't make any sense. Do people seriously black out 2020 from their memories, where we all got to see just how awesomely stupid the man was? "One day, like a miracle, it will go away" he says.
(I've been exposed – I'm not sure I'll catch the worst of it, I'm vaccinated out the wazoo. I didn't even know I had a wazoo! But it's still real, and the reason I can't visit my wife in the hospital, where *she* got her positive test.)
I really don't understand people who have working brains who can't see that you can't trust a stupid liar. They didn't think he'd go wild with tariffs? Hey, he's *stupid*. You thought he'd follow the law? Hey, he's a *liar*. How could there be a surprised look on anyone's face?
Despite getting my 10th shot in early April and wearing an N-95 mask inside public spaces, it finally caught up with me and I spent the 9th to the 14th of May in the hospital with COVID and pneumonia; no joke at 84. But I had none of the symptoms. No cough at all.
I attribute the relative mildness and short hospital stay to getting a shot every 6 months, and I ain't stopping now!
My wife had a stroke and came home from the hospital with covid. She is a cooking enthusiast and lost her sense of taste which has led to a terrible bout of depression. The medical bills were totally reasonable because we have a good healthcare plan through the ACA but when the BUB goes through, we will lose our plan in the near future.
So, shortly, we will not be able to afford a healthcare plan because I am a modest small business owner and am priced right out of the non-ACA market and make way too much money to be destitute enough to get Medicaid. We will go without healthcare until I leave the business (meaning bankruptcy) and get full time employment. If it was not for the GOP punishing me through high healthcare costs, I would run a successful outfit. Every business has to compete with oligarchs who purposefully want to make you sick and broke while they profit off of it.
Yay Amerikkka! Land of the free.
Good for you. I agree with you about the shots.
Garcia is good news. I don't know if he's guilty of crimes but the DOJ will have to prove it in court to a jury. My expectation is that the DOJ is plucking "crimes" out of a place the sun don't shine. It sounds like may be able to prove Garcia was a bus driver and some of the passengers may have been illegal. The allegations do not suggest Garcia brought them across the border. I'd be watching (if I was on the jury) for proof that Garcia knew the status of those people on the bus. If he didn't know, he's no more guilty than a Uber driver is an accessory to murder for transporting a killer. My gut says that the writing was on the wall – the USSC would have ruled against Trump for contempt if it got back to them. It was headed that way. So DOJ told Trump they can do better – they can put Garcia away for evil crimes which proves Trump was protecting white women.
Trump's stupidity is the only epic thing about him. I understand Trump said that WWII did not turn out well for "you." meaning the Chancellor. He replied that it did – Germany got rid of a fascist government. Translation: "I am not a fascist, more than can be said for you."
I have not seen anyone do a dive into what set Musk off. It looks to me like Musk is not happy that the cuts were not draconian. Thad leads to questions about Musk and the tech bros view of what society should look like and the role of government in the nightmare. Musk and Theil (and their evil lessers) view their role as feudal kings with almost unchecked power over the serfs in their domains. Everybody in every feifdom will be totally dependent on the benefoactors for jobs and life itself. The concept of "rights" for the middle class and below will be written out of existence.
Back to the bill and Musk's tantrum. Social Security is untouched. Medicare is only incidentally reduced. Congress, even Republicans, are talking about leaving services in place for the truly needy. To Musk, they sound like Democrats. By force or by subterfuge, Musk wants to pull the rug out from under every American and leave big business as the only chance for survival. NOT government. Musk really meant it in the schtick with the chainsaw. Yes, he revels in cruelty but this was supposed to be where the myth of equality and rights us stamped out.
Musk has a lot of leverage in Congress with his checkbook. He can bankroll candidates in the primary elections. It's early enough he could compete with Trump for control of the GOP. The question is whether Musk was only throwing a tantrum or if he's serious about power.
Hilarious: "I am not a fascist, more than can be said for you."
Yes, neo-feudalism. The oligarch class want the world order to return to the middle ages. Seriously. I don't know how we are going to be able to make this clear to enough of the voting public, when so many still view our political situation as some fantasy version of the 1950's.
"the Department of Justice is bringing Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador, as they could have done all along. He’s been charged with smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S. and will stand trial for that."
The level of vindictiveness is astounding.
Life for the naught people is not good at its best, and really not good without papers. The have yachts and could-have yachts rule with the help of those who never learned much history or too much else either. Borderdenizen notes: "The cult will risk trashing this history to know the feeling that there are not Mexicans working as dishwashers in San Diego." The cult of trickle down. A few drips and some deportation TV, let them bask in superiority over those without papers, at least for now. Only the rest of us, us can't afford yachts who are not cultists get the brunt of this mess. We get inflation and taxation to pay for the tax breaks for the have yachts and the deportation bills to gift those feelings to the cultists.
Conservatism with only the illusion of fiscal Conservatism is what we are getting with components of racial authoritarianism. It is the rise of the era of the ugly American complete with make-up, transplants, and plastic surgery so they look OK on TV. Most of us get to endure an overpriced, wasteful, uneducated and unsophisticated ugly America with a facade of grandiose propaganda. The have yachts and the can afford yachts claim (could be some of that propaganda) that is what we voted for. Some of the have yachts now want even more than the illusion of fiscal responsibility with all of the power, control, and none of the responsibility. It is the authoritarian way– the path of magical thinking. Naught good.
Cruelty theater.