It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president.
If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on merit and based on nepotism instead.
This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough, they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on promises, and it shoots the country in the head.
It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in the US, especially at the local and state level. The main difference is a significant portion of governance was temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root.
The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive, leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing the power of checks and balances.
There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku in Japan, and François Mitterrand in France tried to decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
The notion that this kind of politicization started in the 90s is fanciful revisionism. It wasn’t really a thing in the US until about 2017. The word it’s known by is Trumpism.
I'm familiar with the rise of talk radio, News Corp, Web propaganda, alt-right, etc., in politics and public sentiment.
What's new to me is that the last couple decades might be a reversion to a pre-war mode of US governance.
(I know WW2 was unifying in some ways, as we'd expect, but I don't recall much from school about how US politics was played before then, other than punctuated events like the Civil War, civil rights movement, etc.)
9/11 was a big turning point in my experience. American conservatives that I considered online friends were simple impossible to reason with within days and completely alien beings after a few weeks.
Low-level corruption at the local/state level is related but its effects are different though. In fact even today low level corruption in the US is extremely low by global standards - you can't bribe your way to a drivers license openly, for example. I'm sure it happens but it's not common or openly boasted about (parts of CA or DC could be an exception).
Here the corruption is openly displayed as a kind of peacock-tail to the beneficiaries.
I'd rather not have a whole discussion over this atm (I'm out rn - maybe later), but I recommend reading Yuen Yuen Ang's paper on "Unbundling Corruption" - there are different typographies of what "corruption" is, and some nations have always had a similar type of corruption compared to others.
In addition, low level corruption is orthogonal to grand corruption as can be seen in Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and the US.
Finally, Indian public discourse around corruption is non-targeted, and fails to contextualize significant institutional differences in how local, state, and federal governments operate in India compared to other states (be they democratic like the US or authoritarian like China).
[Feel free to add questions or points of contention, but I won't be able to reply quickly]
Fine, I don't disagree with anything you point out. However where we differ is that I believe identity politics is the trigger factor here, all the other changes you mention (loss of balance of power etc) are downstream of this.
Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _pretend to care_ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
I think they might have figured out that a lot of that honesty and character was a facade. Is the false appearance of morality better than just showing yourself as you really are?
You mean that people lie and cheat? That's always been the case. The point of honesty and character is precisely that they reflect a person's ability to value a higher good than their immediate self-interest. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The fact that reputation has been subjected to unprecedented arms race in the face of the internet and social media doesn't fundamentally change the game, it just makes it more exhausting and overwhelming to pay attention to.
I remember when certain social media networks argued that having a real name policy will lead to a more polite, kinder internet, because people won't be as rude with their real names attached to their posts. Turns out, people really don't care. I see the most vile, disgusting, racist, xenophobic shit on Facebook every single day, with real names and pictures showing smiling happy people hugging their kids on every one of them. Like you said - people don't feel any need to care about honesty, character, or even appearance of politeness or good manners.
* those who were concerned about it happening to others have seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms, etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts
* there is a subset that is just super cult of personality around the current president and will bend over backwards to justify actions
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it to a person he just decided that he didn't like?
Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting him with accusations of pedophilia.
Likewise that Elon can say Trump is “ungrateful” that be received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew the nomination for Elon’s NASA administrator. It’s just open bribery.
American democracy died on the day the supreme court overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US politics is a mere playground for billionaires and corporations.
On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.)
I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
He's first and foremost a narcissist (strongly grandiose subtype, and all over the place on the communal/malignant axis).
That condition should make him ineligible for any position of power. This is what a society gets when it elects someone mentally ill (in the harmful-to-others rather than the typical harmful-to-ill-person sense).
I am continually astounded by how many people, even if you explain the symptoms to them, will be unable to see it - not just in this one case but in general. There is something in many people that makes them attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly above things.
In order to see it, you must recognize the ways in which he fooled you. People would generally rather be fooled again than face the thought that they were fooled at some point in the past. And the more that they have been fooled, the stronger this bias is.
Trump is an absolute genius at fooling people in small ways, then over time ratcheting up the cognitive dissonance until he fools them in big ways. See https://specialto.thebulwark.com/ for a detailed explanation of how he did this with one of the many people that he has turned into puppets.
> but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin.
The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was:
a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight, with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the country at the mercy of international creditors looking for deals heavily tilted in their favour
c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of confidence in the country's currency and ability to service its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.
If you really want to find out the reasons why USSR failed I suggest reading “Collapse the fall of Soviet Union” by Zubok or “Collapse of an Empire” by Gaidar. They are easy to read books. Said reasons are quite different from what is going on in USA at the moment.
Present circumstances in America are very different. When Putin took power, Russia's economy had been declining rapidly for a decade; then over his first decade, the GDP dectupled. If the US were to somehow achieve $600,000 GDP per capita by the end of Trump's current term, yeah, Americans would probably want to reevaluate their conventional wisdom about what good governance looks like. But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.
By 1998 the shit had already hit the fan big time for the common people in Russia, all "thanks" to Shock Therapy (which you allude to at your point b)). That was the real tragedy, nothing a more "experienced" president could have fixed (other than doing what Putin ended up doing, which is trying to reverse some of the craziness of said Shock Therapy).
I write this from direct experience, as I grew up as a kid/adolescent in nearby Romania in the '90s, where we had our very own Shock Therapy. In fact my present political stance (a return to nationalism and a reversal of what globalisation has brought about) is heavily marked by that very traumatic period in my life (and the same thing is valid for many of my compatriots).
That’s the key right? It’s world as content. Nothing means anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of ”politics”. But that’s not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what happens next!
It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the election campaign and a major advisor to the president now declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes of his supporters, what does this say about Musk?
(Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant; what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to know is a pedophile).
That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting influence of power.
Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults could come in and run the country / companies.
I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first sentence.
Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child rape is resolved this way).
Not only that but Musk was able to successfully argue in court that he's such a well known liar that a reasonable person wouldn't take his accusations of pedophillia seriously
It's kind of his pointless go-to A-bomb insult, yet, this time, it's within the realm of possibility. I mean, I don't not believe it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
Trump/Epstein connections have been reported on for years with photos and videos so anyone who cares probably was already on the anti-Trump side.
While Musk has a bigger megaphone than most media, he also has a credibility issue - and now especially for the Trump-true-believer crowd that is likely the only group whose bubble would be so shielded that they'd see it as news.
trump was one of the people that originally provided all they knew about epstein to the prosecutors, and once he realized what epstein was, he was banned from all trump venues. What did other do?
Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that. However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has actually been public information for a long time. It's known that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no evidence he went to the island or did something wrong.
It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult, rather than a serious accusation.
When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons explicitly not about any pedophile rings.
So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's because he just learned of it.
I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act? What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the president of the US might.
(Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think this is a fight between two nasty people).
To be fair Elon claimed that Trump is mentioned in the remainder of files which have yet to be released. Presumably what evidence there is of wrongdoing, if it exists, exists there.
"Pedo guy" Musk being Musk, though, who knows? What is the likelihood Musk would even have access to those files if they were so damning to Trump and still sealed?
Nothing about this is "quite obvious." It could go either way. To be honest I wouldn't put it past either one of them to be on Epstein's "list."
I think the tone of the message would be way more serious if it was a serious accusation based on actual evidence. Now it reads like a kindergarten level conspiracy theory, which almost seems like a joke. The silly claim was that Trump being in the files is the reason why they aren't released.
This whole article is speculation about a war of words on social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any citation.
>One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the exchanges as “bluster” that neither Musk nor Trump would actually implement
> by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins
If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?
GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years?
Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies?
Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies?
Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)?
Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days?
Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually?
I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.
Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.
Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.
Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.
6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are Supreme Court justices.
All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity".
Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of its way to say you can't even examine the communications between the president and the DoJ.
It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for government ministers.
We have legislative immunity called the speech and debate clause. It doesn't shield lawmakers from other crimes, nor should it, and it certainly doesn't imply some sort of expansive executive immunity.
The founders were rebelling agaisnt an untouchable executive, remember?
This contract dispute has nothing to do with Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Cancelling SpaceX contracts for political reasons would be wrong but not criminal.
The point is we won’t find out because presidential immunity also protects against discovery. Cases that previously could have been decided on the merits won’t even make it to adjudication.
Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm unaware of.
This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around. Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
It's not ethics or morality, it's just "not being a child." A president not personally retaliating against a critic doesn't need to have anything to do with ethics, it's just requires a post-middle-school mentality of "I may not be happy with this person but I [my country] can still benefit from things they do."
At least Berlusconi didn't have access to nuclear warheads.
Seriously, I visited the US few times between 2005 and 2010 and each time people were raising the topic of Berlusconi. How can you have a president like that, who voted for him, bunga bunga etc etc.
Now you know how you can have such personality in power too. With even more power.
So, the government would do what, lean on Russia with whom the USA is currently engaged in a proxy war? Also, for Boeing or Blue Origin, the cost would currently be higher per launch, and as far as I know, no one has the kind of satellite network that SpaceX does.
Of course, those are sane considerations. I suppose I shouldn’t accuse the Donald of any kind of rational thinking.
SpaceX is critical infrastructure to the US at this point and its continued availability and operation is of national security interest.
That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
Less nuclear: the US has a lot of control over what SpaceX does. The FAA (and to a lesser extent the NOAA) has to approve every launch. They could simply gorund SpaceX.
If you think SpaceX could simply move operations elsewhere, think again, The US prohibits ASML, a Dutch company, from selling EUV lithography machines to China.
Apart from all of that, SpaceX is absolutely dependant on US government funding and contracts. Withdrawing those, or even the threat of such, allows the US to wield a lot of power over SpaceX.
What's rather surprising about this feud is that Trump is currently the adult and has been uncharacteristically restrained in his response thus far. Of course, all that could change. It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
> nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
This isn't at all clear. It's clear that they could easily compel them to prioritize and fulfill government contracts. Far less clear that they could just take it. It is clear that the current administration could "try" but such an effort might result in a lawsuit that lasts longer than the administration does and thereby become moot.
> It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
How is it insane to repeat what everyone already knows? The only novelty here is Musk himself saying it to his legions of followers, who would have been otherwise inclined to downplay the significance of it.
It's insane because of the implications: Musk was a major contributor to Trump's campaign, and a major advisor, and at the last minute he implies Trump is a pedophile?
This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a pedophile elected! He couldn't have learned this at the last minute, he obviously held this ace in his sleeve.
This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the eyes of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get a pedophile elected president if it would suit his business vision.
This isn't the first time Musk has baselessly accused someone of pedophilia on social media.
He did it randomly to some guy he didn't like in Thailand who saved some kids trapped in a cave. He's probably done it other times.
It's just an Elon Musk thing. Go totally unhinged on social media and defame people without evidence. He does it all the time.
The only guy more famous than Musk for saying absolute nonsense on social media, is Trump.
It is all fake, lame, and nonsense.
What's shocking is that the people running our country are behaving like absolute children. I feel like they wouldn't be able to hold down a job at my company because they're so unhinged, they would have been fired long ago, and yet here they are, billionaires, deciding the fate of 350M people.
To be clear, I'm not debating the veracity of the accusation, I'm asking what it says about Musk that he claims to have knowingly helped elect president someone he knew to be a pedophile.
Wow, that is some amazing threading of the mental needle to focus blame on Musk. Doesn't this indictment apply to every single person who voted for Trump in 2024? Those pictures of Epstein, Trump, and Maxwell having themselves some grand old times have been popularly circulating for like a decade at this point.
If the indictment doesn't apply, then why can't Musk play the same card of "I didn't know/believe/accept" while he was supporting, but only recently has he "now come to know" ?
Why wouldn't I heap blame on Musk (as well as on Trump, mind you)? The guy's deranged and repulsive.
I don't think your objections are fair. Let's go over them:
The average Trump voter doesn't know much about Epstein, and certainly doesn't believe Trump was involved in anything with that scandal. Any evidence that may turn up would be considered "fake news" to them. Whatever you may think of Trump voters, and whatever things they really are to blame for, knowingly voting for someone they believe to be a pedophile isn't one of their sins.
Musk just implied Trump is a pedophile (or is suppressing certain documents because of his links to a pedophile). Musk also claims without him Trump wouldn't have been elected. These are Musk's claims, so he has thrown away any possible defenses of "but I didn't know/believe this" and "but I'm irrelevant in the grand scheme of things".
You also claim Musk could defend himself with "but I didn't know at the time". This is very, very weak. When exactly do you suppose he learned this? In the few days that have elapsed since this very public falling out, maybe even a few days before? Oh, please. You know you don't believe this, these two were heaping praise on each other and calling themselves friends for most of their collaboration since Trump's second term, and only now Musk found out about Epstein? What, an aide rushed this info to him just in time for their current breakup? Absurd.
Any way you slice it, Musk had this accusation up his sleeve the whole time, he just chose to deploy it now.
So again I must ask, what does this say -- in his fans' eyes -- about Musk as a person?
PS: You seem to believe I'm somehow defending Trump here. If that's your worry, let me be clear that I think Trump is a disgrace. I don't know whether he's a pedophile though, unlike Musk I don't claim to have seen any secret documents. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if both Trump and Musk are pedophiles, these aren't exactly examples of decent human beings.
PPS: it has also just occurred to me you could be wondering why I'm focusing on the outrageous things Musk has said, but not on the contradictory, absurd or just plain dumb things Trump is saying about Musk? Well, because Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do lots of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now. Musk, as the world's richest person, has a much longer shelf life and more time to do damage to the US and the rest of the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult following. So I wonder what his followers think.
But Musk is not implying any of those less-than-flattering things. Nobody knows what Musk actually thinks, but what he implied is pretty clear. He calls it "a bomb", and we all know what that means.
And this matters, because Musk was a major campaign contributor and advisor to someone he has now implied to be a pedophile. What does this say about Musk?
Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague statements or evidence.
> What does this say about Musk?
Who knows? Musk has thin associations with Epstein and Maxwell as well, he is a proven liar, is at times visibly manic, and has been reported to drop relationships at a whim when challenged.
There could be plenty of things driving his behavior, but I don't think this informs anything new about his character.
You got me wrong: I'm not talking about the veracity of the accusation, I'm asking about what it says about Musk (regardless of its truth).
Especially in the eyes of Musk fans.
This guy is now effectively claiming he helped get someone elected president whom he knew was a pedophile. Musk claims Trump got elected thanks to his support (again, Musk claims this). He also claims Trump is a pedophile.
So what do Musk fans think about Musk (not Trump) in light of this?
As per usual, every accusation from a narcissist is a confession.
You know who absolutely is connected to Epstein? Elon's brother, Kimbal (allgedly) [1].
And while not related to Epstein but is just gross and in a similar ballpark, Elon's father Errol, had a stepdaughter from his wife's first marriage, Jana Bezuidenhout, who grew up in his house from age 4. He later went on to father two children with Jana (the first when she was 30, I believe) [2]. It's unclear when the relationship began. The only public statements are after Jana had a break-up.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a guy so gross in his personal life comes from a gross family. Everything about Musk is deranged.
Do you remember the (not so distant era) when Musk was the nerd's and hacker's darling? SpaceX, his genius, his vision! This was before we knew much about his personal life and opinions. It seems so long ago now... Before he took to Twitter to claim it was OK to coup countries for their resources, or started naming children like mathematical formulas.
> We have a national space agency that has had plenty of time and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
That's quite inaccurate. NASA doesn't do much themselves, they hire external contractors but keep significant control over them. SpaceX got more funding and less control and they didn't start from scratch, NASA gave them all of their technical documentation, now-how and working prototypes.
NASA could have done everything SpaceX does if they were given the same conditions and funding, however, they've never had funding for blowing up five spaceships in row, they were held to much stricter standards.
The entire story looks like a blatant attempt to take control of space operations away from NASA and thus from the government.
onlyrealcuzzo above commented that Trump canceling SpaceX contracts would be "literally the path that led the USSR to ruin".
However, we have a case of a private contractor trying to manipulate the president by means of "revelations" and decommissioning of a service important for national security. If the president cannot change those contracts the US would be literally on the path to oligarchic Russia... I'm not sure what's worse.
Trump is generally moving in the direction of reducing government control of corporations to the point of risking government capture by oligarchic interests. What's happening now is a direct consequence of his policies and it's ironic that Trump's powers are being questioned when it comes to corporate regulation.
Trump's personal faults are irrelevant at the moment, if the GOP doesn't stand firmly behind Trump we are going to find ourselves in an incredible mess.
I think you'll find both Musk and Trump are aligned with Russia. Which makes the interesting part for me, that they are feuding at all. It implies whatever control Moscow has over them, is failing, otherwise they would not undermine their shared plans in this way.
YouGov made a survey on June 5, asking "If you had to choose, who would you side with more between the following?" with Musk and Trump to choose. For Republicans, it's 71% Trump, 6% Musk, 12% neither, 11% not sure.
Musk is popular amongst republicans because Trump has championed him. The pro-Musk Republicans are also pro-Trump republicans and their loyalty to Trump will beat out whatever respect they have for Musk. Musk is not a threat to Trump, because Trump’s entire platform is built on Trump-or-bust. Musk was a useful idiot to Trump. Musk thinking that Trump’s Epstein connection was somehow going to hurt Trump shows just how impotent Musk is. Trump fans couldn’t care one iota about that.
It's really that simple. If you want to know what MAGA supporters believe about any topic, just look up what Trump last said about it. He could change his mind three times in a single day, and they would also change their mind (and talking points) in lock step three times.
There is so much theater and reality TV in the Trump administration that it's hard to conclude anything. Most of the theater is there to play to his MAGA base.
First there was the (staged?) row with Zelensky. A couple of months later nothing has really changed.
Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130 days in that position). Time for another public row to show that Trump is tough on subsidies for electric vehicles.
SpaceX will of course continue to get funded. A large number of LEO satellites are needed for Trump's Golden Dome and Starlink is needed in crisis regions.
These guys are both masters of dominating attention on social media. It got them to where they are. The way to dominate the national attention in this world we've created, is to act like a child and call someone a pedo. They are not the leaders we wanted, but may be the leaders we deserve.
The Zelensky interview was only staged (manufactured) by the White House. You may have noticed immediately after the US stopped intelligence sharing just long enough for Putin to take back Kursk.
There is no multiverse where Trump would knowingly allow someone to mock or criticize him. If Musk grovels enough Trump may let him back; he loves emasculating his rivals.
I really don't think the Zelensky thing was staged, and I doubt this was either.
As far as I can tell about Zelensky, he had every intention to cancel Trump's proposed deal after the white house meeting, but he is losing the war with Russia so badly that he absolutely needs US support, so he had no choice but to come back to the table.
Musk pulling out the Epstein thing and Trump pulling out the SpaceX contracts are both two subjects these guys are very touchy about. If they were faking it, they wouldn't have gone for the (emotional) throat on this one.
That said, Trump always chickens out, so there's no real chance SpaceX is getting its contracts canceled, even the ones that legitimately are a huge waste of money.
That's a really good take, and I personally missed that his departure was pre-planned all along (you are the first I saw to mention 130 days). But, again. "So, thank you, Elon, as you are leaving your role anyway, how about making a little performance for the public? Be my friend, post on Twitter that I didn't release Epstein files because I'm in them…"
This reads like pretty classic infighting between a dictator and one of his more powerful cronies.
I am surprised at how fast it happened, though. Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship. Maybe our dear leader is just as incompetent at being a dictator as he is everything else.
> Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship.
It doesn't seem that way to me, e.g. Putin arrested Khodorkovsky (the richest man in Russia) in 2003. The way I see it, the politician needs the oligarch's money to gain political power, but then he has actual state power, including guns and the judicial system. At that point the oligarch has no purpose -- after all, the politician can just make new ones -- so it makes sense to cast him out or destroy him.
Trump could bankrupt SpaceX with the stroke of a pen and bleed Tesla dry by revoking EV credits. He could even try to revoke Musk's citizenship over (real or fake) issues with his immigration status in the past. If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
> If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
This is the funniest part to me, in the context of THIS president. The guy that demands fully loyalty but gives none?
I can't imagine being the richest guy in the world, and embarrassing myself to such a degree all for.. what? He paid maybe $300M to help elect the guy, wore all the stupid hates, lavished orange man with praise.. and for what. What was ever the upside? The possible downside was obviously asymmetric to any clear eyed viewer.
This crop of billionaires was created from a time when capital was ascendant and state power was on the decline. I think as a result they’ve come to believe that the state is mostly there for their benefit especially during Republican administrations.
Not that both the Republicans and Democrats are very pro large business. Remember Harris raised at least _twice_ as much money from billionaires than Trump.
They're just pro different big businesses, largely based on their demographics.
Personally I'm still annoyed that Obama's administration had the DOE take over servicing federal student loans to "protect students" only for them to somehow be sold to a private company based in Chicago from what I can tell.
It was weird to see all those billionaire tech bros lining up to kiss his arse. What is the point of spending all that effort to be super rich and powerful if it means you have to grovel to a terrible human being like Trump? Does not compute.
What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat? Shouldn't those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the country is served by them and at what price.
Trump needs to take his lumps on his BBB. That bill is full of pork for billionaires and cuts funding for poor folks. It should come as no surprise that people don't like it.
> What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat?
Well, SpaceX is owned by Musk. Therefore Trump, if seeking to hurt Musk, could attempt to hurt SpaceX.
The ends justify the means. The country's best interests are collateral damage, the benefit that SpaceX offers the country is not relevant to Trump's ego/feelings having been hurt.
It's wild to me how many conspiracy theories I've seen about how this is all staged, like it's a distraction or it's just Elon repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are cratering).
Psychologically, I think this is reflective of cognitive dissonance. The two conflicting ideas are that two people with much to lose would get in the dumbest fight imaginable and the myth of meritocracy [1]. You see, people want or need to believe that people get into these positions through merit: skill, intelligence and hard work.
That's simply not true. We are talking about two of the egotistical, thin-skinned, genuinely stupid narcissists on the planet. Drugs may even be a factor. There is no planet where a charade like this involves calling the president of the United States a pedophile [2].
Media reports seem to universally agree that everybody in the administration absolutely hates Elon. Additionally, IMHO Elon is absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible room reader and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a loyal following. He does not. Any clout he has is solely because of being a Trump acolyte.
The myth of meritocracy is perpetuated to keep you working hard to make somebody else rich. It is to reinforce the existing social and economic order. It is to assign blame to those who are poor because poverty is treated as a personal moral failure.
If Trump chooses to, he can effectively bankrupt Elon. That's how insane all of this is.
For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
There are negotiations over a trade deal with China because of the tariffs and what is quite likely the dumbest trade war in history. The terms of that deal could be fatal to Tesla's future.
Trump could even get Elon denaturalized and deported. How? Immigration fraud. It's fairly clear from the facts (and his brother's statements about 10 years ago) that when Elon dropped out of a Stanford PhD to start a company he was technically undocumented. If you misrepresent to USCIS then it is absolutely grounds for denaturalization should they choose, although such proceedings are incredibly rare.
>For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
This isn't an issue. Execs nor shareholders are required to have clearance and even the ones that have clearance aren't read in to top secret stuff without a need to know. Elon's focus was starship which is quite far removed from any of those contracts (falcon gov launches or starshield). Gwynne Shotwell runs and will continue to run those parts of SpaceX just fine without Elon having clearance.
There's nothing invalid about meritocracy, but that's not what we have. We have some other kind of "ocracy": government by the lucky. I lack the Greek literacy to name the phenomenon correctly but that's what it would translate to in English.
Neither Trump nor Musk has any business running anything more impactful than a used car lot or a corner Starbucks franchise, but their competition was permanently out to lunch in both cases, and here we are. How can anyone be surprised when two merit-free, chaos-loving narcissists fail to get along?
“ For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
Meh, tell it to Darwin. Heat death will come for us all in the end, and there is no refuge to be found in our navels. Why accelerate it by embracing mediocrity? We should identify talent, reward it, and do the best we can with what we have, while we can.
The part about "identifying talent" is where people seem to lose the plot, unfortunately.
There is no myth. Both Trump and Elon have generational talent in their respective domains. This is the kind of talent that’s so unique, it creates its own domain that didn’t exist before, and that no one will be able to replicate after.
But they’re both unstable, and have many other negative features.
One can have an extraordinary talent in starting generational companies, and have a social media addiction (among possibly other addictions and problems) that makes one unstable. These aren’t mutually exclusive.
The only talents they are great at are grift and daring someone to enforce rules against them in a society that largely relies on people holding themselves to standards and risk avoidance instead of active enforcement.
One of their fathers was a successful slumlord, and the other owned an emerald mine in South Africa. Those provide a one-time advantage (which in Trump's case would have been more profitable if he had socked it away in an index fund.) How do they establish 'generational talent' for being POTUS or building rockets and cars?
It will be interesting to see if any of Elon's offspring choose to follow in his footsteps. Probably not the transgender child he disowned, or the one whose name has to be written with Unicode characters, but that leaves something like 20 others to vie for the throne.
"one in eight Americans thinking women are too emotional to be in politics" [1]. Well, I don't know, maybe men should not holding high political offices /s
A friend who studied political science an conflict made this observation about American politics: 30% of the voting population is insane. They will believe the most mind-bendingly illogical things, and then vote for them, so the best you can ever expect from the general population is 70% agreement on reality.
In that light, we're doing really well with only 1/8 believing such a thing.
I always ask myself, "what is being done by the left hand, while we are distracted by the right hand?"
Could this dust-up have anything to do with some other bill being passed or a policy implemented? I can think of the big reconciliation (BBB) bill, and Palantir getting access to more information on American citizens, as 2 things that the public could be distracted from by the Musk-Trump issue.
The public doesn't need elaborate schemes to be distracted, no one actually cares about that stuff. Republicans don't even really care about massive deficit spending in the budget which is out in the open.
Correct. Republicans voted to close the border and deport illegal aliens, not cut the budget deficit. The fiscally responsible republican party hasn’t existed since the 1920s. Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other republicans weren’t going to cut those either, but they were going to talk about reforming them.)
> Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other republicans weren’t going to cut those either, but they were going to talk about reforming them.)
Technically they weren't going to cut them, but they also weren't doing anything to effectively address the upcoming shortfalls in the SS and Medicare trust funds and in fact the tax changes they are trying to enact would shorten the time to those shortfalls.
One has to love this chameleon of a Republican "platform" where values and ideals are championed to browbeat support for a particular action, but then written off as irrelevant when they're awkward for analyzing other actions - while other values and ideals are dragged out in support.
A week ago, "the debt" was really important. Now that Dear Leader has declared otherwise, apparently it's not. Right into the memory hole it goes.
The reality is there is no platform beyond anger (the base), and naked autocratic power (the politicians). Everything else is post-hoc rationalization.
(and just to clarify so I'm not written off as some progressive partisan: I'm a libertarian who was unaligned, understood and saw merit in both camps' ideals - until the Republican party turned its back on conservatism in favor of cult of personality reactionaryism)
There is a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. No taxes on tips was on the platform (#6) as was no cuts to medicare or social security (#14). Balancing the budget was not on the platform.
There are republicans who care about the debt, but the party as a whole doesn’t. The economic libertarians have been thoroughly marginalized in the modern GOP, because economic libertarianism is unpopular.
To be clear, I admire the traditional small government conservatives, though I am not one. The GOP hasn’t been that party since the 1920s. The mass immigration of the 20th century made that approach unviable. We’re a country of machine politics now and it’s only going to become more pronounced. The guy who ran on “No Taxes on Tips” to buy the Latino vote in Nevada was never going to balance the budget.
That platform statement does not contain values or ideals! It contains goals, which could possibly be achieved in very different ways. Values and ideals are then trotted out in support of the specific policies that purport to achieve those goals, and my point is that those ideals are highly inconsistent and seemingly sum up to mere blind anger.
Your individual assertion that you don't care about a balanced budget isn't particularly relevant to the larger context where an overwhelming amount of Trump supporters did just make arguments professing support of the need to get the budget under control to justify last week's policies.
Just because people don’t have a grand unifying theory tying their preferences together doesn’t mean their preferences are motivated by “mere blind anger.” Trying to fit your preferences into some internally consistent framework is a high-IQ fixation.
That’s especially true because society is hard to analyze. For example, I think it will be bad for society to encourage greater race and ethnic consciousness in a diverse society. I can point to all the sectarian conflict that exists in countries around the world as an example of what I seek to avoid, but that’s hardly definitive. Is the upshot that we have to proceed with a vast social experiment, because we can’t provide a closed form analysis of the proposal a priori?
> Palantir getting access to more information on American citizens
This is overblown IMO. The government already has this data on citizens and they're merely using it how they like (i.e. consolidating it through a contractor)
The time to stop this would've been before it was collected in the first place.
I think you're falling into the "they are playing 5D chess" trap, whereas the truth is almost certainly much simpler: two powerful men with giant and brittle egos, who were on a collision course from day one, have now collided. That's it.
They’re to powerful men with huge egos who fundamentally disagree on political priorities. Trump had a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. Balancing the budget wasn’t on it, but the following was: “FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE” (all-caps original).
That's what I usually think too. Even if just to be cautious: people alluding to "Hanlon's razor" (as if it's a real thing) are basically declaring themselves the smartest in the room, so by another well-known eponymous effect they are usually the dumbest in the room. Usually the worst suspicions are confirmed later.
This time, though, I'm running with the crowd. I think this is just too much. I mean, come on, screaming on Twitter that Trump didn't release Epstein files, because he is in them? Sure, it doesn't hurt him, it's no news nor a real accusation, but I'm pretty sure Trump didn't want that to be posted. The whole thing doesn't look nice for anybody, it doesn't help anybody. No, I really think Musk has become totally insane this time, or/and is drugged out. The left hand still may be doing something, but that's taking the opportunity, not making this all up for the sake of distraction.
I would have said the same, except Trump would never have agreed to Elon tweeting about him being in the Epstein files as that now sticks to Trump permanently.
And that line of attack makes it seem a genuine fallout.
It is my opinion that US government won’t cancel SpaceX contracts, as firstly SpaceX is the market leader, and secondly Elon could setup a second SpaceX base overseas, be it in China, Europe or wherever. And the USA will not want Elon working with other countries that closely.
Elon would just lose a bit of money short term, the US government will lose a lot more.
Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn’t have the cards.
A lot of SpaceX technology has export restrictions. On top of that, Elon himself doesn't have any engineering knowledge or degrees and his entire knowledge base on space travel is from Kerbal Space Program that he played for like a week. So what exactly is he going to bring to other countries space programs? The people working at SpaceX aren't going to move to China, and Elon can't just pack his rockets up in a suitcase and fly somewhere else with them.
As a US citizen, it's not clear to me that Elon legally can set up anything overseas without starting from scratch, and going that far might just make him the next Gerald Bull.
> Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn’t have the cards.
That contradicts almost everything we've seen on his government. He doesn't seem to be a deal maker, doesn't seem to even grasp the concept of deals, and doesn't seem to care if he has the cards or not.
I am watching what's happenings in the US at the last months eating popcorn. It's unbelievable. World's strongest nation is reduced to a fight between an autistic and a f...er who happens to carry the nuclear codes that can annihilate the globe.
Where are the official protocols, the dozens of federal lawyers and people behind the presidency, the century long political traditions, the Secret Services?
When described from 10,000 feet, I could almost believe this. If Musk were smart he might be doing something like this on the route to rehabilitating his image with customers.
But the particulars on the ground show that Musk is not smart, just vindictive, power-hungry, petulant, and childish. He literally posted that he would decommission Dragon because of Trump's threat, which was stupid in intent and stupid in potential negotiating effect on Trump (Trump does not know what Dragon is and does not care):
I absolutely would be too, if there wasn’t a long demonstrated history on the part of both of these people to use public drama as smoke to distract from other things they’re doing.
Are you sure? You know that Trump constantly talks about his TV ratings? I forget who it was, but I remember there being a story last year or the year before, of someone who was publicly criticizing Trump met with him and was expecting to be absolutely whipped and scolded, instead behind the scenes Trump thanked them for making good television. The financial impact on Musk’s companies do make this seem real, but somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if this drama was fake. It did occur to me, and I can tell I’m not the only one... the top Google autocomplete for me for “is the trump” is “is the trump musk feud real”.
Not quite relevant, but I've noticed that there's this trend on HN where if there's a non-tech-related happening that's significant and it's obviously something that people want to discuss, people will try and find a tech-related angle in order to discuss the wider issue.
It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president.
If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on merit and based on nepotism instead.
This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough, they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on promises, and it shoots the country in the head.
It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing.
I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on.
It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
> It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion)
To be fair, that's exactly what Obama '08 was
Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in the US, especially at the local and state level. The main difference is a significant portion of governance was temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root.
The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive, leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing the power of checks and balances.
There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku in Japan, and François Mitterrand in France tried to decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
Interesting; is there an accessible 10-minute read on this US (edit: governance) de-politicized/re-politicized history, or does it have a name?
The notion that this kind of politicization started in the 90s is fanciful revisionism. It wasn’t really a thing in the US until about 2017. The word it’s known by is Trumpism.
I'm familiar with the rise of talk radio, News Corp, Web propaganda, alt-right, etc., in politics and public sentiment.
What's new to me is that the last couple decades might be a reversion to a pre-war mode of US governance.
(I know WW2 was unifying in some ways, as we'd expect, but I don't recall much from school about how US politics was played before then, other than punctuated events like the Civil War, civil rights movement, etc.)
9/11 was a big turning point in my experience. American conservatives that I considered online friends were simple impossible to reason with within days and completely alien beings after a few weeks.
Trumpism is just Reaganomics brought to its logical conclusion.
This predates Trumpism.
Low-level corruption at the local/state level is related but its effects are different though. In fact even today low level corruption in the US is extremely low by global standards - you can't bribe your way to a drivers license openly, for example. I'm sure it happens but it's not common or openly boasted about (parts of CA or DC could be an exception).
Here the corruption is openly displayed as a kind of peacock-tail to the beneficiaries.
I'd rather not have a whole discussion over this atm (I'm out rn - maybe later), but I recommend reading Yuen Yuen Ang's paper on "Unbundling Corruption" - there are different typographies of what "corruption" is, and some nations have always had a similar type of corruption compared to others.
In addition, low level corruption is orthogonal to grand corruption as can be seen in Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and the US.
Finally, Indian public discourse around corruption is non-targeted, and fails to contextualize significant institutional differences in how local, state, and federal governments operate in India compared to other states (be they democratic like the US or authoritarian like China).
[Feel free to add questions or points of contention, but I won't be able to reply quickly]
Fine, I don't disagree with anything you point out. However where we differ is that I believe identity politics is the trigger factor here, all the other changes you mention (loss of balance of power etc) are downstream of this.
This is why the standard for something to be considered improper behavior is (or used to be) the appearance of a conflict of interest.
People stopped giving a shit about anything. This is just one of dozens of things that would have been totally unacceptable a few years ago.
The world is no longer a serious place.
Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _pretend to care_ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
I think they might have figured out that a lot of that honesty and character was a facade. Is the false appearance of morality better than just showing yourself as you really are?
You mean that people lie and cheat? That's always been the case. The point of honesty and character is precisely that they reflect a person's ability to value a higher good than their immediate self-interest. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The fact that reputation has been subjected to unprecedented arms race in the face of the internet and social media doesn't fundamentally change the game, it just makes it more exhausting and overwhelming to pay attention to.
This kind of stuff would not fly in Australia. Not to say that there is no corruption, but that it isn’t absolutely blatant and ignored.
I remember when certain social media networks argued that having a real name policy will lead to a more polite, kinder internet, because people won't be as rude with their real names attached to their posts. Turns out, people really don't care. I see the most vile, disgusting, racist, xenophobic shit on Facebook every single day, with real names and pictures showing smiling happy people hugging their kids on every one of them. Like you said - people don't feel any need to care about honesty, character, or even appearance of politeness or good manners.
Part of the problem is that
* those who were concerned about it happening to others have seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms, etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts
* there is a subset that is just super cult of personality around the current president and will bend over backwards to justify actions
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it to a person he just decided that he didn't like?
Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting him with accusations of pedophilia.
So far, all of this is quite normal.
Likewise that Elon can say Trump is “ungrateful” that be received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew the nomination for Elon’s NASA administrator. It’s just open bribery.
American democracy died on the day the supreme court overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US politics is a mere playground for billionaires and corporations.
It’s not they don’t see it - they don’t care. This has always been the moral compass of the US.
On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.)
I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
> Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
did people expect any different when they elected a reality TV star to be president?
one that's such an incredible businessman he managed to bankrupt not one, but two casinos
He's first and foremost a narcissist (strongly grandiose subtype, and all over the place on the communal/malignant axis).
That condition should make him ineligible for any position of power. This is what a society gets when it elects someone mentally ill (in the harmful-to-others rather than the typical harmful-to-ill-person sense).
I am continually astounded by how many people, even if you explain the symptoms to them, will be unable to see it - not just in this one case but in general. There is something in many people that makes them attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly above things.
In order to see it, you must recognize the ways in which he fooled you. People would generally rather be fooled again than face the thought that they were fooled at some point in the past. And the more that they have been fooled, the stronger this bias is.
Trump is an absolute genius at fooling people in small ways, then over time ratcheting up the cognitive dissonance until he fools them in big ways. See https://specialto.thebulwark.com/ for a detailed explanation of how he did this with one of the many people that he has turned into puppets.
> There is something in many people that makes them attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly above things.
It's the slave moral and if you think the majority of people would be better (given the opportunity) you are naive
Narcissists are over-represented as CEOs and such, as well. I think a fair number of Americans like narcissists.
> but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin.
The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was:
a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight, with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the country at the mercy of international creditors looking for deals heavily tilted in their favour
c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of confidence in the country's currency and ability to service its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.
If you really want to find out the reasons why USSR failed I suggest reading “Collapse the fall of Soviet Union” by Zubok or “Collapse of an Empire” by Gaidar. They are easy to read books. Said reasons are quite different from what is going on in USA at the moment.
Present circumstances in America are very different. When Putin took power, Russia's economy had been declining rapidly for a decade; then over his first decade, the GDP dectupled. If the US were to somehow achieve $600,000 GDP per capita by the end of Trump's current term, yeah, Americans would probably want to reevaluate their conventional wisdom about what good governance looks like. But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.
Well, there's an easy way to get to $600,000 GDP per capita, just crash the value of the US dollar by 10x. And this may well be in Trump's reach.
By 1998 the shit had already hit the fan big time for the common people in Russia, all "thanks" to Shock Therapy (which you allude to at your point b)). That was the real tragedy, nothing a more "experienced" president could have fixed (other than doing what Putin ended up doing, which is trying to reverse some of the craziness of said Shock Therapy).
I write this from direct experience, as I grew up as a kid/adolescent in nearby Romania in the '90s, where we had our very own Shock Therapy. In fact my present political stance (a return to nationalism and a reversal of what globalisation has brought about) is heavily marked by that very traumatic period in my life (and the same thing is valid for many of my compatriots).
That’s the key right? It’s world as content. Nothing means anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of ”politics”. But that’s not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what happens next!
> he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course
TACO, as the saying goes.
> Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
The revolution wouldn't have been televised but the polycrisis will be live streamed.
Agreed.
It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the election campaign and a major advisor to the president now declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes of his supporters, what does this say about Musk?
(Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant; what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to know is a pedophile).
That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting influence of power.
Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults could come in and run the country / companies.
I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first sentence.
Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child rape is resolved this way).
> Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker
Laughably so.
Musk: I can save those boys trapped in the cave! We can use this stupid submarine thing of me.
Hero: No need, I and my Navy SEAL cave-diving pals have got this.
Musk: How dare you! You're a pedo.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44779998
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45418245
Not only that but Musk was able to successfully argue in court that he's such a well known liar that a reasonable person wouldn't take his accusations of pedophillia seriously
Wow, I didn't know this.
I didn't even know this was a possible defense at all, "everything I say is bullshit, so if anyone takes it seriously, that's on them".
It's kind of his pointless go-to A-bomb insult, yet, this time, it's within the realm of possibility. I mean, I don't not believe it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
Trump/Epstein connections have been reported on for years with photos and videos so anyone who cares probably was already on the anti-Trump side.
While Musk has a bigger megaphone than most media, he also has a credibility issue - and now especially for the Trump-true-believer crowd that is likely the only group whose bubble would be so shielded that they'd see it as news.
trump was one of the people that originally provided all they knew about epstein to the prosecutors, and once he realized what epstein was, he was banned from all trump venues. What did other do?
He supposedly learned it after the fact.
Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that. However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has actually been public information for a long time. It's known that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no evidence he went to the island or did something wrong.
It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult, rather than a serious accusation.
> He supposedly learned it after the fact.
When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons explicitly not about any pedophile rings.
So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's because he just learned of it.
I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act? What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the president of the US might.
(Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think this is a fight between two nasty people).
To be fair Elon claimed that Trump is mentioned in the remainder of files which have yet to be released. Presumably what evidence there is of wrongdoing, if it exists, exists there.
"Pedo guy" Musk being Musk, though, who knows? What is the likelihood Musk would even have access to those files if they were so damning to Trump and still sealed?
Nothing about this is "quite obvious." It could go either way. To be honest I wouldn't put it past either one of them to be on Epstein's "list."
I think the tone of the message would be way more serious if it was a serious accusation based on actual evidence. Now it reads like a kindergarten level conspiracy theory, which almost seems like a joke. The silly claim was that Trump being in the files is the reason why they aren't released.
And apparently he has now deleted the tweet.
Without seeing the unreleased files we can't know how silly the claim is.
This whole article is speculation about a war of words on social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any citation.
>One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the exchanges as “bluster” that neither Musk nor Trump would actually implement
July 4th we commemorate getting rid of one mad king overseas and replacing him with.. oh wait.
You should always self-host your foreign mad king. The latency to England is just too high.
Canada has done it the right way. Self host but have a redundant backup across the pond.
KaaS (king as a service)
1 Musk = 13 Scaramuccis . Please update your SI unit tables accordingly.
I've said before that by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins. I may have been too optimistic, it might happen earlier.
> by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins
If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?
GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years? Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies? Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies? Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)? Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days? Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually?
I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.
I agree entirely.
Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.
Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.
Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.
That 40% are in a cult about 1 mad rant away from an ivermectin Jonestown.
6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are Supreme Court justices.
All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity".
Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of its way to say you can't even examine the communications between the president and the DoJ.
It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for government ministers.
We have legislative immunity called the speech and debate clause. It doesn't shield lawmakers from other crimes, nor should it, and it certainly doesn't imply some sort of expansive executive immunity.
The founders were rebelling agaisnt an untouchable executive, remember?
This contract dispute has nothing to do with Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Cancelling SpaceX contracts for political reasons would be wrong but not criminal.
The point is we won’t find out because presidential immunity also protects against discovery. Cases that previously could have been decided on the merits won’t even make it to adjudication.
Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm unaware of.
This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around. Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Musk but the president--any president--shouldnt be able to do this.
The biggest self-indictment in that post by POTUS was "I was always surprised Biden didn't do it!"
I am not surprised that Biden didn't cancel all SpaceX contracts for political reasons, neither are most rational people.
Trump doesn't believe that smart people with power can have ethics or morality because he doesn't have them himself.
It's not ethics or morality, it's just "not being a child." A president not personally retaliating against a critic doesn't need to have anything to do with ethics, it's just requires a post-middle-school mentality of "I may not be happy with this person but I [my country] can still benefit from things they do."
The property of "being a child" in an adult is effectively a matter of ethics and morality
No, it can be justified with rationality alone.
At least Berlusconi didn't have access to nuclear warheads.
Seriously, I visited the US few times between 2005 and 2010 and each time people were raising the topic of Berlusconi. How can you have a president like that, who voted for him, bunga bunga etc etc.
Now you know how you can have such personality in power too. With even more power.
The Italians truly invent everything first, eh? Fascism, trumpism, etc
And alphabet.
Don’t get me started on Roman Emperors…
Trumpism is just another league I believe. You may say it's Berlusconism on steroids, but the global impact makes this a thing by itself.
So, the government would do what, lean on Russia with whom the USA is currently engaged in a proxy war? Also, for Boeing or Blue Origin, the cost would currently be higher per launch, and as far as I know, no one has the kind of satellite network that SpaceX does.
Of course, those are sane considerations. I suppose I shouldn’t accuse the Donald of any kind of rational thinking.
SpaceX is critical infrastructure to the US at this point and its continued availability and operation is of national security interest.
That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite, actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
Less nuclear: the US has a lot of control over what SpaceX does. The FAA (and to a lesser extent the NOAA) has to approve every launch. They could simply gorund SpaceX.
If you think SpaceX could simply move operations elsewhere, think again, The US prohibits ASML, a Dutch company, from selling EUV lithography machines to China.
Apart from all of that, SpaceX is absolutely dependant on US government funding and contracts. Withdrawing those, or even the threat of such, allows the US to wield a lot of power over SpaceX.
What's rather surprising about this feud is that Trump is currently the adult and has been uncharacteristically restrained in his response thus far. Of course, all that could change. It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
> nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
This isn't at all clear. It's clear that they could easily compel them to prioritize and fulfill government contracts. Far less clear that they could just take it. It is clear that the current administration could "try" but such an effort might result in a lawsuit that lasts longer than the administration does and thereby become moot.
> It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
How is it insane to repeat what everyone already knows? The only novelty here is Musk himself saying it to his legions of followers, who would have been otherwise inclined to downplay the significance of it.
It's insane because of the implications: Musk was a major contributor to Trump's campaign, and a major advisor, and at the last minute he implies Trump is a pedophile?
This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a pedophile elected! He couldn't have learned this at the last minute, he obviously held this ace in his sleeve.
This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the eyes of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get a pedophile elected president if it would suit his business vision.
This isn't the first time Musk has baselessly accused someone of pedophilia on social media.
He did it randomly to some guy he didn't like in Thailand who saved some kids trapped in a cave. He's probably done it other times.
It's just an Elon Musk thing. Go totally unhinged on social media and defame people without evidence. He does it all the time.
The only guy more famous than Musk for saying absolute nonsense on social media, is Trump.
It is all fake, lame, and nonsense.
What's shocking is that the people running our country are behaving like absolute children. I feel like they wouldn't be able to hold down a job at my company because they're so unhinged, they would have been fired long ago, and yet here they are, billionaires, deciding the fate of 350M people.
Yeah, I remember that other accusation.
To be clear, I'm not debating the veracity of the accusation, I'm asking what it says about Musk that he claims to have knowingly helped elect president someone he knew to be a pedophile.
Wow, that is some amazing threading of the mental needle to focus blame on Musk. Doesn't this indictment apply to every single person who voted for Trump in 2024? Those pictures of Epstein, Trump, and Maxwell having themselves some grand old times have been popularly circulating for like a decade at this point.
If the indictment doesn't apply, then why can't Musk play the same card of "I didn't know/believe/accept" while he was supporting, but only recently has he "now come to know" ?
Why wouldn't I heap blame on Musk (as well as on Trump, mind you)? The guy's deranged and repulsive.
I don't think your objections are fair. Let's go over them:
The average Trump voter doesn't know much about Epstein, and certainly doesn't believe Trump was involved in anything with that scandal. Any evidence that may turn up would be considered "fake news" to them. Whatever you may think of Trump voters, and whatever things they really are to blame for, knowingly voting for someone they believe to be a pedophile isn't one of their sins.
Musk just implied Trump is a pedophile (or is suppressing certain documents because of his links to a pedophile). Musk also claims without him Trump wouldn't have been elected. These are Musk's claims, so he has thrown away any possible defenses of "but I didn't know/believe this" and "but I'm irrelevant in the grand scheme of things".
You also claim Musk could defend himself with "but I didn't know at the time". This is very, very weak. When exactly do you suppose he learned this? In the few days that have elapsed since this very public falling out, maybe even a few days before? Oh, please. You know you don't believe this, these two were heaping praise on each other and calling themselves friends for most of their collaboration since Trump's second term, and only now Musk found out about Epstein? What, an aide rushed this info to him just in time for their current breakup? Absurd.
Any way you slice it, Musk had this accusation up his sleeve the whole time, he just chose to deploy it now.
So again I must ask, what does this say -- in his fans' eyes -- about Musk as a person?
PS: You seem to believe I'm somehow defending Trump here. If that's your worry, let me be clear that I think Trump is a disgrace. I don't know whether he's a pedophile though, unlike Musk I don't claim to have seen any secret documents. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if both Trump and Musk are pedophiles, these aren't exactly examples of decent human beings.
PPS: it has also just occurred to me you could be wondering why I'm focusing on the outrageous things Musk has said, but not on the contradictory, absurd or just plain dumb things Trump is saying about Musk? Well, because Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do lots of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now. Musk, as the world's richest person, has a much longer shelf life and more time to do damage to the US and the rest of the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult following. So I wonder what his followers think.
> an absolutely insane thing to do
Is it?
The statement itself doesn't seem to imply anything other than Musk seems to think he is in those files.
Trump is in some of the JE "files" that were already released (flight logs).
I think the cultural obsession with the unknown surrounding Jeffery Epstein informs what people infer from statements like that.
There are many less-than-flattering ways that Trump could be associated with JE that do not include pedophilia.
But Musk is not implying any of those less-than-flattering things. Nobody knows what Musk actually thinks, but what he implied is pretty clear. He calls it "a bomb", and we all know what that means.
And this matters, because Musk was a major campaign contributor and advisor to someone he has now implied to be a pedophile. What does this say about Musk?
> we all know what that means
Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague statements or evidence.
> What does this say about Musk?
Who knows? Musk has thin associations with Epstein and Maxwell as well, he is a proven liar, is at times visibly manic, and has been reported to drop relationships at a whim when challenged.
There could be plenty of things driving his behavior, but I don't think this informs anything new about his character.
You got me wrong: I'm not talking about the veracity of the accusation, I'm asking about what it says about Musk (regardless of its truth).
Especially in the eyes of Musk fans.
This guy is now effectively claiming he helped get someone elected president whom he knew was a pedophile. Musk claims Trump got elected thanks to his support (again, Musk claims this). He also claims Trump is a pedophile.
So what do Musk fans think about Musk (not Trump) in light of this?
Honestly, if there were any fans of Musk after he imitated a Nazi salute, I don't think their perception of him has much further room to sink.
As per usual, every accusation from a narcissist is a confession.
You know who absolutely is connected to Epstein? Elon's brother, Kimbal (allgedly) [1].
And while not related to Epstein but is just gross and in a similar ballpark, Elon's father Errol, had a stepdaughter from his wife's first marriage, Jana Bezuidenhout, who grew up in his house from age 4. He later went on to father two children with Jana (the first when she was 30, I believe) [2]. It's unclear when the relationship began. The only public statements are after Jana had a break-up.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-girlfrie...
[2]: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/article/31886...
Didn't know these details about Musk's family.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a guy so gross in his personal life comes from a gross family. Everything about Musk is deranged.
Do you remember the (not so distant era) when Musk was the nerd's and hacker's darling? SpaceX, his genius, his vision! This was before we knew much about his personal life and opinions. It seems so long ago now... Before he took to Twitter to claim it was OK to coup countries for their resources, or started naming children like mathematical formulas.
If it’s critical infrastructure it should be nationalized
We have a national space agency that has had plenty of time and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
Why wouldn't SpaceX turn into the funding and political football that NASA is, if it were nationalized?
Like, this isn't a hypothetical. SpaceX only has a market because of the incompetence of the "public option."
> We have a national space agency that has had plenty of time and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
That's quite inaccurate. NASA doesn't do much themselves, they hire external contractors but keep significant control over them. SpaceX got more funding and less control and they didn't start from scratch, NASA gave them all of their technical documentation, now-how and working prototypes.
NASA could have done everything SpaceX does if they were given the same conditions and funding, however, they've never had funding for blowing up five spaceships in row, they were held to much stricter standards.
The entire story looks like a blatant attempt to take control of space operations away from NASA and thus from the government.
Challenger
onlyrealcuzzo above commented that Trump canceling SpaceX contracts would be "literally the path that led the USSR to ruin".
However, we have a case of a private contractor trying to manipulate the president by means of "revelations" and decommissioning of a service important for national security. If the president cannot change those contracts the US would be literally on the path to oligarchic Russia... I'm not sure what's worse.
Trump is generally moving in the direction of reducing government control of corporations to the point of risking government capture by oligarchic interests. What's happening now is a direct consequence of his policies and it's ironic that Trump's powers are being questioned when it comes to corporate regulation.
Trump's personal faults are irrelevant at the moment, if the GOP doesn't stand firmly behind Trump we are going to find ourselves in an incredible mess.
I think you'll find both Musk and Trump are aligned with Russia. Which makes the interesting part for me, that they are feuding at all. It implies whatever control Moscow has over them, is failing, otherwise they would not undermine their shared plans in this way.
Apparently, Musk is very popular among Republicans: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/06/elon-musk-...
YouGov made a survey on June 5, asking "If you had to choose, who would you side with more between the following?" with Musk and Trump to choose. For Republicans, it's 71% Trump, 6% Musk, 12% neither, 11% not sure.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/survey-results/daily...
Trump has unprecedented power of retribution. The best Elon can pull off is swearing at opponents in an interview.
Musk is popular amongst republicans because Trump has championed him. The pro-Musk Republicans are also pro-Trump republicans and their loyalty to Trump will beat out whatever respect they have for Musk. Musk is not a threat to Trump, because Trump’s entire platform is built on Trump-or-bust. Musk was a useful idiot to Trump. Musk thinking that Trump’s Epstein connection was somehow going to hurt Trump shows just how impotent Musk is. Trump fans couldn’t care one iota about that.
It's really that simple. If you want to know what MAGA supporters believe about any topic, just look up what Trump last said about it. He could change his mind three times in a single day, and they would also change their mind (and talking points) in lock step three times.
If anything, Trump fans will pat him on the back for pwning those 13-year-old libs.
Maybe this timeline leads to nationalization of spaceX
There is so much theater and reality TV in the Trump administration that it's hard to conclude anything. Most of the theater is there to play to his MAGA base.
First there was the (staged?) row with Zelensky. A couple of months later nothing has really changed.
Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130 days in that position). Time for another public row to show that Trump is tough on subsidies for electric vehicles.
SpaceX will of course continue to get funded. A large number of LEO satellites are needed for Trump's Golden Dome and Starlink is needed in crisis regions.
Yeah I think this is the most logical take.
These guys are both masters of dominating attention on social media. It got them to where they are. The way to dominate the national attention in this world we've created, is to act like a child and call someone a pedo. They are not the leaders we wanted, but may be the leaders we deserve.
The Zelensky interview was only staged (manufactured) by the White House. You may have noticed immediately after the US stopped intelligence sharing just long enough for Putin to take back Kursk.
https://www.justice.gov/jmd/ethics/summary-government-ethics...
It looks like it is 130 days per year, not a rolling start from the date of hiring.
There is no multiverse where Trump would knowingly allow someone to mock or criticize him. If Musk grovels enough Trump may let him back; he loves emasculating his rivals.
I really don't think the Zelensky thing was staged, and I doubt this was either.
As far as I can tell about Zelensky, he had every intention to cancel Trump's proposed deal after the white house meeting, but he is losing the war with Russia so badly that he absolutely needs US support, so he had no choice but to come back to the table.
Musk pulling out the Epstein thing and Trump pulling out the SpaceX contracts are both two subjects these guys are very touchy about. If they were faking it, they wouldn't have gone for the (emotional) throat on this one.
That said, Trump always chickens out, so there's no real chance SpaceX is getting its contracts canceled, even the ones that legitimately are a huge waste of money.
That's a really good take, and I personally missed that his departure was pre-planned all along (you are the first I saw to mention 130 days). But, again. "So, thank you, Elon, as you are leaving your role anyway, how about making a little performance for the public? Be my friend, post on Twitter that I didn't release Epstein files because I'm in them…"
…Really?
This reads like pretty classic infighting between a dictator and one of his more powerful cronies.
I am surprised at how fast it happened, though. Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship. Maybe our dear leader is just as incompetent at being a dictator as he is everything else.
I hope it escalates into a pay per view cage match.
Elon already has a black eye so I think the cameras weren't invited.
The last time Elon proposed a cage match he pussied out.
And then lost a fight to 5 year old son?
> Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship.
It doesn't seem that way to me, e.g. Putin arrested Khodorkovsky (the richest man in Russia) in 2003. The way I see it, the politician needs the oligarch's money to gain political power, but then he has actual state power, including guns and the judicial system. At that point the oligarch has no purpose -- after all, the politician can just make new ones -- so it makes sense to cast him out or destroy him.
Trump could bankrupt SpaceX with the stroke of a pen and bleed Tesla dry by revoking EV credits. He could even try to revoke Musk's citizenship over (real or fake) issues with his immigration status in the past. If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
> If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
This is the funniest part to me, in the context of THIS president. The guy that demands fully loyalty but gives none?
I can't imagine being the richest guy in the world, and embarrassing myself to such a degree all for.. what? He paid maybe $300M to help elect the guy, wore all the stupid hates, lavished orange man with praise.. and for what. What was ever the upside? The possible downside was obviously asymmetric to any clear eyed viewer.
And so that asymmetric downside now begins.
This crop of billionaires was created from a time when capital was ascendant and state power was on the decline. I think as a result they’ve come to believe that the state is mostly there for their benefit especially during Republican administrations.
Haven't they ever seen House of Cards?
I think it's also a mark of the self delusion some of these "Great Men" tend to have, before you even get into the surrounding yes-men & ketamine.
Probably some sort of "well I am worth $400M, but if I can get that to $2M, I can do my Mars space colony with enough room for my harem, for sure".
vs "Gee I have more money than one can ever spend and remain mortal.. I could go enjoy my life like Bezos before it all evaporates..."
Not that both the Republicans and Democrats are very pro large business. Remember Harris raised at least _twice_ as much money from billionaires than Trump.
They're just pro different big businesses, largely based on their demographics.
Personally I'm still annoyed that Obama's administration had the DOE take over servicing federal student loans to "protect students" only for them to somehow be sold to a private company based in Chicago from what I can tell.
Everyone who consorts with Trump ends up covered in shit.
It was weird to see all those billionaire tech bros lining up to kiss his arse. What is the point of spending all that effort to be super rich and powerful if it means you have to grovel to a terrible human being like Trump? Does not compute.
What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat? Shouldn't those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the country is served by them and at what price.
Trump needs to take his lumps on his BBB. That bill is full of pork for billionaires and cuts funding for poor folks. It should come as no surprise that people don't like it.
They referenced the contracts directly in the disconnected social media exchange on Thursday.
> What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat?
Well, SpaceX is owned by Musk. Therefore Trump, if seeking to hurt Musk, could attempt to hurt SpaceX.
The ends justify the means. The country's best interests are collateral damage, the benefit that SpaceX offers the country is not relevant to Trump's ego/feelings having been hurt.
I fear you materially overestimate Trump's rationality.
It's wild to me how many conspiracy theories I've seen about how this is all staged, like it's a distraction or it's just Elon repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are cratering).
Psychologically, I think this is reflective of cognitive dissonance. The two conflicting ideas are that two people with much to lose would get in the dumbest fight imaginable and the myth of meritocracy [1]. You see, people want or need to believe that people get into these positions through merit: skill, intelligence and hard work.
That's simply not true. We are talking about two of the egotistical, thin-skinned, genuinely stupid narcissists on the planet. Drugs may even be a factor. There is no planet where a charade like this involves calling the president of the United States a pedophile [2].
Media reports seem to universally agree that everybody in the administration absolutely hates Elon. Additionally, IMHO Elon is absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible room reader and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a loyal following. He does not. Any clout he has is solely because of being a Trump acolyte.
The myth of meritocracy is perpetuated to keep you working hard to make somebody else rich. It is to reinforce the existing social and economic order. It is to assign blame to those who are poor because poverty is treated as a personal moral failure.
If Trump chooses to, he can effectively bankrupt Elon. That's how insane all of this is.
For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
There are negotiations over a trade deal with China because of the tariffs and what is quite likely the dumbest trade war in history. The terms of that deal could be fatal to Tesla's future.
Trump could even get Elon denaturalized and deported. How? Immigration fraud. It's fairly clear from the facts (and his brother's statements about 10 years ago) that when Elon dropped out of a Stanford PhD to start a company he was technically undocumented. If you misrepresent to USCIS then it is absolutely grounds for denaturalization should they choose, although such proceedings are incredibly rare.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
[2]: https://deadline.com/2025/06/trump-musk-epstein-files-claim-...
MAGA cope is astonishing in its intensity. I’ve never seen anything like it. Truly a different take on reality.
The proof is in the black eye.
>For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
This isn't an issue. Execs nor shareholders are required to have clearance and even the ones that have clearance aren't read in to top secret stuff without a need to know. Elon's focus was starship which is quite far removed from any of those contracts (falcon gov launches or starshield). Gwynne Shotwell runs and will continue to run those parts of SpaceX just fine without Elon having clearance.
There's nothing invalid about meritocracy, but that's not what we have. We have some other kind of "ocracy": government by the lucky. I lack the Greek literacy to name the phenomenon correctly but that's what it would translate to in English.
Neither Trump nor Musk has any business running anything more impactful than a used car lot or a corner Starbucks franchise, but their competition was permanently out to lunch in both cases, and here we are. How can anyone be surprised when two merit-free, chaos-loving narcissists fail to get along?
I think you're aiming for some idea of "tychocracy," but really, you mean "oligarchy."
It's been described as kakistocracy (government by the people who are most unsuitable for government).
Meritocracy is like perfect communism, in that it's never been tried (and never will).
“ For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
Meh, tell it to Darwin. Heat death will come for us all in the end, and there is no refuge to be found in our navels. Why accelerate it by embracing mediocrity? We should identify talent, reward it, and do the best we can with what we have, while we can.
The part about "identifying talent" is where people seem to lose the plot, unfortunately.
There is no myth. Both Trump and Elon have generational talent in their respective domains. This is the kind of talent that’s so unique, it creates its own domain that didn’t exist before, and that no one will be able to replicate after.
But they’re both unstable, and have many other negative features.
One can have an extraordinary talent in starting generational companies, and have a social media addiction (among possibly other addictions and problems) that makes one unstable. These aren’t mutually exclusive.
> Both Trump and Elon have generational talent in their respective domains
That's an interesting way of saying they were born into a wealthy family
I was also born into a wealthy family but I haven't created multiple billion dollar companies.
Neither has Trump, so don’t feel bad.
Well presumably you have some actual morals.
> One can have an extraordinary talent in starting generational companies
I though Musk was just adept at buying certain companies
The only talents they are great at are grift and daring someone to enforce rules against them in a society that largely relies on people holding themselves to standards and risk avoidance instead of active enforcement.
One of their fathers was a successful slumlord, and the other owned an emerald mine in South Africa. Those provide a one-time advantage (which in Trump's case would have been more profitable if he had socked it away in an index fund.) How do they establish 'generational talent' for being POTUS or building rockets and cars?
It will be interesting to see if any of Elon's offspring choose to follow in his footsteps. Probably not the transgender child he disowned, or the one whose name has to be written with Unicode characters, but that leaves something like 20 others to vie for the throne.
"one in eight Americans thinking women are too emotional to be in politics" [1]. Well, I don't know, maybe men should not holding high political offices /s
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03616843221123...
A friend who studied political science an conflict made this observation about American politics: 30% of the voting population is insane. They will believe the most mind-bendingly illogical things, and then vote for them, so the best you can ever expect from the general population is 70% agreement on reality.
In that light, we're doing really well with only 1/8 believing such a thing.
I blame the leaded paint
Maybe neither should. The problem is the power existing in the first place, waiting around for someone like Trump.
I always ask myself, "what is being done by the left hand, while we are distracted by the right hand?"
Could this dust-up have anything to do with some other bill being passed or a policy implemented? I can think of the big reconciliation (BBB) bill, and Palantir getting access to more information on American citizens, as 2 things that the public could be distracted from by the Musk-Trump issue.
The public doesn't need elaborate schemes to be distracted, no one actually cares about that stuff. Republicans don't even really care about massive deficit spending in the budget which is out in the open.
Correct. Republicans voted to close the border and deport illegal aliens, not cut the budget deficit. The fiscally responsible republican party hasn’t existed since the 1920s. Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other republicans weren’t going to cut those either, but they were going to talk about reforming them.)
> Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other republicans weren’t going to cut those either, but they were going to talk about reforming them.)
Technically they weren't going to cut them, but they also weren't doing anything to effectively address the upcoming shortfalls in the SS and Medicare trust funds and in fact the tax changes they are trying to enact would shorten the time to those shortfalls.
One has to love this chameleon of a Republican "platform" where values and ideals are championed to browbeat support for a particular action, but then written off as irrelevant when they're awkward for analyzing other actions - while other values and ideals are dragged out in support.
A week ago, "the debt" was really important. Now that Dear Leader has declared otherwise, apparently it's not. Right into the memory hole it goes.
The reality is there is no platform beyond anger (the base), and naked autocratic power (the politicians). Everything else is post-hoc rationalization.
(and just to clarify so I'm not written off as some progressive partisan: I'm a libertarian who was unaligned, understood and saw merit in both camps' ideals - until the Republican party turned its back on conservatism in favor of cult of personality reactionaryism)
There is a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. No taxes on tips was on the platform (#6) as was no cuts to medicare or social security (#14). Balancing the budget was not on the platform.
There are republicans who care about the debt, but the party as a whole doesn’t. The economic libertarians have been thoroughly marginalized in the modern GOP, because economic libertarianism is unpopular.
To be clear, I admire the traditional small government conservatives, though I am not one. The GOP hasn’t been that party since the 1920s. The mass immigration of the 20th century made that approach unviable. We’re a country of machine politics now and it’s only going to become more pronounced. The guy who ran on “No Taxes on Tips” to buy the Latino vote in Nevada was never going to balance the budget.
That platform statement does not contain values or ideals! It contains goals, which could possibly be achieved in very different ways. Values and ideals are then trotted out in support of the specific policies that purport to achieve those goals, and my point is that those ideals are highly inconsistent and seemingly sum up to mere blind anger.
Your individual assertion that you don't care about a balanced budget isn't particularly relevant to the larger context where an overwhelming amount of Trump supporters did just make arguments professing support of the need to get the budget under control to justify last week's policies.
Just because people don’t have a grand unifying theory tying their preferences together doesn’t mean their preferences are motivated by “mere blind anger.” Trying to fit your preferences into some internally consistent framework is a high-IQ fixation.
That’s especially true because society is hard to analyze. For example, I think it will be bad for society to encourage greater race and ethnic consciousness in a diverse society. I can point to all the sectarian conflict that exists in countries around the world as an example of what I seek to avoid, but that’s hardly definitive. Is the upshot that we have to proceed with a vast social experiment, because we can’t provide a closed form analysis of the proposal a priori?
> Palantir getting access to more information on American citizens
This is overblown IMO. The government already has this data on citizens and they're merely using it how they like (i.e. consolidating it through a contractor)
The time to stop this would've been before it was collected in the first place.
I think you're falling into the "they are playing 5D chess" trap, whereas the truth is almost certainly much simpler: two powerful men with giant and brittle egos, who were on a collision course from day one, have now collided. That's it.
They’re to powerful men with huge egos who fundamentally disagree on political priorities. Trump had a platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. Balancing the budget wasn’t on it, but the following was: “FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE” (all-caps original).
That's what I usually think too. Even if just to be cautious: people alluding to "Hanlon's razor" (as if it's a real thing) are basically declaring themselves the smartest in the room, so by another well-known eponymous effect they are usually the dumbest in the room. Usually the worst suspicions are confirmed later.
This time, though, I'm running with the crowd. I think this is just too much. I mean, come on, screaming on Twitter that Trump didn't release Epstein files, because he is in them? Sure, it doesn't hurt him, it's no news nor a real accusation, but I'm pretty sure Trump didn't want that to be posted. The whole thing doesn't look nice for anybody, it doesn't help anybody. No, I really think Musk has become totally insane this time, or/and is drugged out. The left hand still may be doing something, but that's taking the opportunity, not making this all up for the sake of distraction.
I would have said the same, except Trump would never have agreed to Elon tweeting about him being in the Epstein files as that now sticks to Trump permanently.
And that line of attack makes it seem a genuine fallout.
It is my opinion that US government won’t cancel SpaceX contracts, as firstly SpaceX is the market leader, and secondly Elon could setup a second SpaceX base overseas, be it in China, Europe or wherever. And the USA will not want Elon working with other countries that closely.
Elon would just lose a bit of money short term, the US government will lose a lot more.
Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn’t have the cards.
A lot of SpaceX technology has export restrictions. On top of that, Elon himself doesn't have any engineering knowledge or degrees and his entire knowledge base on space travel is from Kerbal Space Program that he played for like a week. So what exactly is he going to bring to other countries space programs? The people working at SpaceX aren't going to move to China, and Elon can't just pack his rockets up in a suitcase and fly somewhere else with them.
> and secondly Elon could setup a second SpaceX base overseas
I'd be very surprised if this is possible given ITAR regulations.
>Trump is a deal maker
Is he though?
He didn't write the book 'The art of the deal'.
He is a terrible businessman. I read that most of his properties are loss making. How many other people have lost money on a casino?
He didn't end the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 24 hours, as he said he would.
What good deals has he made?
cia would step in before we ever allowed that to happen.
As a US citizen, it's not clear to me that Elon legally can set up anything overseas without starting from scratch, and going that far might just make him the next Gerald Bull.
> Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn’t have the cards.
That contradicts almost everything we've seen on his government. He doesn't seem to be a deal maker, doesn't seem to even grasp the concept of deals, and doesn't seem to care if he has the cards or not.
> Trump is a deal maker
He's absolutely not
But we are now allied with North Korea, secured peace in Ukraine, and have permanent trade deals with everyone.
I am watching what's happenings in the US at the last months eating popcorn. It's unbelievable. World's strongest nation is reduced to a fight between an autistic and a f...er who happens to carry the nuclear codes that can annihilate the globe.
Where are the official protocols, the dozens of federal lawyers and people behind the presidency, the century long political traditions, the Secret Services?
> fight between an autistic and a f...er
There are many better nouns to describe Elmo that don't involve disparaging neurodivergent folks.
I don't believe Musk's claim at all that he is autistic, that is just his excuse for being an asshole and/or high on drugs, depending on the day.
Please don't attribute Musk's behavior to autism.
It's a disgusting and inaccurate smear against people on the autism spectrum.
This feud is just a pantomime for the crowd in my opinion. There's a bigger play here.
You grossly underestimate the pettiness and pedantry of those involved
Lol, I guess this is what happens when two assholes surround themselves with sycophantic yes-men for far too long.
Nobody taught them how to play nice. I've met eight year olds with more civility and maturity than those two...
Oh well. Reminds me of that Alien vs Predator movie: Whoever wins, we lose.
When described from 10,000 feet, I could almost believe this. If Musk were smart he might be doing something like this on the route to rehabilitating his image with customers.
But the particulars on the ground show that Musk is not smart, just vindictive, power-hungry, petulant, and childish. He literally posted that he would decommission Dragon because of Trump's threat, which was stupid in intent and stupid in potential negotiating effect on Trump (Trump does not know what Dragon is and does not care):
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/06/05/musk-trump-spacex-dragon...
If it was a charade Epstein would not have been mentioned.
Both use deception and disruption to get to their goals. Now they both are at the receiving end. This will not end well for either.
What are you alluding to here?
I'm inclined to Hanlon's Razor.
I absolutely would be too, if there wasn’t a long demonstrated history on the part of both of these people to use public drama as smoke to distract from other things they’re doing.
the variation I prefer is: never attribute to wisdom that which is adequately explained by stupidity
That's giving these people far too much credit.
Are you sure? You know that Trump constantly talks about his TV ratings? I forget who it was, but I remember there being a story last year or the year before, of someone who was publicly criticizing Trump met with him and was expecting to be absolutely whipped and scolded, instead behind the scenes Trump thanked them for making good television. The financial impact on Musk’s companies do make this seem real, but somehow I wouldn’t be surprised if this drama was fake. It did occur to me, and I can tell I’m not the only one... the top Google autocomplete for me for “is the trump” is “is the trump musk feud real”.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/president-trump...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/television-tr...
Not quite relevant, but I've noticed that there's this trend on HN where if there's a non-tech-related happening that's significant and it's obviously something that people want to discuss, people will try and find a tech-related angle in order to discuss the wider issue.
If we all worked in machine shops, we’d be talking about the steel tariffs.