Fairly frankly, I’m rooting for every of them to destroy the opposite.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump within the Oval Workplace on Friday, Could 30, 2025.
(Francis Chung / Politico / Bloomberg)
What occurs when two of the most important egos on the planet have a falling out? We’re about to search out out.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are sparring over the administration’s large legislative bundle that Trump and his group try to strong-arm by means of Congress, with the president saying on Thursday that he was “very disillusioned” in his former adviser. On Tuesday, Musk took to X to declare the laws to be a “disgusting abomination.” Effectively, from out of the mouths of babes…
Musk railed in opposition to members of Congress who voted for the invoice, and introduced that America would, come the subsequent election cycle, fireplace these dullards. The subtext was that the world’s richest man would seemingly unleash his social media muscle and open his huge pockets to facilitate challenges to these feckless sufficient to vote for a invoice that they properly knew would swell the deficit (and obliterate tax credit for consumers of Teslas and different electrical automobiles).
Trump isn’t precisely overjoyed by this. In any case, the large, lovely invoice that’s presently wending its manner by means of Congress comprises just about each heinous concept that Trump and his inside circle might provide you with: multiplying, by orders of magnitude, the already obscene quantities the US spends on locking down its borders and harassing asylum seekers, refugees, and others fleeing poverty and violence; ending just about all subsidies and tax credit for sustainable vitality infrastructure; slashing well being and dietary spending for the poor; and boosting tax cuts for the über-wealthy.
It’s mainly one-stop looking for imply, nasty individuals. It’s like a sizzling pot soup the place each ingredient plus the kitchen sink is thrown into one, massive, boiling, concoction—on this case of undiluted horribleness.
And now, right here comes Musk—the ungrateful, ketamine-addled, Sieg Heil saluting brat—who, regardless of Trump’s having basically given his raiding events free rein to sabotage each side of presidency they selected, and Musk himself carte steadiness to disregard each conflict-of-interest regulation in existence, is daring to throw a tantrum over the nationwide debt.
Present Difficulty
For the primary day, Trump maintained his composure over Musk’s assaults. However that couldn’t final lengthy; it’s merely not within the gangster-president’s DNA to passively settle for a betrayal of this order of magnitude. And, true to type, by Thursday the 2 megalomaniacs were at each other’s throats, with Trump floating the thought of ending all authorities contracts and subsidies to Musk-owned companies, and Musk floating the thought of making a brand new political get together.
In his fury, Musk claimed credit score for Trump’s election victory, and live-posted his responses to Trump’s criticisms of him; and in his petulant anger, Trump took to social media to declare that he would have carried the swing states even with out his sidekick’s intervention. Musk responded by taking to X to announce that Trump’s identify was within the infamous Epstein recordsdata, after which endorsing a name for Trump’s impeachment. I’m positive by the point this column is printed, Trump may have hit again at this newest allegation along with his personal brew of bile.
This has the potential to make Recreation of Thrones seem like youngster’s play. And, fairly frankly, I’m rooting for every of them to destroy the opposite.
However, it’s not solely Musk whom Trump was feuding with this week. MAGA-man and Supreme Courtroom Justice Amy Coney Barrett—whose accession Trump celebrated in a raucous White Home occasion barely per week earlier than the 2020 elections—are on the outs, apparently as a result of she isn’t fairly the rubber stamp that he assumed she could be when he nominated her throughout his first go-round within the White Home. Positive, she was instrumental within the push to overturn Roe v. Wade, however extra not too long ago she hasn’t been fairly as monolithically disagreeable as have Alito, Thomas, and, for probably the most half Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. In a sequence of rulings over the previous a number of months, Barrett has sided with the extra liberal judges, in addition to, at occasions, Chief Justice Roberts, stymieing a number of the extra flagrantly unconstitutional of Trump’s energy grabs, particularly round immigration.
MAGA world has taken notice, with commentators and influencers critiquing Barrett for not being reliably sufficient within the hard-right camp, and, presumably, for backtracking on the spirit of the 2024 Supreme Courtroom ruling that presidents can mainly do regardless of the hell they need as long as they are saying they’re doing it of their official capability. In latest days, CNN and different retailers have reported that in personal Trump himself has joined the pile-on.
Given his incapability to rein in his id, it appears solely a matter of time earlier than the president goes public along with his assaults on Barrett too. He has already executed so with his criticisms of the Federal Society’s animating pressure, Leonard Leo, who’s extra accountable than anybody else within the nation for the present conservative slant of America’s courts, and who, Trump casually famous, “in all probability hates America.” Once more, from out of the mouths of babes…
Common
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Wouldn’t the whole lot be a lot simpler if Musk and Barrett—and the remainder of the Federal Society judges who’re unexpectedly proving themselves thorns in Trump’s aspect—might merely be as quiescent as Peter Hegseth, the eminently unqualified lout who rose to political prominence solely by means of his potential to out-lickspittle just about everybody else in Trump’s orbit?
Since he grew to become protection secretary earlier this yr, Hegseth has been busily waging struggle on DEI—which, in his petty and bigoted thoughts, appears to contain firing every general he can who has pores and skin darker than his and genitalia totally different from his, in addition to wantonly humiliating transgender soldiers; restoring Confederate names to military bases; and ordering the censorship of military libraries.
Now, Hegseth has determined that having a US navy vessel named after murdered homosexual rights icon Harvey Milk is in some way an affront to American masculinity. And so, with a view to make America’s navy extra deadly, with a view to enhance the caliber of the killing machine, he has ordered the renaming of the ship.
A Pentagon spokesman stated, “Secretary Hegseth is dedicated to making sure that the names hooked up to all DOD installations and property are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s historical past, and the warrior ethos.”
The primary third of that trifecta, I believe it’s honest to say, is undeniably true. Hegseth and Trump are of the identical small-minded ilk. Each consider that America is greatest served by scrubbing its historical past of all complexity, variety, and cultural pluralism. Each consider that America is a white, heterosexual, manly man’s land. And each are insecure sufficient to consider that any acknowledgement of the nation’s flaws and any nod to the progress embodied by civil rights advocates corresponding to Harvey Milk in some way destroy the pedestal upon which individuals like them perch.
Who of their proper thoughts would attempt to invisiblize the tales of American heroes corresponding to Harvey Milk? The identical form of homunculus scoundrels who consider that on this nation of immigrants, on this nation of tons of of hundreds of thousands of distinctive tales, “variety,” “inequality,” “discrimination,” “underprivileged,” “feminism,” “neighborhood,” “discrimination,” and “local weather change” are all dirty words.
There’s not a whit of greatness to those individuals, not a whit of decency. They’re small, scared little creatures, leaping at each shadow, spooked by each whiff of distinction.
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