Tag: Trump’s Musk Problem

Nobody Voted for Elon Musk

Buck Banks

Elon Musk may have pleasured himself with his ability to slash Twitter’s workforce and turn it into a janky site for fascist fanboys. But America is not a software company. And letting a thin-skinned, Ketamine-fueled, video-game cheating, Nazi apologist billionaire take over the machinery of the United States is not something that anyone voted for. Finally Democrats in Congress are beginning to make this point. But citizens, too, must be full-throated. Because none of us, not a single one of us, voted for Elon Musk.

— Clara Jeffery, Mother Jones

Trump Brings Clarity to Musk’s Role

Buck Banks

“Elon can’t do—and won’t do—anything without our approval and we’ll give him the approval where appropriate. Where not appropriate, we won’t.”

— “President Trump on Monday said there were curbs in place to prevent Elon Musk from doing anything in the government without the White House’s blessing, responding to growing confusion about who was overseeing Musk’s push to dismantle multiple agencies,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Musk Mulls Dodging DOGE Goals

Buck Banks

$2 $1 trillion

Tech billionaire Elon Musk said Wednesday that his budget-cutting effort on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump would most likely not find $2 trillion in savings, backtracking on a goal he set earlier as co-head of a new advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, NBC News reported. Musk told political strategist Mark Penn in an interview broadcast on X that the $2 trillion figure was a “best-case outcome” and that he thought there was only a “good shot” at cutting half that.

Donald Has an Elon Problem

Buck Banks

“Trump can flick Marco Rubio aside like dandruff; brush Mike Johnson off like an errant crumb; turn Pam Bondi into Nikki Haley by midnight tonight. His orbit is filled with botoxed disposables who hang upon his favor; courtiers who can be stripped of their livelihoods and status — and exiled from MAGA altogether — if they offend the Orange God King. Trump can’t fire JD Vance, but he could destroy his truckling veep’s political future with a single Truth Social post. … Not so with Elon Musk. … Musk is the world’s richest man; a cult-figure in his own right, and the master of his social media domain. Now, in part thanks to Trump’s own patronage, he also holds sway over much of his domestic agenda via DOGE. If that were not enough, Musk is rapidly fashioning himself into a global power broker — with a decidedly Trump-like flavor. … Indeed, the two men seem to be dueling for attention — vying with one another with competing distractions, as Musk conducts his own independent foreign policy.”

— Charlie Sykes on Substack