Don’t let your glee interfere with your loathing.
Watching Trump and Musk slug it out on social media is entertaining. But the experience can be so heady that before you know it you’ve lost your bearings.
Wait, what? Elon is going full WWE on Trump? He’s calling the one and only piece of legislation that Trump and MAGA have had a shot at passing this year “a disgusting abomination?” He’s saying Trump wouldn’t have won the election in 2024 without him? He’s making the old man real real mad?
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Maybe, for one moment, you’re starting to see what those five (acknowledged) Musk baby mamas saw in him.
Don’t fall for it.
As Trump noted, Elon was for the budget bill before he was against it. As Trump observed, Elon turned on it when he got pushed out of the White House and saw the tax credits for electric vehicles cut. As Trump observed, it sure sounds like Elon has sour grapes. Maybe, as Trump suggested, the way to really cut spending was to eliminate all those sweetheart deals that Musk’s companies have with the U.S. government.
Hey, Trump’s making sense. Maybe he’s not as bad as we thought.
No, no, no. What’s in that popcorn that you’re eating as you watch the fight of the century? Trump and Musk are monsters. Sure, it’s funny to compare their battle to King Kong versus Godzilla. But it would take a vast army of giant apes and fire-breathing lizards to do the kind of damage America’s billionaire odd couple have been doing and intend to do.
Musk’s Texas chainsaw massacre of critical U.S. government agencies will cause tens of thousands of people to suffer and many to die. Cutting vital U.S. food and medical aid programs will do that. Cutting critical HHS and CDC programs will do that. Cutting back the ability of the country to identify and respond to natural disasters will do that.
Trump is behind all that too, of course. And he’s behind a bill that will add over two trillion dollars to the national debt over the next ten years. He’s behind a bill that will pay for tax cuts for he and Musk and other billionaires by cutting Medicaid for almost 16 million people.
He’s the one giving cover to the war crimes of Vladimir Putin and Bibi Netanyahu. He’s the one who made the U.S. government one of the world’s most corrupt.
He’s the one who has launched a masked thuggish Gestapo against the American people. He’s the one seeking to gut the rule of law in this country. He’s the one making the climate crisis worse. He’s in a war with science and the truth.
These are not monsters from a science fiction movie battling it out to boost summer movie ticket sales. They really are crushing buildings, cars, mass transit systems, cities, and countless innocent people beneath their feet.
Yes, it’s perversely enjoyable when Musk suggests Trump should be impeached. (He should be.) Or that Trump is probably all over the Epstein files. (Of course he is. Heck, some of the idiot bros who voted for him probably saw that as a sign of Cialis-enhanced mega-tumescent alphaness.)
Sure, it’s a pleasure to see Trumpworld finally turn on the calculating, supremely weird, tech bro who has named all his kids after his favorite typographical errors. Steve Bannon—who in his sweaty, unshaven slobbery evokes a movie swamp monster himself—is calling for Musk’s companies to be taken over by the government and for the South African-born con artist to be deported! How rich!
Never mind that we shouldn’t use the government to either enforce personal vendettas or to promote personal enrichment of government officials (and their families).
This is way better than any of the other reality sleaze on television. For sure Simon Cowell would slap down his buzzer and send these guys to the finals in Las Vegas in which they would face off against other animal acts.
But when the social media food fight stops, what will we be left with?
Trump will still be standing. So will Musk. As Musk noted, Trump will be around for another three and a half years and the pale, fleshy tower of ketamine himself will likely be around for decades more. That’s bad news for us however you slice it. We can’t get rid of our worst president in history easily and getting rid of the super-empowered broligarchs who swept him into power will be even harder.
Both will be weakened by this. But by how much? Trump’s followers have already bought into the presidency of a twice-impeached, insurrectionist, racist, misogynist convicted criminal.
He’s been insulted by better men than Elmo and survived politically. Musk has lost some of his “I’m the king of the world” cache. But he’s still the richest man in the world and can meddle in our national affairs to his hearts content until his frozen brain is ultimately launched to the storage facility he is preparing for it on Mars.
Sadly, as weakened as they may be by this, both monsters will retain a great deal of power. Which is fine in the movie biz when you want sequels. But the sequels to this will very likely lose their appeal quickly.
Further, how do you think this makes us look to the world? It is already clear our government is broken. It is already apparent we are circling the drain as a superpower. Do you doubt it?
Earlier Thursday Germany’s mild-mannered Chancellor Friedrich Merz, became the latest foreign leader (following the equally mild-mannered Mark Carney of Canada) to turn one of Trump’s Oval Office ambushes against Trump. He dunked on Trump’s defenses of Putin and even pointed out to the befuddled Trump that Germans consider the defeat of Naziism to be a good thing.
But although we are clearly weakened today by our internal divisions, splits with our allies, loss of credibility, and betrayal of the values on which we stood for so many years, we can and almost assuredly be weakened further not just by this split but by what it says about America under Trump. And no, I don’t just mean it will be confusing for foreign potentates to figure out which of the two guys to pay off to grease the skids for future good relations with the U.S. (Both will figure out a way to cash in.)
No, the real damage done by today’s fight was not measured by the blows they struck against one another. Rather it was to the country whose flesh they have been tearing at with their vulture politician beaks since January. Trump again degraded the presidency just as he did when he hired Musk. Musk again thought only of himself and his bottom line. Both again looked upon all of us as the kind of collateral damage they could live with if destroying our lives might leave one crypto penny more in their hot crypto wallets.
Our institutions emerged weaker, our global standing further diminished, our enemies encouraged by the unending chaos within our government.
So, sure, enjoy flabby-old-guy-night at the fights. But don’t lose sight of its costs. Yes, laugh at these idiots. But don’t forget how dangerous, repulsive and destructive they really are.
