Musk did very well indeed under Biden. The IRA subsidized his factories, consumer tax rebates juiced car sales, and satellite launches puffed SpaceX.
And then he put all of his accumulated political capital, and nearly $300 million in cash to propel Trump/GOP to victory...just so they could throw him under the bus and strip him of all the goodies the Dems had showered on him. 20/20 hindsight notwithstanding, how could he have been so fricking stupid?
I think the reason is that -- like the industrialists who got behind Hitler -- he thought he could control him and, by extension, take full command of the gravy train he was riding.
These people are malignant narcissists. Their decisions aren't rational. They're appetitive.
Moreover, it's no secret that Musk is stupid. He's just a child of privilege who inherited a large toolkit to work with. Now he's run through them all and we can see he can't actually operate them. Trump can see it too.
Musk's personal Night of the Long Knives is coming when he's dragged before Congress and made to explain how he destroyed government.
And, no, Elon. You can't come back to Canada. We'll see to that.
Congress will not bring Musk to account unless the Dems get in in 2026, if we still have elections. But you're absolutely right about the industrialists and Hitler.
With respect, even the Republicans will want to drag Musk into a hearing by his hair plugs because they will need a scapegoat when their constituents begin to feel the effects of DOGE's nihilistic vandalism. Trump cannot be to blame for anything, ever. So Musk will be obliged to take the fall.
Another Hitler analogy: remember what he did to Ernst Roehm! And they were close friends and even closer associates. Musk, on the other hand, is just more chum in the water to draw the sharks.
Musk would be better off keeping his mouth shut and whispering "SpaceX" in the ear of whoever Trump is listening to now. I wonder if Trump would go so far as to take SpaceX for himself?
Or even better, grovel and pay into Trump's bribery account.
Musk has really painted himself into a corner. His businesses are international, but no one trusts him anymore. Trust and respect are words that are currently out of fashion...but that doesn't mean they don't have worth.
The Night of the Long Knives purged the True Believers. It can be argued that this is the fate of all True Believers who come to be perceived as a threat to the Führer, in this case Trump. Think not just of Röhm, but of Prigozhin recently. And now Musk? Yawn. Krugman may not want to live in "that kind" of country, but much of US history is hardly star-spangled. Mostly off-shore, but it was bound to be onshored at some point. While I don't wish harm on anyone, if it happens, I'll pop the corn.
Don't forget Stalin's purge of all his top Red Army generals right before Hitler attacked in 1941. Decimated the Army leadership so much, the Germans slaughtered millions of Russian soldiers before Zhukov led the desperate stand at Stalingrad. And then after the war, he banished Zhukov to a desolate post because he became more popular than Stalin.
Felon has already purged Military leadership of quality. All that is left is loyal to him, not the Constitution.
I think the Army making the parade as underwhelming as possible was a clear indication decent people are still in positions to make a difference. Let's hope it stays that way.
Absolutely, we should not forget. Let's add to the list: Stalin purged Yagoda, then Yezhov, then Beria, heads of the NKVD. He purged the old guard Bolsheviks Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, Rakovsky, Radek. Mao purged radical Red Guards. Let's go back further, Robespierre, that fanatical revolutionary was purged by his own - there were too many to list them all, the Girondins, the Dantonists, the Hébertists...But it's a common phenomenon. Louis de Saint-Just, aka "the Angel of Death" and henchman of Robespierre, said before his execution: "No one can rule innocently." It all reminds me of Goya's painting "Saturn Devouring his Son." I see that painting as a metaphor for autocratic paranoia. Isn't human history grand?
The True Believers are every bit as venal as the Maximum Leader, and therefore fully fungible because they're literally asking for it. Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, like a very dark sick joke, seems designed specifically to do the most devastating economic harm to Trump supporters. Same with DOGE.
Think of Berlin with the Red Army having reduced it to rubble and closing in for the kill.
Yeah, but notice that it did not prevent him from tanking both Twitter and Tesla, and his rockets regularly explode as though that were the actual mission.
You don't know what you are talking about. His Falcon 9 rocket is one of the most reliable launchers in history. Starship is a crazy ambitious program and the current version has had a string of failures. The is nothing fraudulent about the success of Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y. The is nothing fraudulent about the quality of the Tesla charging network.
Musk is a brilliant entrepreneur but he is not very good at politics. Trump used him and is now tossing him like a used condom.
Space X rockets explode regularly. A "rapid unscheduled disassembly", despite the clever branding, is by definition a devastating mission failure.
Tesla is tanking -- the company is actually shrinking in a growing market. Both the Robotaxi and the Cybertruck are boondoggles that will cost the company billions as complete write-offs. Teslas are the most dangerous vehicles on the road and enjoy an industry standard of "poor build quality". Feel free to look all of this up, which you should have done before you hit the "Reply" button.
And if Musk is so brilliant, then why has he made himself an enemy of someone who can and will relish destroying him?
The most important SpaceX rocket is the Falcon 9. It launched 134 times in 2024. Falcon 9 Block 5, the current version., has flown 443 times successfully and failed once, giving it a 99.77% success rate. One of the major payloads for the rocket are satellites for the Starlink constellation, of which 7855 satellites are currently operational. Starlink generated an estimated $8.2 billion in revenue last year.
The rocket which you have seen blowing up over the past few years is Starship, which is a development program. They are trying to produce a fully and rapidly reuseable rocket, which has never been done before. The past three flights have been unsuccessful.
So no, you don't know what you are talking about. You do end you post with a good question: "And if Musk is so brilliant, then why has he made himself an enemy of someone who can and will relish destroying him?"
I think Musk has a massive ego and is bad at politics. Making enemies of both President Trump and progressives is a bad idea. He has also made a bunch of enemies in Europe with his support for the AfD. Musk thinks that he is such a genius that he can get away with it.
AI is what Musk has to sell: for cars to drive themselves, for rocket stages to land themselves. The largest part of the damage Musk has done to our government recently was as a result of using AI without any tether to responsible human beings.
One might suspect that Musk's rockets explode on a regular basis because they're taxpayer-funded. Rather than putting the work and time in to make them fail-safe as NASA does, Musk just tries out another "oppsie!".
This is such an excellent point that I can't believe I haven't heard it expressed before.
Just as Tesla's "Full Self-Driving Software" has actually killed people, the exploding rockets of Space X come at the cost of someone else. All Elon has to do is to continue to collect his taxpayer-funded remittance cheques.
In Canada, back in the day, we had a term for this: "corporate welfare bum".
That's Elon to a t. A bum. A mooch. A deadbeat. Throw in a touch of ecological terrorist and serial killer, and you've got the complete profile.
Although your cynicism is well justified, I think there are two solid reasons to believe that Musk would not be so cavalier with taxpayer money: First, he would suffer reputational damage whenever there are high profile engineering failures and it would have negative impacts that would spill over into his other businesses and future projects; second, repeated failure makes it increasingly politically difficult for an administration to continue funding. Recall the grief Repubs gave to Obama for his $500 million investment in a solar start up (Solyndra ??) that went bust. If Musk wants the public funding to continue to flow, he would much rather have successes to point to.
But wait...Republicans make it their gameplay to attack any project that might disturb the oil industry, such as solar, or environmental project for that matter. And then, note the way they hooted at Biden's "incapacity" when barely a murmur is heard about Trump's obvious dementia. That's the Republican way of gaining and keeping power: point and jeer at any Democratic win; stay silent at any Republican failure. So watch....so long as Musk is on Trump's side he can be sure he'll be well-financed. If Trump goes after Musk for being "disloyal" you can be sure the $pigot will be turned off. As for reputational damage, Musk has already taken care of that with the Cybertruck.
He talent at Tesla was getting them VC money thru his PayPal connections and then getting government subsidies. He contributed, but not as the technical genius he made himself out to be.
Not to mention subsidies from Xi, which may have been more substantial than what he got here. At any rate, Musk does use the money he wangles from where ever to hire people who actually do know WTF they're doing.
That IS a talent, though it's not sufficiently unique to make him the Richest Man in the World. He does seem to have a good instinct for "The Next Big Thing!"
When they deport him to a third country, as the Supreme Court has just given the Republican administration the right to do, I don’t think he gets to pick which one. I am sure he would prefer Canada to El Salvador or South Sudan, but it won’t be up to him.
If he did manage to hide out in Canada, much as I don’t want him here, citizens have right of entry here, even if I don’t like them, so we have to let him come. But he will have no money left after Trump cancels all of his government contracts,so he won’t be able to do as much damage.
If he is not an American citizen anymore, he will not be allowed either to fund primary challenges, because foreigners are not permitted to donate to American campaigns, nor will he be able to start a new party. Stripping him of his citizenship will remove most of the threat to the Trump regime, and taking away his money will take care of the rest.
So I think the threat to strip him of his citizenship and deport him is quite serious. It’s the one-stop solution.
And how/why do you propose USCIS strips Mr. Musk from his citizenship? Also, if things really go wrong for him, he can leave and go to whatever country he prefers. People with enough money are welcome everywhere.
Any excuse will serve, including concealing illegal activities before you became a citizen. Musk has admitted to working in the US illegally for a few months after his student visa expired. That’s more than enough. Though as it happens the Republican administration is also looking into using political beliefs as a justification for stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship.
As for money, if the Republican administration follows through on its threats to strip Musk’s businesses of their federal contracts, SpaceX would fold immediately and Tesla, which is supporting everything, would tank shortly thereafter. He would be broke, and unwelcome everywhere.
The fun part will be seeing Musk traveling in steerage on a boat headed to S. Africa. A country where millions of people will probably die because of Musk's DOGE cutting of USAID.
That will give him a front row seat for the fictional "White Genocide" he's going on and on about. And -- irony of ironies -- he'll be the only white person in South Africa who won't be allowed to claim political refugee status in the US!
Yes, but the threat of equality and civil rights are just too much of a threat for people like Elon and the right to deal with and they'll sacrifice billions of dollars before living in world that forces them to treat minorities and liberals they don't like equally.
"like the industrialists who got behind Hitler -- he thought he could control him" - it is because oligarchs usually do. And even if a truly determined dictator succeeds in ending the rule of the oligarchy, it is always only temporary. After all, in the long run, the oligarchy will rule over any dictator. At least over his successors.
Because it can't be otherwise. There is only one way in which a strong government can manage an oligarchy - if the government opposes the oligarchy in its own field - the field of wealth creation For this, the government must have its own extensive public sector. This can be done in other countries, and some other countries have successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach. But this is not possible in the USA. That's why the situation in the United States is becoming increasingly precarious.
I don't mean to be mean, but what you're effectively saying is "it can't be otherwise", but only for the United States because, of course, other advanced democracies have demonstrated as much...
Well, a stricter formulation would require more definitions and explanations. I just wanted to be brief. Let's put it this way: according to the rules of the game that the US has set for itself, "it cannot be otherwise." But in principle, other options are possible. And please note that I did not mean a communist government with a fully socialized economy. I was referring to a fairly broad public sector along with the private one.
Nub.....How could 77 million people be that dumb too? Their lives were improving under Biden and then they got mesmerized again by the worlds greatest conman and threw their vote to him.
Why? The mainstream media constantly told the public that inflation was really bad and used the price of eggs to illustrate that “fact”. They kept that narrative up even after inflation was returning to normal levels. I believe the reason the media buried good economic news was that information debunked their strong belief that we would have to have a serious recession to get inflation under control as Larry Summers and other austerity proponents had claimed. This is the same media that has refused for decades to admit that the economy does better under Democrats and that Republicans repeatedly have exploded the deficit/debt with their unproductive tax cuts for the rich. Confirmation bias is powerful.
Post election polls of swing voters showed the vast majority of voters were unaware that the US had the world’s best economy with the best job market in over 50 years and wages outpacing inflation, with the biggest gains going to the lowest incomes. Many told pollsters that although they were personally doing well financially and their regions were too, the national economy was really bad. Exit polls showed that a whopping 67% percent of voters thought the economy was bad. That is the same economy that The Economist had just declared was “the envy of the world” — a story most of the media buried. That mistaken belief is why swing voters chose Trump the “great businessman”:
The media's always been mad, but I've never seen it as bad as it was in the 2020s. They fought a scorched-earth war with the Biden administration for four years straight and pretty much suppressed anything that could spell good news for Biden, to the point that things like Biden capping insulin prices at $35.00 were reported as "insurance companies say they'll cap insulin prices at $35.00!" There's no bigger factor in where we are now than them.
And they continue to ignore him. No Republican US Senator attended the funeral service for the Minnesota lawmaker and her husband who were assassinated. And Trump certainly did not attend. But Joe Biden attended, as did Kamala Harris. There were some moving videos of Biden greeting people and comforting them and stopping to talk to a disabled woman. It brought me to tears. But I saw nothing in the major media outlets; all the videos I saw were from social media accounts.
Absolutely. Not to mention the incessant coverage of Biden's age, his gait, his voice, etc while giving Trump and his insane ramblings a pass. When Trump lied about not knowing anything about Project 2025 or being involved with it, the credulous media took him at his word, despite how many of his former staffers worked on it.
While saying zero about Donny Dementia’s word salad:
Mr. President, is there an expected timeframe detainees will spend here? days, weeks, months? and does that have anything to do with the immigration judges you just spoke about, being trained and staffed here?”
Donny: “what was the first part of your question?”
reporter: “is there a specific timeframe you expect the detainees to stay here? days, weeks, months?”
Donny: “in Florida?”
reporter: “yes.”
Donny: “I’m gonna spend a lot. look, this is my home state. I love it. I love your government. I love all the people around— these are all friends of mine. and they know I’m— very well. I’m not surprised that they do so well. they’re great— people. uh, Ron has been a friend of mine for a long time. I feel very comfortable in this state. I’ll spend a lot of time here.”
in the space of one second, Donny forgets what question he’s been asked, and starts improvising a nonsensical answer.
Yes. And is the media beating that economic drum now that the economy is about to hit a recession and many people will suffer? We know because we read Substack, but the corporate/billionaire media is now silent.
Also, it helps that the electorate is completely ignorant. The most common search on election day was “did Joe Biden drop out of the presidential race” you cannot govern an electorate in a democracy that is this ignorant. 48% of people don’t even know what the BBB is and only 8% understand that it’s going to cut their medical care.
But the Dems didn't understand that the media had sold out and expected it to function as a truth teller. Media organization publicly being humiliated and bending the knee to Krasnov may finally break through to them. Admittedly I am looking for the pony in a pile of horseshit.
The media would have silenced it as well. We dropped our WaPo subscription the day both Biden and Trump were in the front page. Biden was president but the American flag was behind Trump.
The mainstream media also didn’t explain that the $8.7 trillion of debt. Trump added to the economy in his first four-year term, a 40% increase lead to inflation once the economy reopens while supply chains were still screwed up. Stupid people didn’t think about that and that is why they are paying a stupidity tax.
Yes. Racism accounts for all Republican political successes since 1968. Nixon/Atwater learned from George Wallace that racist campaigns succeed all over the country, and Republican politicians have been riding that horse ever since.
The carnival barker advertised a great freak show, sort of like the lynchings on Sunday after church. They impressed Adolf and now the Nazi version impresses chump. And around and around we go.
Propaganda is a very powerful weapon. Substandard education and a Media wasteland of Fox "News" produces a voting class happy to shoot itself in the foot.
Their lives were not improving and they thought that country was going in the wrong direction. It is very condescending to call them dumb. And it is also very stupid. Never underestimate others.
“THEY” were flat out wrong. According to the facts, period. So they are either ignorant (misinformed if you are more comfy with that adjective)or willfully ignorant . Fact is the economy was improving and better than any other country on. the. Planet.
Areas like SW PA, rural places are still in decline. They only relate to what they see in the world they live in and it has gone tremendously downhill from its glory days of yesteryear, much like the deep south that thought France would come to their defense again when European manufacturers moved to Egypt and India as suppliers again, I read in Empire of Cotton.
They are not stupid. They correctly perceive that their only hope of preserving the systemic legal, economic, and political advantages of white Americans is to vote for Republicans.
True, but their votes were a small fraction of the votes for Trump. Roughly 60% of white voters, including 70% of white working class voters and 80% of white evangelical voters, voted for Trump. Seems ironic that if one in three white evangelicals were decent human beings (instead if only one in five), Trump would have lost the election.
The media certainly sees Musk as a genius. They also playdown the insanity of his childish belief that we will be colonizing Mars in the near future, as if that goal would be more feasible than saving this planet. The media rarely challenges the assumptions behind that quest which we taxpayers will pay bigly for instead of funding silly things like public schools, health care coverage, etc. Weirdly Musk is OK with cutting scientific research except for space exploration projects that fund his company.
Mass media also built up Trump into something more than a local real estate nepo baby, Reagan into something more than a B movie actor, and generally reinforced politics as entertainment. And this was AFTER the exposure of William Randolph Hearst’s role in manipulating the US into the Spanish American War.
I think Hearst put the screws to a playwright who wrote--was it Citizen Kane?-- about him. That was in a copy of the Smithsonian recently. I hope that an internet search will explain why Hearst manipulated us into that war.
Which is why some of us will be popping corn if anything does happen. When you are so self-serving and insensitive to your fellow creatures, and forget that we are all in it together, you just don't get the supports when your luck runs out.
The idiot should know that the timeline for the sun destroying the Earth is 4 billion years. He is a different stupid than chump but did present better. And he has worked a day or two in his life, even if it was to steal from Tesla’s work.
Because Biden dared try to place some regulations on the tech industry and had an actual antitrust department to go after their constant consolidation.
Good comments. Many Americans think that anyone who claims to have lots of money and acts nutty is a genius. Many of the MAGA base think that Donald is a business genius. We live in a world of misinformation.
just stop the sugar-coating..it isn't misinformation, its bald faced lies..told again and again..TRUMPF IS A LIAR, lies are meant to deceive...which TRUMPF does, i sometimes wonder if he believes his own lies. you kids had better get your heads out of the clouds.. the shit is coming at you, hard and fast.
The right word is "disinformation," meaning lies deliberately told to get a certain response from the recipient of the lies. Misinformation could be a mistake, but disinformation is very, very deliberate. It's what most people think the word "propaganda" means (but propaganda can actually be true - disinformation is NEVER true).
China gave Musk free land, low interest loans, and free access to the Chinese market unencumbered by limitations put on other foreign car manufacturers. I believe more Teslas are made in China than in any other country.
And Musk is finding out what other businessmen who went to China 25 years ago discovered: they’ll initially work with you, learn your business, then make their own version cheaper and undercut you. My state sent an agricultural trade delegation over to China back then. Farmers were excited about the new market until four years later, when Chinese agriculturalists started producing for their own market using the techniques perfected by US farmers. Boy were our farmers mad, but it wasn’t the only instance of this happening and they should have known better. Must certainly should have known better since he is a relative Johnny come lately to China.
Musk is related to a Russian on his mother's side....a cousin of his, I believe. She's part of the new oligarchy over there and they're all neo-feudalists. I think I discovered it in a comment on here and sure enough a published article with pics in social media posts confirmed it. Perhaps the data extracted through DOGE is Musk's insurance policy with Putin if he needs to pull an 'Edward Snowden'.
Because, believe it or not, all of these people lack wisdom. A peaceful society that focused on giving security and dignity to ordinary citizens would tolerate the narcissism of overly wealthy people. But these, mostly men, want their wealth to confer unbridled power over society. The current despicable legislation is not to confer more money on the wealthy. They know they don't need it. That is the smokescreen. It is to take wealth away from the middle and working classes and thereby crush their hopes and their courage. Mitch McConnell summarized it most cogently: "They'll get over it". If the Republic somehow manages to stumble through this disaster, the best way to insure that it never happens again is to put all of this house of deplorables in jail-for a long time-as a warning to future autocratic aspirants.
More than one tech bro's fortune rests on the government's largesse. To borrow Michael Happy's phrase, "these people are malignant narcissists." To that end, each thinks he is a genius deserving of his wealth and adoration.
Has anyone listened to Ross Douthat's interview of Peter Thiel? I make myself read or listen to commentators I think are in the wrong camp and both are worthy of a measure of disagreeable-ness. But it was an engrossing if chilling conversation about how Thiel, and by probable extension his tech bro billionaires, see that the future of the world is to be carved up into fiefdoms run by them with help from AI. They have far too much influence even if they are not in the actual seats of power.
I daresay they're going to wish they had not encouraged every white male (including a lot of mentally ill men) to have one or more assault rifles. It's not going to be fun for the elite class if that group ever wakes up and realizes what their so-called "populists" (greedy bastard billionaires and politicians) have done to them.
I'm not sure Trump and Co. cares about DoD payloads. They are laser focused on rounding up as many people as they can with ICE, hence the humungous payout for Homeland Security and ICE in the brutal bill the Senate passed.
(The other day I learned that the persons in the Space Force are referred to as Guardians--as opposed to soldiers or Airmen. Like the angels or the baseball team?)
True. Obama made a mistake in not supporting the space program, thereby opening the doors to privatization, even though we have the Space Force. I thought that the Trump administration has hatched a plan to combine Space Force into some other department, although I don't know if that plan has started the road to enactment.
Not sure, but the Greenland madness figures in somehow. We have a base there, formerly known as Thule, now Pittufik, Inuit name of the place. The base has been there since WW 2 and formerly had thousands stationed there; now there a a couple of hundred Space Force people. It's physically about the size of Chicago. What could Trump mean when he says we need more of Greenland?
It may be as simple as this - if DonnyJon acquires Canada and Greenland for the US, he goes down in the history books as the President who was responsible for the greatest increase in the size of the United States.
I imagine it to be tech oligarch influenced for access to its mining important for the manufacture of electric batteries and future access to virgin sea bed mining in the Arctic.
Biden was good for Musk financially, but his administration wasn’t into promoting the tech bros as Masters of the Universe. Indeed, antitrust actions and AI regulation were on the horizon. Musk decided Trump was likely to indulge his whims to translate money into control. Musk discovered what Gandalf told Saruman about evil lords who don’t share power.
He likes to think he’s the smartest person in the room, which makes him vulnerable to his own cupidity and mendaciousness. In other words, the fucker got what he deserved. I hope to see the day when he is penniless myself. I will laugh and dance.
I've assumed Musk's tirades are as he begins to see his comically over-valued company starting to circle the toilet bowl. But is he also starting to realize that he has been set up to be the fall guy for the failure of all the government services that he wrecked during his Doge rampage? All those senators and reps he's threatening with primary challenges are quietly sharpening their knives for the hearings next year (or this fall) when they will be shocked shocked at what this maniac did to their beloved Social Security Administration
Great editorial Paul! My son was and still is a Civil War fanatic and we spent three days at Gettysburg about one month before September 11, 2001. We toured the entire battlefield and I stood at Cemetery Ridge and looked out at the open field where the cream of the Confederate Army (10,000 men) walked into withering cannon fire and 30 minutes later a vast majority were dead. Anybody who calls Robert E. Lee a great general should stand at Cemetery Ridge and basically the traitorous Confederate States of America lost the Civil War on a Pennsylvania battlefield. One of the greatest Presidents, FDR, lit a flame in the 1930’s at the last organized reunion of both the remaining Union and Confederate veterans! We are now facing another Civil War and the leader of the anti-democracy forces stated yesterday in a Florida swamp that we had a “lot of bad people” in the USA who will end up in the Florida swamp! Really, Orange Monster, please look in the mirror because that will be your fate! God bless the heroes of the Union forces at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863 and God Bless the patriots of 2025-2026 who will rise up to stop the Orange Monster!!!
He's not from the future, he knows his history. The most obtuse Republicans and Conservatives (they are legion!) never find the value in education, leaving themselves open to horrific shocks when consequences catch up to them.
i'm assuming that this is not Taylor's fIrst rodeo; yes, Musk is seeing that he has been had..biggly...by another man who is most certainly his inferior..how did he allow himself to get so screwed
The thing is that Trump & Musk are in many ways the same. Both are sociopathic narcissists who are more showman/conman than anything else when dealing with others. Both think they are the smartest guy in the room, always.
Don Galloway (NYU biz prof) made the good point that it was extremely stupid for Musk to alienate Democrats, who as a group are more likely to want and buy an electric vehicle. I saw a Tesla with a bumper sticker that read I BOUGHT THIS BEFORE I KNEW HE WAS CRAZY, and a sign in a window of a Tesla dealership that said, "We hate him, too."
I sold mine before it was apparent he was going crazy. A damn good car, though not without flaws mainly due to sloppy manufacturing. Of course, his reputation as an engineering genius is long debunked; but as a sharp businessman he was good enough to wrest control of the company and manage to employ a bunch of really sharp engineers - and arrange for billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize his expensive but really advanced cars.
It would be a positive if he hadn't conspicuously turned into - or turned out to be - such a complete asshole.
His Teslas have been recalled 37 times for defects and his cybertruck was literally glued together. His supposed Starship
Rocket is 0-10 in completing one orbit of the Earth and wasted $4 billion of our monies! The Saturn V moon rocket was 13-0 and never failed once!!! Musk is a big bullshit artist just like another guy who is colored Orange!!!
Hey, I said he was nothing as an engineer. And the positive achievements of his companies were impressive. For a while. But his skill at hiring and managing the best engineers has been, as you say, less than impressive, deteriorating with time like his sanity and all.
Masked paramilitary thugs roaming the streets. Newly opened concentration camps. Suppression and criminalization of opposing viewpoints. Anyone recognize the pattern?
I DO!!!! I grew up in South Africa in the 60s ---- This is EXACTLY what we saw. Illegal unlimited arrests: no one being allowed to know what happened to that individual; The press was censored in many ways - but also could not REPORT on the illegal arrest; People were BANNED - which meant that they could not be in a 'group' of ore than two; The press again could not report that. People were DEPORTED, and also were killed - thrown out of the windows. Nelson Mandela was 'remanded; to a prison island for 27 years. The ONLY reason he was not killed was the Helen Suzman, the sole member of the Progressive Party would visit him monthly. While it was the blacks who were affected the worst (the brown people in this country) the whites were not exempt from all this (like stripping US citizens of their citizenship) As much as I try to be active and optimistic, and as much as the terrible polling about all of the issues the criminal has advanced ---- it took 40 YEARS in South Africa for real change to happen.
A fellow graduate student at that time, a white South African, was stripped of her passport by her government for her activities opposing apartheid and could not return to her own country.
I actually find some comfort in such stories as this. It was 40 years for real change to happen, and that's been the case in other countries as well. The US will probably be going rapidly down for my lifetime, but it's nice to think that sanity might return. We had a good idea with rule of law and democracy. Ideas are hard to extinguish.
By the time required for sanity to return, global warming will have shrunk the land area capable of supporting life for large mammals by enough to make battles for livable space catastrophic for Homo sapien populations.
We definitely saw it coming. Hansen published the definitive data on global warming in 1980. You and I perhaps did what we could, but the willful ignorance of the American majority ensured the failure to take effective measures against catastrophe. Might be too late now, but will surely be too late when (if ever) US voters understand their plight.
FYI. it probably will never be reported, that GULAG Trumpf visited yesterday has already been flooded, by a normal FLORIDA summer rain,,it doesn't jusr rain in south fFLORIDA..WE get torrential. tropical downpours. DESANTIS knew what florida is like in the summer..hurricanes and water..lots of it..but the s---head went ahead and built this gulag anyway..and FLORIDA TAXPYERS will pay for it and for the manintenance of it....porta toilets for 5, 000 inmates..will be dumped in the GLADES.oh, the water table in the GLADES is just a foot above sea level.
Professor Krugman: this is a real life bonfire of the vanities, except there will be (and already is) FAR MORE collateral damage to the livelihoods, health and lives of we the people.
Musk and all the other oligarchs did just fine under Obama and Biden and would have done just fine under Harris. Musk almost certainly wouldn’t have gone to jail. People with money in this country and around the globe are seldomly held accountable for crimes they commit. He would simply have been heavily fined.
Musk actively joined because of a personal issue with his transgender child. Father of the Year, this guy.
And you said you didn’t see Trumo taking businesses from a rich guy and give it to a loyalist in this country as of yet. I see it happening already.
People need to remember that the agencies and “waste” Musk supposedly “cut” wasn’t cut at all. No money was handed back to ye treasury. It is currently frozen to blackmail and extort first institutions and THEN it will head directly to people. Lawsuits that would have been considered a nuisance and 100% winnable are being settled by major media outlets with a nod to not criticize or even COVER the president in an unfavorable light.
A researcher from Hertiage said and I must paraphrase that “There is nothing special about the water in the Charles that makes people smarter. Top researchers go thee because that’s where the money is. Take the money away and they’ll go there.” Meaning take the money already granted to Harvard, MIt! Columbia, Cornell, BU, Tufts and simply hand it over to universities led by loyalists. Take taxpayer dollars and hand it to friendly religious groups (ie Christian and Catholic) to run schools and teach what you tell them. They are following the playbook of Russia and Hungary to a tee.
And considering the amount of blatant bribery, corruption and STEALING, extortion, and viscous attacks on opponents in just six months, I can’t imagine how much further we will sink. And they won’t assassinate political opponents. They don’t have to. All they need to is put out the hit and wait for some nut job to hear the call to arms. And it is not both sides. It is one violent side who knows the only way they stay in power is to lie, cheat, and use force, threats and smears.
In an interview with his transgender child in NYT, s/he revealed that s/he wasn't the cause of his swerve to the far right--that he had always been so. Quite a mature 19? year old is what I thought. The ones who rose to the top in Silicon Valley no longer have to pretend to be liberal now.
I don't see - although it's a pleasant thought - on what grounds Musk would have gone to jail under an honest regime, based on what he did before 2021. Any suggestions?
I believe it was fraud and not disclosing he was buying shares secretly beyond the limit allowed by law.
He was charged with not disclosing he was buying more tha 5% of shares in Twitter. He bought shares artificially low and basically did what all trumps friends do….screwed over other investors to benefit himself.
He could also have been in hot water for buying votes in PA.
But I guess he doesn’t have to worry now. All it cost him was a rounding error in campaign contributions and completely destroying the tech apparatus of the government and handing over privileged information to Voyght to use as blackmail and extortion for the next…I dunno…forever.
Spot on as usual, Dr Krugman. Nothing good coming from this as it shows just how impotent even the richest oligarchs are when up against even a fledgling oligarchy. This should scare the hell out of anyone given the road we are on.
I think it already has scared the hell out of business leaders. They are being damaged, right left and center with only whispers to be heard. Look how quick big legal firms were to capitulate.
Red Notice and Freezing Order. Browder nails the rise and fall and re-rise of the oligarchs in Russia. One other big takeaway from those books is for citizens to beware of being 'gifted' shares of the country's commons and then being encouraged to sell them cheaply in a 'marketplace' where the shares are snapped up by the favored oligarchs. Goodbye US national lands and resources if that happens.
Yeah, I gave my Soldiers a tour of Gettysburg a few years ago, and as I pointed out to them: essential though Chamberlain's actions were at Gettysburg, and as deserving of the Medal of Honor as they were, they were nowhere near the bravest nor most superhuman things he did in uniform. And wonderful though his deeds in uniform were, they were nowhere near the bravery he showed facing down a mob on the steps of Maine's Capitol. It is a travesty that we didn't rename Bragg for the guy.
That DT missive was far too coherent to have been actually written by Trump. I will bet it was done by Stephen Miller, who has one very serious bone to pick wth Musk.
And, I don't think Musk really realized how bat-shit crazy these people are when he threw in with them. He knows now, so I wonder if that changes any part of the equation.
To some extent, he does. He was able to cut transmissions to Ukraine in the early stages of that war because he didn't want them to use the system to guide their drones.
Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao...they have the ability to make people believe they are on their side and against their enemies. Personal charisma.
The Economist told about interviewing Trump before the 2016 election and they wondered which was the real Trump. The charming man they talked to in his penthouse who seemed so reasonable, or the maniac they heard on the campaign trail.
These terrible villains of history have the ability to make person after person believe in them, even with ample evidence that they aren't to be trusted.
They love their wizard because they share his white supremacist beliefs and deeply appreciate his unabashed willingness to take actions grounded in those beliefs.
This is the inevitable consequence of two people who team up when they are both very weak, insecure people whose only competence is getting people to pay attention.
Amazing how many of the rich forget whose money made them rich. Maybe boycotts of sports, movies, online sellers, and streamers will remind them. Better to sacrifice things we don’t need than have things we need (accessible health care) disrupted or taken away.
Absolutely. The only power we have left may be to refuse to play. Stop buying from any entity who enables Trump. Bezos and Musk and the TechBoys may be individually above boycotts, but the systems they created are dependent on players with money (i.e., the public).
The progression from marches, to boycotts, to one day general strikes, to multi day general strikes, to passive aggressive non-participation in all types of societal activities . . . may be necessary in light of the surrender of the courts, the Congress, American business leaders.
We may be forced to withdraw - our money, our time, our involvement, our commitment.
Nothing would please the right more than violence in the streets - all too many of them are itching to unlimber their assault rifles . . .
tRump is a nearly pure state machine in his deal making. He only cares about what he wants and will discard all promises once he has what he wants. He does remember and act on all things that oppose or hurt him. On those he takes revenge without mercy.
Giving tRump what he wants gains you nothing after he has what he wants!!!
All the "negotiation" with universities and law firms are all about tRump gaining control. His only negotiating model is "I win; you lose." All negotiations get forced into that model. He will not honor any promises he makes to get what he wants.
Musk did very well indeed under Biden. The IRA subsidized his factories, consumer tax rebates juiced car sales, and satellite launches puffed SpaceX.
And then he put all of his accumulated political capital, and nearly $300 million in cash to propel Trump/GOP to victory...just so they could throw him under the bus and strip him of all the goodies the Dems had showered on him. 20/20 hindsight notwithstanding, how could he have been so fricking stupid?
I think the reason is that -- like the industrialists who got behind Hitler -- he thought he could control him and, by extension, take full command of the gravy train he was riding.
These people are malignant narcissists. Their decisions aren't rational. They're appetitive.
Moreover, it's no secret that Musk is stupid. He's just a child of privilege who inherited a large toolkit to work with. Now he's run through them all and we can see he can't actually operate them. Trump can see it too.
Musk's personal Night of the Long Knives is coming when he's dragged before Congress and made to explain how he destroyed government.
And, no, Elon. You can't come back to Canada. We'll see to that.
Congress will not bring Musk to account unless the Dems get in in 2026, if we still have elections. But you're absolutely right about the industrialists and Hitler.
With respect, even the Republicans will want to drag Musk into a hearing by his hair plugs because they will need a scapegoat when their constituents begin to feel the effects of DOGE's nihilistic vandalism. Trump cannot be to blame for anything, ever. So Musk will be obliged to take the fall.
Another Hitler analogy: remember what he did to Ernst Roehm! And they were close friends and even closer associates. Musk, on the other hand, is just more chum in the water to draw the sharks.
I wonder if that was Trump's plan all along -- to scapegoat Musk when things went South.
Trump is not intelligent. But he has animal cunning.
Animal -- like on the rodent level.
Like, say, a rat that knows where all its hidey-holes are.
Can we stop insulting rats by comparing them to humans. Please.
I hope you're right. He's in need of a reckoning, even if it's from the craven rethugs.
The Republicans will make Musk pay *because* they are craven.
MAGA is about to be eviscerated by the massive sabotage of government by DOGE.
Someone has to bear the blame, and it can never be Trump.
And look who's a sitting duck!
Musk is notoriously stupid.
But he's smart enough to know this much.
He's in the crosshairs.
It's why he's threatening a third party.
But he's too stupid to appreciate that this only makes it easier to take him down.
Wisconsin.
Musk would be better off keeping his mouth shut and whispering "SpaceX" in the ear of whoever Trump is listening to now. I wonder if Trump would go so far as to take SpaceX for himself?
Or even better, grovel and pay into Trump's bribery account.
Musk has really painted himself into a corner. His businesses are international, but no one trusts him anymore. Trust and respect are words that are currently out of fashion...but that doesn't mean they don't have worth.
The cuts in the BBB don’t kick in until 2026-8. The Rs want the midterms over before they kick in. Don’t expect mass MAGA anger anytime soon.
Yep, who is going to have sympathy or EMPATHY for him? Maybe he can get help from Vlad, hahaha 😂
Unrelated SPAM for an infomercial...seen this before. Reported
So sick of your post - you are actually destroying your brand
I’m sure China will be happy to take in Musk since he already took an oath to uphold Chinese communist party socialist values:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/tesla-commits-promoting-core-socialist-values-pledge-chinese-auto-companiesTesla commits to promoting 'core socialist values' in pledge with Chinese auto companies | Fox Business
The MAGA TRASH GOP conveniently ignored this when Mosque is working with Trump to dismantle our democracy. I am sure they will resurrect it now
The Night of the Long Knives purged the True Believers. It can be argued that this is the fate of all True Believers who come to be perceived as a threat to the Führer, in this case Trump. Think not just of Röhm, but of Prigozhin recently. And now Musk? Yawn. Krugman may not want to live in "that kind" of country, but much of US history is hardly star-spangled. Mostly off-shore, but it was bound to be onshored at some point. While I don't wish harm on anyone, if it happens, I'll pop the corn.
Don't forget Stalin's purge of all his top Red Army generals right before Hitler attacked in 1941. Decimated the Army leadership so much, the Germans slaughtered millions of Russian soldiers before Zhukov led the desperate stand at Stalingrad. And then after the war, he banished Zhukov to a desolate post because he became more popular than Stalin.
Felon has already purged Military leadership of quality. All that is left is loyal to him, not the Constitution.
I hope there are decent people in hiding.
I think the Army making the parade as underwhelming as possible was a clear indication decent people are still in positions to make a difference. Let's hope it stays that way.
Those who disagree with Trump and criticize him, then either resign or decline to seek reelection. Decent? Perhaps. Spineless? Definitely.
Absolutely, we should not forget. Let's add to the list: Stalin purged Yagoda, then Yezhov, then Beria, heads of the NKVD. He purged the old guard Bolsheviks Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, Rakovsky, Radek. Mao purged radical Red Guards. Let's go back further, Robespierre, that fanatical revolutionary was purged by his own - there were too many to list them all, the Girondins, the Dantonists, the Hébertists...But it's a common phenomenon. Louis de Saint-Just, aka "the Angel of Death" and henchman of Robespierre, said before his execution: "No one can rule innocently." It all reminds me of Goya's painting "Saturn Devouring his Son." I see that painting as a metaphor for autocratic paranoia. Isn't human history grand?
I think this is right on all points.
The True Believers are every bit as venal as the Maximum Leader, and therefore fully fungible because they're literally asking for it. Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, like a very dark sick joke, seems designed specifically to do the most devastating economic harm to Trump supporters. Same with DOGE.
Think of Berlin with the Red Army having reduced it to rubble and closing in for the kill.
That's the future of Trumpworld, sooner or later.
The mortars are already in the air.
It’s the true believers who make me shudder as I wake up every morning.
What makes me shudder is the 77 million people who voted for Trump. Each of them is a person the world would be better off without.
Yes, if the Jan 6th insurrection wasn't a breaking point, they are too stupid, or venal to live.
Wake up screaming!
Musk is Ernst Rohm
As far as I can see, Musk's talent lies in hiring the right people and spurring them on.
Yeah, but notice that it did not prevent him from tanking both Twitter and Tesla, and his rockets regularly explode as though that were the actual mission.
He's a fraud.
And the bill is finally due.
You don't know what you are talking about. His Falcon 9 rocket is one of the most reliable launchers in history. Starship is a crazy ambitious program and the current version has had a string of failures. The is nothing fraudulent about the success of Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y. The is nothing fraudulent about the quality of the Tesla charging network.
Musk is a brilliant entrepreneur but he is not very good at politics. Trump used him and is now tossing him like a used condom.
I do know what I'm talking about.
Space X rockets explode regularly. A "rapid unscheduled disassembly", despite the clever branding, is by definition a devastating mission failure.
Tesla is tanking -- the company is actually shrinking in a growing market. Both the Robotaxi and the Cybertruck are boondoggles that will cost the company billions as complete write-offs. Teslas are the most dangerous vehicles on the road and enjoy an industry standard of "poor build quality". Feel free to look all of this up, which you should have done before you hit the "Reply" button.
And if Musk is so brilliant, then why has he made himself an enemy of someone who can and will relish destroying him?
The most important SpaceX rocket is the Falcon 9. It launched 134 times in 2024. Falcon 9 Block 5, the current version., has flown 443 times successfully and failed once, giving it a 99.77% success rate. One of the major payloads for the rocket are satellites for the Starlink constellation, of which 7855 satellites are currently operational. Starlink generated an estimated $8.2 billion in revenue last year.
The rocket which you have seen blowing up over the past few years is Starship, which is a development program. They are trying to produce a fully and rapidly reuseable rocket, which has never been done before. The past three flights have been unsuccessful.
So no, you don't know what you are talking about. You do end you post with a good question: "And if Musk is so brilliant, then why has he made himself an enemy of someone who can and will relish destroying him?"
I think Musk has a massive ego and is bad at politics. Making enemies of both President Trump and progressives is a bad idea. He has also made a bunch of enemies in Europe with his support for the AfD. Musk thinks that he is such a genius that he can get away with it.
Musk is not good at social interaction of any kind, and he can be easily swayed by evil men who flatter him. He needs a better "reality interpreter".
AI is what Musk has to sell: for cars to drive themselves, for rocket stages to land themselves. The largest part of the damage Musk has done to our government recently was as a result of using AI without any tether to responsible human beings.
But the cars don't safely "drive themselves" -- people have been killed and multiple lawsuits are pending.
And the rockets still explode, even after successfully landing, which they seem to do less and less...
Like Trump, at his core he is a bullshitter who overpromises and underdelivers and never admits it.
If nothing else, it's a master class on the limitations of AI.
One might suspect that Musk's rockets explode on a regular basis because they're taxpayer-funded. Rather than putting the work and time in to make them fail-safe as NASA does, Musk just tries out another "oppsie!".
This is such an excellent point that I can't believe I haven't heard it expressed before.
Just as Tesla's "Full Self-Driving Software" has actually killed people, the exploding rockets of Space X come at the cost of someone else. All Elon has to do is to continue to collect his taxpayer-funded remittance cheques.
In Canada, back in the day, we had a term for this: "corporate welfare bum".
That's Elon to a t. A bum. A mooch. A deadbeat. Throw in a touch of ecological terrorist and serial killer, and you've got the complete profile.
Although your cynicism is well justified, I think there are two solid reasons to believe that Musk would not be so cavalier with taxpayer money: First, he would suffer reputational damage whenever there are high profile engineering failures and it would have negative impacts that would spill over into his other businesses and future projects; second, repeated failure makes it increasingly politically difficult for an administration to continue funding. Recall the grief Repubs gave to Obama for his $500 million investment in a solar start up (Solyndra ??) that went bust. If Musk wants the public funding to continue to flow, he would much rather have successes to point to.
But wait...Republicans make it their gameplay to attack any project that might disturb the oil industry, such as solar, or environmental project for that matter. And then, note the way they hooted at Biden's "incapacity" when barely a murmur is heard about Trump's obvious dementia. That's the Republican way of gaining and keeping power: point and jeer at any Democratic win; stay silent at any Republican failure. So watch....so long as Musk is on Trump's side he can be sure he'll be well-financed. If Trump goes after Musk for being "disloyal" you can be sure the $pigot will be turned off. As for reputational damage, Musk has already taken care of that with the Cybertruck.
He talent at Tesla was getting them VC money thru his PayPal connections and then getting government subsidies. He contributed, but not as the technical genius he made himself out to be.
Not to mention subsidies from Xi, which may have been more substantial than what he got here. At any rate, Musk does use the money he wangles from where ever to hire people who actually do know WTF they're doing.
That IS a talent, though it's not sufficiently unique to make him the Richest Man in the World. He does seem to have a good instinct for "The Next Big Thing!"
Yes, as long as he doesn't micro-manage them, his companies are successful.
Cyber truck is an example.
When they deport him to a third country, as the Supreme Court has just given the Republican administration the right to do, I don’t think he gets to pick which one. I am sure he would prefer Canada to El Salvador or South Sudan, but it won’t be up to him.
If he did manage to hide out in Canada, much as I don’t want him here, citizens have right of entry here, even if I don’t like them, so we have to let him come. But he will have no money left after Trump cancels all of his government contracts,so he won’t be able to do as much damage.
If he is not an American citizen anymore, he will not be allowed either to fund primary challenges, because foreigners are not permitted to donate to American campaigns, nor will he be able to start a new party. Stripping him of his citizenship will remove most of the threat to the Trump regime, and taking away his money will take care of the rest.
So I think the threat to strip him of his citizenship and deport him is quite serious. It’s the one-stop solution.
Musk has engaged in treasonous activity by repeatedly supporting Trump's threat to annex Canada.
That, by the way, meets both the national and international legal standard of terrorism.
We can strip him of his Canadian citizenship just as readily as the Americans and ship him back to South Africa.
I'm already working on this, as are hundreds of thousands of other Canadians.
It's a growth industry. Unlike, say, Tesla.
And how/why do you propose USCIS strips Mr. Musk from his citizenship? Also, if things really go wrong for him, he can leave and go to whatever country he prefers. People with enough money are welcome everywhere.
Any excuse will serve, including concealing illegal activities before you became a citizen. Musk has admitted to working in the US illegally for a few months after his student visa expired. That’s more than enough. Though as it happens the Republican administration is also looking into using political beliefs as a justification for stripping naturalized citizens of their citizenship.
As for money, if the Republican administration follows through on its threats to strip Musk’s businesses of their federal contracts, SpaceX would fold immediately and Tesla, which is supporting everything, would tank shortly thereafter. He would be broke, and unwelcome everywhere.
I think Elon was bragging re. the visa situation. He went from J-1 to H-1B. Just about every procedure for a work-bound immigrant contains mistakes.
Most times a bunch of plutonians big enough can control an autocrat
Autocrats face coups
Plutonians can often arrange
The material conditions for a coup
But only if they are fairly well
If Informally organized
Mostly oligarchs operate
thru
ad hoc coalitions of plutonians
Most often
The autocrat has
massaged and nurtured
enough of them
And of course
Autocrats have undercover thugs
At their right hand
To pick off the squeaky ones
most often the Autocrat
Makes enough plutocrats happy
Consider purge of the SA
And
Generals can coup an auto too
But usually require plutonian aquiessence
Your writing format makes it a difficult read. Is it possible to write in paragraphs as does everyone else?
It is a free-verse poem.
The fun part will be seeing Musk traveling in steerage on a boat headed to S. Africa. A country where millions of people will probably die because of Musk's DOGE cutting of USAID.
That will give him a front row seat for the fictional "White Genocide" he's going on and on about. And -- irony of ironies -- he'll be the only white person in South Africa who won't be allowed to claim political refugee status in the US!
You can't make this stuff up. You don't need to!
Yes, but the threat of equality and civil rights are just too much of a threat for people like Elon and the right to deal with and they'll sacrifice billions of dollars before living in world that forces them to treat minorities and liberals they don't like equally.
"like the industrialists who got behind Hitler -- he thought he could control him" - it is because oligarchs usually do. And even if a truly determined dictator succeeds in ending the rule of the oligarchy, it is always only temporary. After all, in the long run, the oligarchy will rule over any dictator. At least over his successors.
True enough. Oligarchs have been running America since long before the Revolution.
The "Revolution", in fact, was a rebellion by and for oligarchs where the common people were lured in with promises of freedom and prosperity.
Sound familiar?
This is America's longest long con, and still good to go!
Because it can't be otherwise. There is only one way in which a strong government can manage an oligarchy - if the government opposes the oligarchy in its own field - the field of wealth creation For this, the government must have its own extensive public sector. This can be done in other countries, and some other countries have successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach. But this is not possible in the USA. That's why the situation in the United States is becoming increasingly precarious.
I don't mean to be mean, but what you're effectively saying is "it can't be otherwise", but only for the United States because, of course, other advanced democracies have demonstrated as much...
Well, a stricter formulation would require more definitions and explanations. I just wanted to be brief. Let's put it this way: according to the rules of the game that the US has set for itself, "it cannot be otherwise." But in principle, other options are possible. And please note that I did not mean a communist government with a fully socialized economy. I was referring to a fairly broad public sector along with the private one.
Nub.....How could 77 million people be that dumb too? Their lives were improving under Biden and then they got mesmerized again by the worlds greatest conman and threw their vote to him.
Why? The mainstream media constantly told the public that inflation was really bad and used the price of eggs to illustrate that “fact”. They kept that narrative up even after inflation was returning to normal levels. I believe the reason the media buried good economic news was that information debunked their strong belief that we would have to have a serious recession to get inflation under control as Larry Summers and other austerity proponents had claimed. This is the same media that has refused for decades to admit that the economy does better under Democrats and that Republicans repeatedly have exploded the deficit/debt with their unproductive tax cuts for the rich. Confirmation bias is powerful.
Post election polls of swing voters showed the vast majority of voters were unaware that the US had the world’s best economy with the best job market in over 50 years and wages outpacing inflation, with the biggest gains going to the lowest incomes. Many told pollsters that although they were personally doing well financially and their regions were too, the national economy was really bad. Exit polls showed that a whopping 67% percent of voters thought the economy was bad. That is the same economy that The Economist had just declared was “the envy of the world” — a story most of the media buried. That mistaken belief is why swing voters chose Trump the “great businessman”:
“I Blame the Media”
https://criticalread.substack.com/p/i-blame-the-media
Yep.
The media's always been mad, but I've never seen it as bad as it was in the 2020s. They fought a scorched-earth war with the Biden administration for four years straight and pretty much suppressed anything that could spell good news for Biden, to the point that things like Biden capping insulin prices at $35.00 were reported as "insurance companies say they'll cap insulin prices at $35.00!" There's no bigger factor in where we are now than them.
And they continue to ignore him. No Republican US Senator attended the funeral service for the Minnesota lawmaker and her husband who were assassinated. And Trump certainly did not attend. But Joe Biden attended, as did Kamala Harris. There were some moving videos of Biden greeting people and comforting them and stopping to talk to a disabled woman. It brought me to tears. But I saw nothing in the major media outlets; all the videos I saw were from social media accounts.
Absolutely. Not to mention the incessant coverage of Biden's age, his gait, his voice, etc while giving Trump and his insane ramblings a pass. When Trump lied about not knowing anything about Project 2025 or being involved with it, the credulous media took him at his word, despite how many of his former staffers worked on it.
While saying zero about Donny Dementia’s word salad:
Mr. President, is there an expected timeframe detainees will spend here? days, weeks, months? and does that have anything to do with the immigration judges you just spoke about, being trained and staffed here?”
Donny: “what was the first part of your question?”
reporter: “is there a specific timeframe you expect the detainees to stay here? days, weeks, months?”
Donny: “in Florida?”
reporter: “yes.”
Donny: “I’m gonna spend a lot. look, this is my home state. I love it. I love your government. I love all the people around— these are all friends of mine. and they know I’m— very well. I’m not surprised that they do so well. they’re great— people. uh, Ron has been a friend of mine for a long time. I feel very comfortable in this state. I’ll spend a lot of time here.”
in the space of one second, Donny forgets what question he’s been asked, and starts improvising a nonsensical answer.
Yes. And is the media beating that economic drum now that the economy is about to hit a recession and many people will suffer? We know because we read Substack, but the corporate/billionaire media is now silent.
Also, it helps that the electorate is completely ignorant. The most common search on election day was “did Joe Biden drop out of the presidential race” you cannot govern an electorate in a democracy that is this ignorant. 48% of people don’t even know what the BBB is and only 8% understand that it’s going to cut their medical care.
That is also the Dems failure to make their case and foolishly expecting the media to do it for them.
Good luck getting anybody to hear your case when the media's determined not to report it.
At a certain point, you have to stop blaming the people that the system is rigged against for not un-rigging it.
But the Dems didn't understand that the media had sold out and expected it to function as a truth teller. Media organization publicly being humiliated and bending the knee to Krasnov may finally break through to them. Admittedly I am looking for the pony in a pile of horseshit.
The major fault is that of a media which claimed to be independent but was not.
The media would have silenced it as well. We dropped our WaPo subscription the day both Biden and Trump were in the front page. Biden was president but the American flag was behind Trump.
The mainstream media also didn’t explain that the $8.7 trillion of debt. Trump added to the economy in his first four-year term, a 40% increase lead to inflation once the economy reopens while supply chains were still screwed up. Stupid people didn’t think about that and that is why they are paying a stupidity tax.
Good analysis. Thanks for the link.
Racism is the elephant in the room. And they'll burn society to the ground to avoid civil rights and equality.
Yes. Racism accounts for all Republican political successes since 1968. Nixon/Atwater learned from George Wallace that racist campaigns succeed all over the country, and Republican politicians have been riding that horse ever since.
They are (1) stupid, (2) uneducated, (3) fundamentally bad people, or (4) some combination of the above.
They are all three at the same time. Particularly fundamentally bad people.
Throw in some Evangelicals while you're at it.
The carnival barker advertised a great freak show, sort of like the lynchings on Sunday after church. They impressed Adolf and now the Nazi version impresses chump. And around and around we go.
Propaganda is a very powerful weapon. Substandard education and a Media wasteland of Fox "News" produces a voting class happy to shoot itself in the foot.
Their lives were not improving and they thought that country was going in the wrong direction. It is very condescending to call them dumb. And it is also very stupid. Never underestimate others.
“THEY” were flat out wrong. According to the facts, period. So they are either ignorant (misinformed if you are more comfy with that adjective)or willfully ignorant . Fact is the economy was improving and better than any other country on. the. Planet.
Those are the FACTS.
Areas like SW PA, rural places are still in decline. They only relate to what they see in the world they live in and it has gone tremendously downhill from its glory days of yesteryear, much like the deep south that thought France would come to their defense again when European manufacturers moved to Egypt and India as suppliers again, I read in Empire of Cotton.
lol huh?
They are not stupid. They correctly perceive that their only hope of preserving the systemic legal, economic, and political advantages of white Americans is to vote for Republicans.
That doesn’t explain the Hispanic and black male vote, however.
True, but their votes were a small fraction of the votes for Trump. Roughly 60% of white voters, including 70% of white working class voters and 80% of white evangelical voters, voted for Trump. Seems ironic that if one in three white evangelicals were decent human beings (instead if only one in five), Trump would have lost the election.
Regardless, he made significant progress with both groups.
And after he gave us 15% Trump unemployment and the highest death toll per capita on earth. MAGA TRASH ARE WILLFULLY IGNORANT, AND HAVE AMNESIA.
Because he is, in fact, a very stupid man with money who has been led to believe, by people who needed his money, that he is a genius.
The media certainly sees Musk as a genius. They also playdown the insanity of his childish belief that we will be colonizing Mars in the near future, as if that goal would be more feasible than saving this planet. The media rarely challenges the assumptions behind that quest which we taxpayers will pay bigly for instead of funding silly things like public schools, health care coverage, etc. Weirdly Musk is OK with cutting scientific research except for space exploration projects that fund his company.
Mass media also built up Trump into something more than a local real estate nepo baby, Reagan into something more than a B movie actor, and generally reinforced politics as entertainment. And this was AFTER the exposure of William Randolph Hearst’s role in manipulating the US into the Spanish American War.
I think Hearst put the screws to a playwright who wrote--was it Citizen Kane?-- about him. That was in a copy of the Smithsonian recently. I hope that an internet search will explain why Hearst manipulated us into that war.
Which is why some of us will be popping corn if anything does happen. When you are so self-serving and insensitive to your fellow creatures, and forget that we are all in it together, you just don't get the supports when your luck runs out.
The idiot should know that the timeline for the sun destroying the Earth is 4 billion years. He is a different stupid than chump but did present better. And he has worked a day or two in his life, even if it was to steal from Tesla’s work.
Will anyone hold Walter Isaacson to account for writing a hagiography of Musk, as well as other journalists who helped to sell the myth of Musk?
Do you still believe what media is saying? That would be very naive.
Because Biden dared try to place some regulations on the tech industry and had an actual antitrust department to go after their constant consolidation.
Not to mention all the green tech subsidies that Obama gave him. Without Obama, MuskRat would have slinked back to Swaziland long ago.
To answer your last question: MuskRat isn't the genius he thinks he is, and that he's all too often made out to be. Not even close.
Good comments. Many Americans think that anyone who claims to have lots of money and acts nutty is a genius. Many of the MAGA base think that Donald is a business genius. We live in a world of misinformation.
Have a nice July 4th.
just stop the sugar-coating..it isn't misinformation, its bald faced lies..told again and again..TRUMPF IS A LIAR, lies are meant to deceive...which TRUMPF does, i sometimes wonder if he believes his own lies. you kids had better get your heads out of the clouds.. the shit is coming at you, hard and fast.
The right word is "disinformation," meaning lies deliberately told to get a certain response from the recipient of the lies. Misinformation could be a mistake, but disinformation is very, very deliberate. It's what most people think the word "propaganda" means (but propaganda can actually be true - disinformation is NEVER true).
China gave Musk free land, low interest loans, and free access to the Chinese market unencumbered by limitations put on other foreign car manufacturers. I believe more Teslas are made in China than in any other country.
And Musk is finding out what other businessmen who went to China 25 years ago discovered: they’ll initially work with you, learn your business, then make their own version cheaper and undercut you. My state sent an agricultural trade delegation over to China back then. Farmers were excited about the new market until four years later, when Chinese agriculturalists started producing for their own market using the techniques perfected by US farmers. Boy were our farmers mad, but it wasn’t the only instance of this happening and they should have known better. Must certainly should have known better since he is a relative Johnny come lately to China.
Just for the record, we've done the same thing on occasion. See under Lowell, Power Loom.
Interesting. What crop or crops were involved?
Biden should have nationalized Starlink when Musk cut its use by Ukraine in deference to Putin.
Individuals do not take state actions on Foreign policy
Musk is related to a Russian on his mother's side....a cousin of his, I believe. She's part of the new oligarchy over there and they're all neo-feudalists. I think I discovered it in a comment on here and sure enough a published article with pics in social media posts confirmed it. Perhaps the data extracted through DOGE is Musk's insurance policy with Putin if he needs to pull an 'Edward Snowden'.
Because, believe it or not, all of these people lack wisdom. A peaceful society that focused on giving security and dignity to ordinary citizens would tolerate the narcissism of overly wealthy people. But these, mostly men, want their wealth to confer unbridled power over society. The current despicable legislation is not to confer more money on the wealthy. They know they don't need it. That is the smokescreen. It is to take wealth away from the middle and working classes and thereby crush their hopes and their courage. Mitch McConnell summarized it most cogently: "They'll get over it". If the Republic somehow manages to stumble through this disaster, the best way to insure that it never happens again is to put all of this house of deplorables in jail-for a long time-as a warning to future autocratic aspirants.
It's the ketamine. Then and now.
More than one tech bro's fortune rests on the government's largesse. To borrow Michael Happy's phrase, "these people are malignant narcissists." To that end, each thinks he is a genius deserving of his wealth and adoration.
Has anyone listened to Ross Douthat's interview of Peter Thiel? I make myself read or listen to commentators I think are in the wrong camp and both are worthy of a measure of disagreeable-ness. But it was an engrossing if chilling conversation about how Thiel, and by probable extension his tech bro billionaires, see that the future of the world is to be carved up into fiefdoms run by them with help from AI. They have far too much influence even if they are not in the actual seats of power.
I daresay they're going to wish they had not encouraged every white male (including a lot of mentally ill men) to have one or more assault rifles. It's not going to be fun for the elite class if that group ever wakes up and realizes what their so-called "populists" (greedy bastard billionaires and politicians) have done to them.
We may be seeing the dawn of the "New Medieval Period"....one of Tech Kings and serfs, with roving bands of "knights" creating mayhem to keep order.
Pride cometh before the fall.
Musk has effectively hollowed out NASA. He may be indispensable for DoD payloads.
I'm not sure Trump and Co. cares about DoD payloads. They are laser focused on rounding up as many people as they can with ICE, hence the humungous payout for Homeland Security and ICE in the brutal bill the Senate passed.
Well, the Space Force *was* created by Trump 1.
(The other day I learned that the persons in the Space Force are referred to as Guardians--as opposed to soldiers or Airmen. Like the angels or the baseball team?)
True. Obama made a mistake in not supporting the space program, thereby opening the doors to privatization, even though we have the Space Force. I thought that the Trump administration has hatched a plan to combine Space Force into some other department, although I don't know if that plan has started the road to enactment.
Not sure, but the Greenland madness figures in somehow. We have a base there, formerly known as Thule, now Pittufik, Inuit name of the place. The base has been there since WW 2 and formerly had thousands stationed there; now there a a couple of hundred Space Force people. It's physically about the size of Chicago. What could Trump mean when he says we need more of Greenland?
It may be as simple as this - if DonnyJon acquires Canada and Greenland for the US, he goes down in the history books as the President who was responsible for the greatest increase in the size of the United States.
I imagine it to be tech oligarch influenced for access to its mining important for the manufacture of electric batteries and future access to virgin sea bed mining in the Arctic.
"how could he have been so fricking stupid?"
Because, aside from being fairly smart (and lucky) at business, Musk is pretty stupid in every other way.
EVERYTHING TRUMP TOUCHES DIES - EVERYTHING
Biden was good for Musk financially, but his administration wasn’t into promoting the tech bros as Masters of the Universe. Indeed, antitrust actions and AI regulation were on the horizon. Musk decided Trump was likely to indulge his whims to translate money into control. Musk discovered what Gandalf told Saruman about evil lords who don’t share power.
Paraphrasing Rick James, ketamine's a helluva drug (and narcissism a helluva personality disorder!)
He likes to think he’s the smartest person in the room, which makes him vulnerable to his own cupidity and mendaciousness. In other words, the fucker got what he deserved. I hope to see the day when he is penniless myself. I will laugh and dance.
I've assumed Musk's tirades are as he begins to see his comically over-valued company starting to circle the toilet bowl. But is he also starting to realize that he has been set up to be the fall guy for the failure of all the government services that he wrecked during his Doge rampage? All those senators and reps he's threatening with primary challenges are quietly sharpening their knives for the hearings next year (or this fall) when they will be shocked shocked at what this maniac did to their beloved Social Security Administration
Great editorial Paul! My son was and still is a Civil War fanatic and we spent three days at Gettysburg about one month before September 11, 2001. We toured the entire battlefield and I stood at Cemetery Ridge and looked out at the open field where the cream of the Confederate Army (10,000 men) walked into withering cannon fire and 30 minutes later a vast majority were dead. Anybody who calls Robert E. Lee a great general should stand at Cemetery Ridge and basically the traitorous Confederate States of America lost the Civil War on a Pennsylvania battlefield. One of the greatest Presidents, FDR, lit a flame in the 1930’s at the last organized reunion of both the remaining Union and Confederate veterans! We are now facing another Civil War and the leader of the anti-democracy forces stated yesterday in a Florida swamp that we had a “lot of bad people” in the USA who will end up in the Florida swamp! Really, Orange Monster, please look in the mirror because that will be your fate! God bless the heroes of the Union forces at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863 and God Bless the patriots of 2025-2026 who will rise up to stop the Orange Monster!!!
Boy, that sounds exactly right. Did you come from the future, G Taylor?
He's not from the future, he knows his history. The most obtuse Republicans and Conservatives (they are legion!) never find the value in education, leaving themselves open to horrific shocks when consequences catch up to them.
i'm assuming that this is not Taylor's fIrst rodeo; yes, Musk is seeing that he has been had..biggly...by another man who is most certainly his inferior..how did he allow himself to get so screwed
The thing is that Trump & Musk are in many ways the same. Both are sociopathic narcissists who are more showman/conman than anything else when dealing with others. Both think they are the smartest guy in the room, always.
What was it PT Barnum said? Something about suckers I think.
Don Galloway (NYU biz prof) made the good point that it was extremely stupid for Musk to alienate Democrats, who as a group are more likely to want and buy an electric vehicle. I saw a Tesla with a bumper sticker that read I BOUGHT THIS BEFORE I KNEW HE WAS CRAZY, and a sign in a window of a Tesla dealership that said, "We hate him, too."
I sold mine before it was apparent he was going crazy. A damn good car, though not without flaws mainly due to sloppy manufacturing. Of course, his reputation as an engineering genius is long debunked; but as a sharp businessman he was good enough to wrest control of the company and manage to employ a bunch of really sharp engineers - and arrange for billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize his expensive but really advanced cars.
It would be a positive if he hadn't conspicuously turned into - or turned out to be - such a complete asshole.
His Teslas have been recalled 37 times for defects and his cybertruck was literally glued together. His supposed Starship
Rocket is 0-10 in completing one orbit of the Earth and wasted $4 billion of our monies! The Saturn V moon rocket was 13-0 and never failed once!!! Musk is a big bullshit artist just like another guy who is colored Orange!!!
Hey, I said he was nothing as an engineer. And the positive achievements of his companies were impressive. For a while. But his skill at hiring and managing the best engineers has been, as you say, less than impressive, deteriorating with time like his sanity and all.
My former brother-in-law said (back before Musk went nuts) that the best description of Musk he'd ever heard was "a bullshit artist who delivers."
Don Galloway was an actor on Ironside. I think you mean Scott Galloway.
THAT'S RIGHT. Thanks. Sheesh, etc.
Masked paramilitary thugs roaming the streets. Newly opened concentration camps. Suppression and criminalization of opposing viewpoints. Anyone recognize the pattern?
I DO!!!! I grew up in South Africa in the 60s ---- This is EXACTLY what we saw. Illegal unlimited arrests: no one being allowed to know what happened to that individual; The press was censored in many ways - but also could not REPORT on the illegal arrest; People were BANNED - which meant that they could not be in a 'group' of ore than two; The press again could not report that. People were DEPORTED, and also were killed - thrown out of the windows. Nelson Mandela was 'remanded; to a prison island for 27 years. The ONLY reason he was not killed was the Helen Suzman, the sole member of the Progressive Party would visit him monthly. While it was the blacks who were affected the worst (the brown people in this country) the whites were not exempt from all this (like stripping US citizens of their citizenship) As much as I try to be active and optimistic, and as much as the terrible polling about all of the issues the criminal has advanced ---- it took 40 YEARS in South Africa for real change to happen.
A fellow graduate student at that time, a white South African, was stripped of her passport by her government for her activities opposing apartheid and could not return to her own country.
Thanks for your comment. 40 years! Americans don’t have a clue how long it will take For things to change.
I actually find some comfort in such stories as this. It was 40 years for real change to happen, and that's been the case in other countries as well. The US will probably be going rapidly down for my lifetime, but it's nice to think that sanity might return. We had a good idea with rule of law and democracy. Ideas are hard to extinguish.
By the time required for sanity to return, global warming will have shrunk the land area capable of supporting life for large mammals by enough to make battles for livable space catastrophic for Homo sapien populations.
Can't say we didn't see this coming and did nothing about it.
We definitely saw it coming. Hansen published the definitive data on global warming in 1980. You and I perhaps did what we could, but the willful ignorance of the American majority ensured the failure to take effective measures against catastrophe. Might be too late now, but will surely be too late when (if ever) US voters understand their plight.
There is no point waking up I guess. We should all just let the US destroy itself. This country is beyond hope.
And where is our Nelson Mandela?
Things still haven't improved much. South Africa is not your average EU democracy.
FYI. it probably will never be reported, that GULAG Trumpf visited yesterday has already been flooded, by a normal FLORIDA summer rain,,it doesn't jusr rain in south fFLORIDA..WE get torrential. tropical downpours. DESANTIS knew what florida is like in the summer..hurricanes and water..lots of it..but the s---head went ahead and built this gulag anyway..and FLORIDA TAXPYERS will pay for it and for the manintenance of it....porta toilets for 5, 000 inmates..will be dumped in the GLADES.oh, the water table in the GLADES is just a foot above sea level.
Professor Krugman: this is a real life bonfire of the vanities, except there will be (and already is) FAR MORE collateral damage to the livelihoods, health and lives of we the people.
>Beyond that, even great wealth offers little protection from the people in power under an authoritarian regime.<
Yep. Ever hear of Jack Ma?
The smug stupidity of the hyper rich truly is something to behold.
Musk and all the other oligarchs did just fine under Obama and Biden and would have done just fine under Harris. Musk almost certainly wouldn’t have gone to jail. People with money in this country and around the globe are seldomly held accountable for crimes they commit. He would simply have been heavily fined.
Musk actively joined because of a personal issue with his transgender child. Father of the Year, this guy.
And you said you didn’t see Trumo taking businesses from a rich guy and give it to a loyalist in this country as of yet. I see it happening already.
People need to remember that the agencies and “waste” Musk supposedly “cut” wasn’t cut at all. No money was handed back to ye treasury. It is currently frozen to blackmail and extort first institutions and THEN it will head directly to people. Lawsuits that would have been considered a nuisance and 100% winnable are being settled by major media outlets with a nod to not criticize or even COVER the president in an unfavorable light.
A researcher from Hertiage said and I must paraphrase that “There is nothing special about the water in the Charles that makes people smarter. Top researchers go thee because that’s where the money is. Take the money away and they’ll go there.” Meaning take the money already granted to Harvard, MIt! Columbia, Cornell, BU, Tufts and simply hand it over to universities led by loyalists. Take taxpayer dollars and hand it to friendly religious groups (ie Christian and Catholic) to run schools and teach what you tell them. They are following the playbook of Russia and Hungary to a tee.
And considering the amount of blatant bribery, corruption and STEALING, extortion, and viscous attacks on opponents in just six months, I can’t imagine how much further we will sink. And they won’t assassinate political opponents. They don’t have to. All they need to is put out the hit and wait for some nut job to hear the call to arms. And it is not both sides. It is one violent side who knows the only way they stay in power is to lie, cheat, and use force, threats and smears.
In an interview with his transgender child in NYT, s/he revealed that s/he wasn't the cause of his swerve to the far right--that he had always been so. Quite a mature 19? year old is what I thought. The ones who rose to the top in Silicon Valley no longer have to pretend to be liberal now.
I don't see - although it's a pleasant thought - on what grounds Musk would have gone to jail under an honest regime, based on what he did before 2021. Any suggestions?
I believe it was fraud and not disclosing he was buying shares secretly beyond the limit allowed by law.
He was charged with not disclosing he was buying more tha 5% of shares in Twitter. He bought shares artificially low and basically did what all trumps friends do….screwed over other investors to benefit himself.
He could also have been in hot water for buying votes in PA.
But I guess he doesn’t have to worry now. All it cost him was a rounding error in campaign contributions and completely destroying the tech apparatus of the government and handing over privileged information to Voyght to use as blackmail and extortion for the next…I dunno…forever.
Spot on as usual, Dr Krugman. Nothing good coming from this as it shows just how impotent even the richest oligarchs are when up against even a fledgling oligarchy. This should scare the hell out of anyone given the road we are on.
I think it already has scared the hell out of business leaders. They are being damaged, right left and center with only whispers to be heard. Look how quick big legal firms were to capitulate.
Red Notice by Bill Browder is another book about Putin and the oligarchs that helped make him. Lot of lessons for American oligarchs.
Red Notice and Freezing Order. Browder nails the rise and fall and re-rise of the oligarchs in Russia. One other big takeaway from those books is for citizens to beware of being 'gifted' shares of the country's commons and then being encouraged to sell them cheaply in a 'marketplace' where the shares are snapped up by the favored oligarchs. Goodbye US national lands and resources if that happens.
The part of the BBB referencing the selling of public lands was scrapped due to the influence of voter/donors? that like to hunt on public land.
Elon needs to read the book FOR SURE!
Not sure Elum reads books. Definitely not a reader of books.
If he did read it, he should pay close attention to what happened to Mikhael Khordovsky or Boris Berezovsky.
Mush wants to go to Mars.
Can we send him now?
Pity we couldn't have sent him in January.
January 2024.
Yeah, I gave my Soldiers a tour of Gettysburg a few years ago, and as I pointed out to them: essential though Chamberlain's actions were at Gettysburg, and as deserving of the Medal of Honor as they were, they were nowhere near the bravest nor most superhuman things he did in uniform. And wonderful though his deeds in uniform were, they were nowhere near the bravery he showed facing down a mob on the steps of Maine's Capitol. It is a travesty that we didn't rename Bragg for the guy.
Well, the headquarters of the Maine National Guard is named for him. Best one can expect, I guess.
That DT missive was far too coherent to have been actually written by Trump. I will bet it was done by Stephen Miller, who has one very serious bone to pick wth Musk.
And, I don't think Musk really realized how bat-shit crazy these people are when he threw in with them. He knows now, so I wonder if that changes any part of the equation.
My thought, too, that Trump did not write that post.
Forensic comment analysis says "agree."
does MUSK control all those sattelites he put up there?
To some extent, he does. He was able to cut transmissions to Ukraine in the early stages of that war because he didn't want them to use the system to guide their drones.
Trump being Trump. Befriend someone. Use them. Use them up. Blame them. Cast them aside. Destroy them (zealously).
Why his political allies d’jour reuse to see this and pledge their allegiance is amazing. Yet they keep taking jobs ignoring what they have to know.
It is the same for the MAGA true believers. As he literally takes money from their pockets and hands it to fellow billionaires, they refuse to see.
Even though the curtain was pulled back long ago, they refuse to see.
They love their Wizard. Inexplicably.
"Trump being Trump. Befriend someone. Use them. Use them up. Blame them. Cast them aside. Destroy them (zealously)."
You'd think people would catch on and avoid Trump like the plague, but no, they think it won't happen to them.
It does. It happens to all of them.
Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao...they have the ability to make people believe they are on their side and against their enemies. Personal charisma.
The Economist told about interviewing Trump before the 2016 election and they wondered which was the real Trump. The charming man they talked to in his penthouse who seemed so reasonable, or the maniac they heard on the campaign trail.
These terrible villains of history have the ability to make person after person believe in them, even with ample evidence that they aren't to be trusted.
The guy's a sociopath.
They love their wizard because they share his white supremacist beliefs and deeply appreciate his unabashed willingness to take actions grounded in those beliefs.
As long as Donald skates by, I don't know how much schadenfreude I can feel here.
This is the inevitable consequence of two people who team up when they are both very weak, insecure people whose only competence is getting people to pay attention.
Amazing how many of the rich forget whose money made them rich. Maybe boycotts of sports, movies, online sellers, and streamers will remind them. Better to sacrifice things we don’t need than have things we need (accessible health care) disrupted or taken away.
Absolutely. The only power we have left may be to refuse to play. Stop buying from any entity who enables Trump. Bezos and Musk and the TechBoys may be individually above boycotts, but the systems they created are dependent on players with money (i.e., the public).
The progression from marches, to boycotts, to one day general strikes, to multi day general strikes, to passive aggressive non-participation in all types of societal activities . . . may be necessary in light of the surrender of the courts, the Congress, American business leaders.
We may be forced to withdraw - our money, our time, our involvement, our commitment.
Nothing would please the right more than violence in the streets - all too many of them are itching to unlimber their assault rifles . . .
But you can’t shoot passive aggression.
I have stopped using Amazon.
tRump is a nearly pure state machine in his deal making. He only cares about what he wants and will discard all promises once he has what he wants. He does remember and act on all things that oppose or hurt him. On those he takes revenge without mercy.
Giving tRump what he wants gains you nothing after he has what he wants!!!
All the "negotiation" with universities and law firms are all about tRump gaining control. His only negotiating model is "I win; you lose." All negotiations get forced into that model. He will not honor any promises he makes to get what he wants.