[HN Gopher] Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
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Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts
Author : rbanffy
Score : 119 points
Date : 2025-06-07 13:25 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spacenews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (spacenews.com)
| Neil44 wrote:
| This feud is just a pantomime for the crowd in my opinion.
| There's a bigger play here.
| michaeljx wrote:
| You grossly underestimate the pettiness and pedantry of those
| involved
| solardev wrote:
| Lol, I guess this is what happens when two assholes surround
| themselves with sycophantic yes-men for far too long.
|
| Nobody taught them how to play nice. I've met eight year olds
| with more civility and maturity than those two...
|
| Oh well. Reminds me of that Alien vs Predator movie: Whoever
| wins, we lose.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm inclined to Hanlon's Razor.
| phpnode wrote:
| the variation I prefer is: never attribute to wisdom that
| which is adequately explained by stupidity
| dahart wrote:
| I absolutely would be too, if there wasn't a long
| demonstrated history on the part of both of these people to
| use public drama as smoke to distract from other things
| they're doing.
| hiatus wrote:
| What are you alluding to here?
| mystified5016 wrote:
| That's giving these people _far_ too much credit.
| dahart wrote:
| Are you sure? You know that Trump constantly talks about his
| TV ratings? I forget who it was, but I remember there being a
| story last year or the year before, of someone who was
| publicly criticizing Trump met with him and was expecting to
| be absolutely whipped and scolded, instead behind the scenes
| Trump thanked them for making good television. The financial
| impact on Musk's companies do make this seem real, but
| somehow I wouldn't be surprised if this drama was fake. It
| did occur to me, and I can tell I'm not the only one... the
| top Google autocomplete for me for "is the trump" is "is the
| trump musk feud real".
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/president-
| trump...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/28/us/politics/television-
| tr...
| epistasis wrote:
| When described from 10,000 feet, I could almost believe this.
| If Musk were smart he might be doing something like this on the
| route to rehabilitating his image with customers.
|
| But the particulars on the ground show that Musk is not smart,
| just vindictive, power-hungry, petulant, and childish. He
| literally posted that he would decommission Dragon because of
| Trump's threat, which was stupid in intent and stupid in
| potential negotiating effect on Trump (Trump does not know what
| Dragon is and does not care):
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/06/05/musk-trump-spacex-dragon...
| hsnewman wrote:
| Both use deception and disruption to get to their goals. Now
| they both are at the receiving end. This will not end well for
| either.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| If it was a charade Epstein would not have been mentioned.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| This reads like pretty classic infighting between a dictator and
| one of his more powerful cronies.
|
| I am surprised at how fast it happened, though. Usually this
| comes towards the end of a dictatorship. Maybe our dear leader is
| just as incompetent at being a dictator as he is everything else.
| solardev wrote:
| I hope it escalates into a pay per view cage match.
| tjpnz wrote:
| The last time Elon proposed a cage match he pussied out.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| And then lost a fight to 5 year old son?
| davidcbc wrote:
| His mommy wouldn't let him do it
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Elon already has a black eye so I think the cameras weren't
| invited.
| username223 wrote:
| > Usually this comes towards the end of a dictatorship.
|
| It doesn't seem that way to me, e.g. Putin arrested
| Khodorkovsky (the richest man in Russia) in 2003. The way I see
| it, the politician needs the oligarch's money to gain political
| power, but then he has actual state power, including guns and
| the judicial system. At that point the oligarch has no purpose
| -- after all, the politician can just make new ones -- so it
| makes sense to cast him out or destroy him.
|
| Trump could bankrupt SpaceX with the stroke of a pen and bleed
| Tesla dry by revoking EV credits. He could even try to revoke
| Musk's citizenship over (real or fake) issues with his
| immigration status in the past. If Elon thought he was buying
| the presidency in exchange for favors, he wasn't thinking
| things through.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| > If Elon thought he was buying the presidency in exchange
| for favors, he wasn't thinking things through.
|
| This is the funniest part to me, in the context of THIS
| president. The guy that demands fully loyalty but gives none?
|
| I can't imagine being the richest guy in the world, and
| embarrassing myself to such a degree all for.. what? He paid
| maybe $300M to help elect the guy, wore all the stupid hates,
| lavished orange man with praise.. and for what. What was ever
| the upside? The possible downside was obviously asymmetric to
| any clear eyed viewer.
|
| And so that asymmetric downside now begins.
| roxolotl wrote:
| This crop of billionaires was created from a time when
| capital was ascendant and state power was on the decline. I
| think as a result they've come to believe that the state is
| mostly there for their benefit especially during Republican
| administrations.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I think it's also a mark of the self delusion some of
| these "Great Men" tend to have, before you even get into
| the surrounding yes-men & ketamine.
|
| Probably some sort of "well I am worth $400M, but if I
| can get that to $2M, I can do my Mars space colony with
| enough room for my harem, for sure".
|
| vs "Gee I have more money than one can ever spend and
| remain mortal.. I could go enjoy my life like Bezos
| before it all evaporates..."
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Haven't they ever seen House of Cards?
| elcritch wrote:
| Not that both the Republicans and Democrats are very pro
| large business. Remember Harris raised at least _twice_
| as much money from billionaires than Trump.
|
| They're just pro different big businesses, largely based
| on their demographics.
|
| Personally I'm still annoyed that Obama's administration
| had the DOE take over servicing federal student loans to
| "protect students" only for them to somehow be sold to a
| private company based in Chicago from what I can tell.
| jyounker wrote:
| Everyone who consorts with Trump ends up covered in shit.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It was weird to see all those billionaire tech bros lining
| up to kiss his arse. What is the point of spending all that
| effort to be super rich and powerful if it means you have
| to grovel to a terrible human being like Trump? Does not
| compute.
| shrubble wrote:
| I always ask myself, "what is being done by the left hand, while
| we are distracted by the right hand?"
|
| Could this dust-up have anything to do with some other bill being
| passed or a policy implemented? I can think of the big
| reconciliation (BBB) bill, and Palantir getting access to more
| information on American citizens, as 2 things that the public
| could be distracted from by the Musk-Trump issue.
| fullshark wrote:
| The public doesn't need elaborate schemes to be distracted, no
| one actually cares about that stuff. Republicans don't even
| really care about massive deficit spending in the budget which
| is out in the open.
| rayiner wrote:
| Correct. Republicans voted to close the border and deport
| illegal aliens, not cut the budget deficit. The fiscally
| responsible republican party hasn't existed since the 1920s.
| Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he considers
| Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The other
| republicans weren't going to cut those either, but they were
| going to talk about reforming them.)
| mindslight wrote:
| One has to love this chameleon of a Republican "platform"
| where values and ideals are championed to browbeat support
| for a particular action, but then written off as irrelevant
| when they're awkward for analyzing other actions - while
| other values and ideals are dragged out in support.
|
| A week ago, "the debt" was really important. Now that Dear
| Leader has declared otherwise, apparently it's not. Right
| into the memory hole it goes.
|
| The reality is there is no platform beyond anger (the
| base), and naked autocratic power (the politicians).
| Everything else is post-hoc rationalization.
|
| (and just to clarify so I'm not written off as some
| progressive partisan: I'm a libertarian who was unaligned,
| understood and saw merit in both camps' ideals - until the
| Republican party turned its back on conservatism in favor
| of cult of personality reactionaryism)
| rayiner wrote:
| There is a platform:
| https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. No taxes on tips
| was on the platform (#6) as was no cuts to medicare or
| social security (#14). Balancing the budget was not on
| the platform.
|
| There are republicans who care about the debt, but the
| party as a whole doesn't. The economic libertarians have
| been thoroughly marginalized in the modern GOP, because
| economic libertarianism is unpopular.
|
| To be clear, I admire the traditional small government
| conservatives, though I am not one. The GOP hasn't been
| that party since the 1920s. The mass immigration of the
| 20th century made that approach unviable. We're a country
| of machine politics now and it's only going to become
| more pronounced. The guy who ran on "No Taxes on Tips" to
| buy the Latino vote in Nevada was never going to balance
| the budget.
| mindslight wrote:
| That platform statement does not contain values or
| ideals! It contains _goals_ , which could possibly be
| achieved in very different ways. Values and ideals are
| then trotted out in support of the specific policies that
| purport to achieve those goals, and my point is that
| those ideals are highly inconsistent and seemingly sum up
| to mere blind anger.
|
| Your individual assertion that you don't care about a
| balanced budget isn't particularly relevant to the larger
| context where an overwhelming amount of Trump supporters
| _did_ just make arguments professing support of the need
| to get the budget under control to justify last week 's
| policies.
| rayiner wrote:
| Just because people don't have a grand unifying theory
| tying their preferences together doesn't mean their
| preferences are motivated by "mere blind anger." Trying
| to fit your preferences into some internally consistent
| framework is a high-IQ fixation.
|
| That's especially true because society is hard to
| analyze. For example, I think it will be bad for society
| to encourage greater race and ethnic consciousness in a
| diverse society. I can point to all the sectarian
| conflict that exists in countries around the world as an
| example of what I seek to avoid, but that's hardly
| definitive. Is the upshot that we have to proceed with a
| vast social experiment, because we can't provide a closed
| form analysis of the proposal _a priori_?
| tzs wrote:
| > Trump has been consistent on this since 2016: he
| considers Medicare and Social Security untouchable. (The
| other republicans weren't going to cut those either, but
| they were going to talk about reforming them.)
|
| Technically they weren't going to cut them, but they also
| weren't doing anything to effectively address the upcoming
| shortfalls in the SS and Medicare trust funds and in fact
| the tax changes they are trying to enact would shorten the
| time to those shortfalls.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > Palantir getting access to more information on American
| citizens
|
| This is overblown IMO. The government already has this data on
| citizens and they're merely using it how they like (i.e.
| consolidating it through a contractor)
|
| The time to stop this would've been before it was collected in
| the first place.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I think you're falling into the "they are playing 5D chess"
| trap, whereas the truth is almost certainly much simpler: two
| powerful men with giant and brittle egos, who were on a
| collision course from day one, have now collided. That's it.
| rayiner wrote:
| They're to powerful men with huge egos who fundamentally
| disagree on political priorities. Trump had a platform:
| https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. Balancing the budget
| wasn't on it, but the following was: "FIGHT FOR AND PROTECT
| SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO
| CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE" (all-caps original).
| yb6677 wrote:
| I would have said the same, except Trump would never have
| agreed to Elon tweeting about him being in the Epstein files as
| that now sticks to Trump permanently.
|
| And that line of attack makes it seem a genuine fallout.
| krick wrote:
| That's what I usually think too. Even if just to be cautious:
| people alluding to "Hanlon's razor" (as if it's a real thing)
| are basically declaring themselves the smartest in the room, so
| by another well-known eponymous effect they are usually the
| dumbest in the room. Usually the worst suspicions are confirmed
| later.
|
| This time, though, I'm running with the crowd. I think this is
| just too much. I mean, come on, screaming on Twitter that Trump
| didn't release Epstein files, because he is in them? Sure, it
| doesn't hurt him, it's no news nor a real accusation, but I'm
| pretty sure Trump didn't _want_ that to be posted. The whole
| thing doesn 't look nice for anybody, it doesn't help anybody.
| No, I really think Musk has become totally insane this time,
| or/and is drugged out. The left hand still may be doing
| something, but that's taking the opportunity, not making this
| all up for the sake of distraction.
| yb6677 wrote:
| It is my opinion that US government won't cancel SpaceX
| contracts, as firstly SpaceX is the market leader, and secondly
| Elon could setup a second SpaceX base overseas, be it in China,
| Europe or wherever. And the USA will not want Elon working with
| other countries that closely.
|
| Elon would just lose a bit of money short term, the US government
| will lose a lot more.
|
| Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn't have the cards.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| > Trump is a deal maker
|
| He's absolutely not
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| But we are now allied with North Korea, secured peace in
| Ukraine, and have permanent trade deals with everyone.
| randallsquared wrote:
| As a US citizen, it's not clear to me that Elon legally can set
| up anything overseas without starting from scratch, and going
| that far might just make him the next Gerald Bull.
| hypeatei wrote:
| > and secondly Elon could setup a second SpaceX base overseas
|
| I'd be very surprised if this is possible given ITAR
| regulations.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Trump is a deal maker and knows he doesn't have the cards.
|
| That contradicts almost everything we've seen on his
| government. He doesn't seem to be a deal maker, doesn't seem to
| even grasp the concept of deals, and doesn't seem to care if he
| has the cards or not.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| cia would step in before we ever allowed that to happen.
| AngryData wrote:
| A lot of SpaceX technology has export restrictions. On top of
| that, Elon himself doesn't have any engineering knowledge or
| degrees and his entire knowledge base on space travel is from
| Kerbal Space Program that he played for like a week. So what
| exactly is he going to bring to other countries space programs?
| The people working at SpaceX aren't going to move to China, and
| Elon can't just pack his rockets up in a suitcase and fly
| somewhere else with them.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Trump is a deal maker
|
| Is he though?
|
| He didn't write the book 'The art of the deal'.
|
| He is a terrible businessman. I read that most of his
| properties are loss making. How many other people have lost
| money on a casino?
|
| He didn't end the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 24 hours, as
| he said he would.
|
| What good deals has he made?
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's wild to me how many conspiracy theories I've seen about how
| this is all staged, like it's a distraction or it's just Elon
| repairing his image and trying to rescue Tesla (whose sales are
| cratering).
|
| Psychologically, I think this is reflective of cognitive
| dissonance. The two conflicting ideas are that two people with
| much to lose would get in the dumbest fight imaginable and the
| myth of meritocracy [1]. You see, people want or need to believe
| that people get into these positions through merit: skill,
| intelligence and hard work.
|
| That's simply not true. We are talking about two of the
| egotistical, thin-skinned, genuinely stupid narcissists on the
| planet. Drugs may even be a factor. There is no planet where a
| charade like this involves calling the _president of the United
| States a pedophile_ [2].
|
| Media reports seem to universally agree that everybody in the
| administration absolutely hates Elon. Additionally, IMHO Elon is
| absolutely on the spectrum. As such, he is a terrible room reader
| and I believe is deluded into thinking he has a loyal following.
| He does not. Any clout he has is solely because of being a Trump
| acolyte.
|
| The myth of meritocracy is perpetuated to keep you working hard
| to make somebody else rich. It is to reinforce the existing
| social and economic order. It is to assign blame to those who are
| poor because poverty is treated as a personal moral failure.
|
| If Trump chooses to, he can effectively bankrupt Elon. That's how
| insane all of this is.
|
| For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security clearance.
| There's no recourse for this. And that makes SpaceX's military
| contracts real awkward.
|
| There are negotiations over a trade deal with China because of
| the tariffs and what is quite likely the dumbest trade war in
| history. The terms of that deal could be fatal to Tesla's future.
|
| Trump could even get Elon denaturalized and deported. How?
| Immigration fraud. It's fairly clear from the facts (and his
| brother's statements about 10 years ago) that when Elon dropped
| out of a Stanford PhD to start a company he was technically
| undocumented. If you misrepresent to USCIS then it is absolutely
| grounds for denaturalization should they choose, although such
| proceedings are incredibly rare.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
|
| [2]: https://deadline.com/2025/06/trump-musk-epstein-files-
| claim-...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| There's nothing invalid about meritocracy, but that's not what
| we have. We have some other kind of "ocracy": government by the
| lucky. I lack the Greek literacy to name the phenomenon
| correctly but that's what it would translate to in English.
|
| Neither Trump nor Musk has any business running anything more
| impactful than a used car lot or a corner Starbucks franchise,
| but their competition was permanently out to lunch in both
| cases, and here we are. How can anyone be surprised when two
| merit-free, chaos-loving narcissists fail to get along?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Meritocracy is like perfect communism, in that it's never
| been tried (and never will).
| mmustapic wrote:
| " For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that
| was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each
| of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger.
| Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us
| for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving
| while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns
| reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea
| of earning, and you will begin to be able to think."
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Meh, tell it to Darwin. Heat death will come for us all
| in the end, and there is no refuge to be found in our
| navels. Why accelerate it by embracing mediocrity? We
| should identify talent, reward it, and do the best we can
| with what we have, while we can.
|
| The part about "identifying talent" is where people seem
| to lose the plot, unfortunately.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's been described as kakistocracy (government by the people
| who are most unsuitable for government).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I think you're aiming for some idea of "tychocracy," but
| really, you mean "oligarchy."
| coffeemug wrote:
| There is no myth. Both Trump and Elon have generational talent
| in their respective domains. This is the kind of talent that's
| so unique, it creates its own domain that didn't exist before,
| and that no one will be able to replicate after.
|
| But they're both unstable, and have many other negative
| features.
|
| One can have an extraordinary talent in starting generational
| companies, and have a social media addiction (among possibly
| other addictions and problems) that makes one unstable. These
| aren't mutually exclusive.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| One of their fathers was a successful slumlord, and the other
| owned an emerald mine in South Africa. Those provide a one-
| time advantage (which in Trump's case would have been more
| profitable if he had socked it away in an index fund.) How do
| they establish 'generational talent' for being POTUS or
| building rockets and cars?
|
| It _will_ be interesting to see if any of Elon 's offspring
| choose to follow in his footsteps. Probably not the
| transgender child he disowned, or the one whose name has to
| be written with Unicode characters, but that leaves something
| like 20 others to vie for the throne.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > One can have an extraordinary talent in starting
| generational companies
|
| I though Musk was just adept at buying certain companies
| sidibe wrote:
| The only talents they are great at are grift and daring
| someone to enforce rules against them in a society that
| largely relies on people holding themselves to standards and
| risk avoidance instead of active enforcement.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > Both Trump and Elon have generational talent in their
| respective domains
|
| That's an interesting way of saying they were born into a
| wealthy family
| bobsmooth wrote:
| I was also born into a wealthy family but I haven't created
| multiple billion dollar companies.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Well presumably you have some actual morals.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| I bet you would have no moral given the opportunity.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Neither has Trump, so don't feel bad.
| kaptainscarlet wrote:
| The proof is in the black eye.
| spacemadness wrote:
| MAGA cope is astonishing in its intensity. I've never seen
| anything like it. Truly a different take on reality.
| kortilla wrote:
| >For starters, Trump can simply revoke Elon's security
| clearance. There's no recourse for this. And that makes
| SpaceX's military contracts real awkward.
|
| This isn't an issue. Execs nor shareholders are required to
| have clearance and even the ones that have clearance aren't
| read in to top secret stuff without a need to know. Elon's
| focus was starship which is quite far removed from any of those
| contracts (falcon gov launches or starshield). Gwynne Shotwell
| runs and will continue to run those parts of SpaceX just fine
| without Elon having clearance.
| state_less wrote:
| What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat? Shouldn't
| those SpaceX contracts be based on how well the country is served
| by them and at what price.
|
| Trump needs to take his lumps on his BBB. That bill is full of
| pork for billionaires and cuts funding for poor folks. It should
| come as no surprise that people don't like it.
| kaonwarb wrote:
| I fear you materially overestimate Trump's rationality.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > What does SpaceX have to do with the Musk/Trump spat?
|
| Well, SpaceX is owned by Musk. Therefore Trump, if seeking to
| hurt Musk, could attempt to hurt SpaceX.
|
| The ends justify the means. The country's best interests are
| collateral damage, the benefit that SpaceX offers the country
| is not relevant to Trump's ego/feelings having been hurt.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| They referenced the contracts directly in the disconnected
| social media exchange on Thursday.
| BirAdam wrote:
| So, the government would do what, lean on Russia with whom the
| USA is currently engaged in a proxy war? Also, for Boeing or Blue
| Origin, the cost would currently be higher per launch, and as far
| as I know, no one has the kind of satellite network that SpaceX
| does.
|
| Of course, those are sane considerations. I suppose I shouldn't
| accuse the Donald of any kind of rational thinking.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I think you'll find both Musk and Trump are aligned with
| Russia. Which makes the interesting part for me, that they are
| feuding at all. It implies whatever control Moscow has over
| them, is failing, otherwise they would not undermine their
| shared plans in this way.
| jmyeet wrote:
| SpaceX is critical infrastructure to the US at this point and
| its continued availability and operation is of national
| security interest.
|
| That may sound like it gives Elon power. It's the opposite,
| actually. No US administration will take lightly threats to
| national security infrastructure like this. The nuclear option
| for any administration is to nationalize SpaceX, which they
| absolutely could do.
|
| Less nuclear: the US has a lot of control over what SpaceX
| does. The FAA (and to a lesser extent the NOAA) has to approve
| every launch. They could simply gorund SpaceX.
|
| If you think SpaceX could simply move operations elsewhere,
| think again, The US prohibits ASML, a Dutch company, from
| selling EUV lithography machines to China.
|
| Apart from all of that, SpaceX is absolutely dependant on US
| government funding and contracts. Withdrawing those, or even
| the threat of such, allows the US to wield a lot of power over
| SpaceX.
|
| What's rather surprising about this feud is that Trump is
| currently the adult and has been uncharacteristically
| restrained in his response thus far. Of course, all that could
| change. It was Elon who _heavily implied that Trump was a
| pedophile_ , which is an absolutely insane thing to do.
| cyclecount wrote:
| If it's critical infrastructure it should be nationalized
| dingnuts wrote:
| We have a national space agency that has had plenty of time
| and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
|
| Why wouldn't SpaceX turn into the funding and political
| football that NASA is, if it were nationalized?
|
| Like, this isn't a hypothetical. SpaceX only has a market
| because of the incompetence of the "public option."
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > We have a national space agency that has had plenty of
| time and money to do the stuff SpaceX is doing.
|
| That's quite inaccurate. NASA doesn't do much themselves,
| they hire external contractors but keep significant
| control over them. SpaceX got more funding and less
| control and they didn't start from scratch, NASA gave
| them all of their technical documentation, now-how and
| working prototypes.
|
| NASA could have done everything SpaceX does if they were
| given the same conditions and funding, however, they've
| never had funding for blowing up five spaceships in row,
| they were held to much stricter standards.
|
| The entire story looks like a blatant attempt to take
| control of space operations away from NASA and thus from
| the government.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Challenger
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| _onlyrealcuzzo_ above commented that Trump canceling SpaceX
| contracts would be "literally the path that led the USSR
| to ruin".
|
| However, we have a case of a private contractor trying to
| manipulate the president by means of "revelations" and
| decommissioning of a service important for national
| security. If the president cannot change those contracts
| the US would be literally on the path to oligarchic
| Russia... I'm not sure what's worse.
|
| Trump is generally moving in the direction of reducing
| government control of corporations to the point of risking
| government capture by oligarchic interests. What's
| happening now is a direct consequence of his policies and
| it's ironic that Trump's powers are being questioned when
| it comes to corporate regulation.
|
| Trump's personal faults are irrelevant at the moment, if
| the GOP doesn't stand firmly behind Trump we are going to
| find ourselves in an incredible mess.
| testing22321 wrote:
| This is a very anti-USA way of thinking because it doesn't
| allow companies to extract profit.
|
| Healthcare, education, roads, prisons, electricity,
| transit, all of it is designed in the USA so a company can
| extract profit.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| > an absolutely insane thing to do
|
| Is it?
|
| The statement itself doesn't seem to imply anything other
| than Musk seems to think he is in those files.
|
| Trump is in some of the JE "files" that were already released
| (flight logs).
|
| I think the cultural obsession with the unknown surrounding
| Jeffery Epstein informs what people infer from statements
| like that.
|
| There are many less-than-flattering ways that Trump could be
| associated with JE that do not include pedophilia.
| the_af wrote:
| But Musk is not implying any of those less-than-flattering
| things. Nobody knows what Musk _actually thinks_ , but what
| he implied is pretty clear. He calls it "a bomb", and we
| all know what that means.
|
| And this matters, because Musk was a major campaign
| contributor and advisor to someone he has now implied to be
| a pedophile. What does this say about _Musk_?
| someothherguyy wrote:
| > we all know what that means
|
| Personally, I don't jump to conclusions based on vague
| statements or evidence.
|
| > What does this say about Musk?
|
| Who knows? Musk has thin associations with Epstein and
| Maxwell as well, he is a proven liar, is at times visibly
| manic, and has been reported to drop relationships at a
| whim when challenged.
|
| There could be plenty of things driving his behavior, but
| I don't think this informs anything new about his
| character.
| the_af wrote:
| You got me wrong: I'm not talking about the veracity of
| the accusation, I'm asking about what it says _about
| Musk_ (regardless of its truth).
|
| Especially in the eyes of Musk fans.
|
| This guy is now effectively claiming he helped get
| someone elected president whom he knew was a pedophile.
| Musk claims Trump got elected _thanks to his support_
| (again, Musk claims this). He also claims Trump is a
| pedophile.
|
| So what do Musk fans think about _Musk_ (not Trump) in
| light of this?
| spuz wrote:
| Honestly, if there were any fans of Musk after he
| imitated a Nazi salute, I don't think their perception of
| him has much further room to sink.
| jmyeet wrote:
| As per usual, every accusation from a narcissist is a
| confession.
|
| You know who absolutely is connected to Epstein? Elon's
| brother, Kimbal (allgedly) [1].
|
| And while not related to Epstein but is just gross and in
| a similar ballpark, Elon's father Errol, had a
| stepdaughter from his wife's first marriage, Jana
| Bezuidenhout, who grew up in his house from age 4. He
| later went on to father two children with Jana (the first
| when she was 30, I believe) [2]. It's unclear when the
| relationship began. The only public statements are after
| Jana had a break-up.
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epsteins-ex-
| girlfrie...
|
| [2]: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/celebrity/artic
| le/31886...
| the_af wrote:
| Didn't know these details about Musk's family.
|
| It doesn't surprise me at all that a guy so gross in his
| personal life comes from a gross family. Everything about
| Musk is deranged.
|
| Do you remember the (not so distant era) when Musk was
| the nerd's and hacker's darling? SpaceX, his genius, his
| vision! This was before we knew much about his personal
| life and opinions. It seems so long ago now... Before he
| took to Twitter to claim it was OK to coup countries for
| their resources, or started naming children like
| mathematical formulas.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _It was Elon who heavily implied that Trump was a
| pedophile, which is an absolutely insane thing to do._
|
| How is it insane to repeat what everyone already knows? The
| only novelty here is Musk himself saying it to his legions of
| followers, who would have been otherwise inclined to downplay
| the significance of it.
| the_af wrote:
| It's insane because of the implications: Musk was a major
| contributor to Trump's campaign, and a major advisor, and
| _at the last minute_ he implies Trump is a pedophile?
|
| This means Musk knowingly contributed to get a pedophile
| elected! He couldn't have learned this at the last minute,
| he obviously held this ace in his sleeve.
|
| This already should "impeach" Musk (informally) in the eyes
| of his supporters: this is a guy who would help get a
| pedophile elected president if it would suit his business
| vision.
| mindslight wrote:
| Wow, that is some amazing threading of the mental needle
| to focus blame on Musk. Doesn't this indictment apply to
| every single person who voted for Trump in 2024? Those
| pictures of Epstein, Trump, and Maxwell having themselves
| some grand old times have been popularly circulating for
| like a decade at this point.
|
| If the indictment doesn't apply, then why can't Musk play
| the same card of "I didn't know/believe/accept" while he
| was supporting, but only recently has he "now come to
| know" ?
| the_af wrote:
| Why wouldn't I heap blame on Musk (as well as on Trump,
| mind you)? The guy's deranged and repulsive.
|
| I don't think your objections are fair. Let's go over
| them:
|
| The average Trump voter doesn't know much about Epstein,
| and certainly doesn't believe Trump was involved in
| anything with that scandal. Any evidence that may turn up
| would be considered "fake news" to them. Whatever you may
| think of Trump voters, and whatever things they really
| are to blame for, knowingly voting for someone they
| believe to be a pedophile isn't one of their sins.
|
| Musk just implied Trump is a pedophile (or is suppressing
| certain documents because of his links to a pedophile).
| Musk also claims without him Trump wouldn't have been
| elected. These are _Musk 's claims_, so he has thrown
| away any possible defenses of "but I didn't know/believe
| this" and "but I'm irrelevant in the grand scheme of
| things".
|
| You also claim Musk could defend himself with "but I
| didn't know at the time". This is very, very weak. When
| exactly do you suppose he learned this? In the few days
| that have elapsed since this very public falling out,
| maybe even a few days before? Oh, please. You know you
| don't believe this, these two were heaping praise on each
| other and calling themselves friends for most of their
| collaboration since Trump's second term, and only _now_
| Musk found out about Epstein? What, an aide rushed this
| info to him just in time for their current breakup?
| Absurd.
|
| Any way you slice it, Musk had this accusation up his
| sleeve the whole time, he just chose to deploy it now.
|
| So again I must ask, what does this say -- in his fans'
| eyes -- about Musk as a person?
|
| PS: You seem to believe I'm somehow defending Trump here.
| If that's your worry, let me be clear that I think Trump
| is a disgrace. I don't know whether he's a pedophile
| though, unlike Musk I don't claim to have seen any secret
| documents. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if both
| Trump and Musk are pedophiles, these aren't exactly
| examples of decent human beings.
|
| PPS: it has also just occurred to me you could be
| wondering why I'm focusing on the outrageous things Musk
| has said, but not on the contradictory, absurd or just
| plain dumb things Trump is saying about Musk? Well,
| because Trump has an expiration date. I suppose he can do
| lots of immediate damage to Musk, but he must do so now.
| Musk, as the world's richest person, has a much longer
| shelf life and more time to do damage to the US and the
| rest of the world, and bizarrely, has a large cult
| following. So I wonder what his followers think.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| IME Trump supporters will justify anything he does or may
| plausibly have done. They're too invested in him or have
| bought into the idea that the other must be so much
| worse.
|
| Elon stans seem to have a similar mindset.
|
| Getting folks to think critically about Elon's actions
| would require an Epstein video of Trump engaging in SA
| with a clearly underage child. Likely only if coming out
| of police evidence lockers sealed before AI video
| existed. And it would have to be reported widely and
| maybe even released publicly without cuts (only
| blurring).
| safety1st wrote:
| This isn't the first time Musk has baselessly accused
| someone of pedophilia on social media.
|
| He did it randomly to some guy he didn't like in Thailand
| who saved some kids trapped in a cave. He's probably done
| it other times.
|
| It's just an Elon Musk thing. Go totally unhinged on
| social media and defame people without evidence. He does
| it all the time.
|
| The only guy more famous than Musk for saying absolute
| nonsense on social media, is Trump.
|
| It is all fake, lame, and nonsense.
|
| What's shocking is that the people running our country
| are behaving like absolute children. I feel like they
| wouldn't be able to hold down a job at my company because
| they're so unhinged, they would have been fired long ago,
| and yet here they are, billionaires, deciding the fate of
| 350M people.
| the_af wrote:
| Yeah, I remember that other accusation.
|
| To be clear, I'm not debating the veracity of the
| accusation, I'm asking what it says _about Musk_ that he
| claims to have knowingly helped elect president someone
| he knew to be a pedophile.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| > nationalize SpaceX, which they absolutely could do.
|
| This isn't at all clear. It's clear that they could easily
| compel them to prioritize and fulfill government contracts.
| Far less clear that they could just take it. It is clear that
| the current administration could "try" but such an effort
| might result in a lawsuit that lasts longer than the
| administration does and thereby become moot.
| seydor wrote:
| Maybe this timeline leads to nationalization of spaceX
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Apparently, Musk is very popular among Republicans:
| https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/06/06/elon-musk-...
| abxyz wrote:
| Musk is popular amongst republicans because Trump has
| championed him. The pro-Musk Republicans are also pro-Trump
| republicans and their loyalty to Trump will beat out whatever
| respect they have for Musk. Musk is not a threat to Trump,
| because Trump's entire platform is built on Trump-or-bust. Musk
| was a useful idiot to Trump. Musk thinking that Trump's Epstein
| connection was somehow going to hurt Trump shows just how
| impotent Musk is. Trump fans couldn't care one iota about that.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| If anything, Trump fans will pat him on the back for pwning
| those 13-year-old libs.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's really that simple. If you want to know what MAGA
| supporters believe about any topic, just look up what Trump
| last said about it. He could change his mind three times in a
| single day, and they would also change their mind (and
| talking points) in lock step three times.
| oskarkk wrote:
| YouGov made a survey on June 5, asking "If you had to choose,
| who would you side with more between the following?" with Musk
| and Trump to choose. For Republicans, it's 71% Trump, 6% Musk,
| 12% neither, 11% not sure.
|
| https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/survey-results/daily...
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| Trump has unprecedented power of retribution. The best Elon can
| pull off is swearing at opponents in an interview.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore,
| so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government
| contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as
| corruption in any way, shape, or form.
|
| Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the
| president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things
| about the president.
|
| If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should
| extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on
| merit and based on nepotism instead.
|
| This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone
| says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it
| shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough,
| they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the
| money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on
| promises, and it shoots the country in the head.
| the_af wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the
| election campaign and a major advisor to the president now
| declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats
| an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk
| knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him
| after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes
| of his supporters, what does this say about Musk?
|
| (Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant;
| what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to
| know is a pedophile).
| aisenik wrote:
| Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated
| with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu
| lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less
| reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the
| situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the
| dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child
| rape is resolved this way).
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| It's kind of his pointless go-to A-bomb insult, yet, this
| time, it's within the realm of possibility. I mean, I don't
| not believe it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
| majormajor wrote:
| Trump/Epstein connections have been reported on for years
| with photos and videos so anyone who cares probably was
| already on the anti-Trump side.
|
| While Musk has a bigger megaphone than most media, he also
| has a credibility issue - and now especially for the Trump-
| true-believer crowd that is likely the only group whose
| bubble would be so shielded that they'd see it as news.
| redeeman wrote:
| trump was one of the people that originally provided all
| they knew about epstein to the prosecutors, and once he
| realized what epstein was, he was banned from all trump
| venues. What did other do?
| jordanb wrote:
| Not only that but Musk was able to successfully argue in
| court that he's such a well known liar that a reasonable
| person wouldn't take his accusations of pedophillia
| seriously
| the_af wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know this.
|
| I didn't even know this was a possible defense at all,
| "everything I say is bullshit, so if anyone takes it
| seriously, that's on them".
| amiga386 wrote:
| > Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker
|
| Laughably so.
|
| Musk: I can save those boys trapped in the cave! We can use
| this stupid submarine thing of mine.
|
| Hero: No need, I and my Navy SEAL cave-diving pals have got
| this.
|
| Musk: How dare you! You're a pedo.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44779998
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45418245
| Geee wrote:
| He supposedly learned it after the fact.
|
| Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that.
| However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has
| actually been public information for a long time. It's known
| that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no
| evidence he went to the island or did something wrong.
|
| It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the
| actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to
| the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult,
| rather than a serious accusation.
| krapp wrote:
| To be fair Elon claimed that Trump is mentioned in the
| remainder of files which have yet to be released.
| Presumably what evidence there is of wrongdoing, if it
| exists, exists there.
|
| "Pedo guy" Musk being Musk, though, who knows? What is the
| likelihood Musk would even have access to those files if
| they were so damning to Trump and still sealed?
|
| Nothing about this is "quite obvious." It could go either
| way. To be honest I wouldn't put it past either one of them
| to be on Epstein's "list."
| Geee wrote:
| I think the tone of the message would be way more serious
| if it was a serious accusation based on actual evidence.
| Now it reads like a kindergarten level conspiracy theory,
| which almost seems like a joke. The silly claim was that
| Trump being in the files is the reason why they aren't
| released.
|
| And apparently he has now deleted the tweet.
| krapp wrote:
| Without seeing the unreleased files we can't know how
| silly the claim is.
| the_af wrote:
| > _He supposedly learned it after the fact._
|
| When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his
| administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his
| going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons
| explicitly _not_ about any pedophile rings.
|
| So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's
| because he just learned of it.
|
| I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves
| like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act?
| What is true is that accusing _the president of the US_ of
| being linked to a pedophile ring is _not the same_ as
| accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile.
|
| The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the
| president of the US might.
|
| (Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel
| compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think
| this is a fight between two nasty people).
| evan_ wrote:
| I think having 400 billion dollars earns a person a
| measure of resp- well, whatever Trump is capable of that
| would equate to respect
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting
| influence of power.
|
| Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be
| better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to
| destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults
| could come in and run the country / companies.
|
| I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had
| redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first
| sentence.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| July 4th we commemorate getting rid of one mad king overseas
| and replacing him with.. oh wait.
| mindslight wrote:
| You should always self-host your foreign mad king. The
| latency to England is just too high.
| ithkuil wrote:
| KaaS (king as a service)
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| Canada has done it the right way. Self host but have a
| redundant backup across the pond.
| jmyeet wrote:
| 6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are
| Supreme Court justices.
|
| All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme
| Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing
| out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity".
|
| Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make
| prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of
| its way to say you can't even examine the communications
| between the president and the DoJ.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the
| impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's
| perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity
| and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for
| government ministers.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| We have legislative immunity called the speech and debate
| clause. It doesn't shield lawmakers from other crimes, nor
| should it, and it certainly doesn't imply some sort of
| expansive executive immunity.
|
| The founders were rebelling agaisnt an untouchable
| executive, remember?
| nradov wrote:
| This contract dispute has nothing to do with Presidential
| immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.
| Cancelling SpaceX contracts for political reasons would be
| wrong but not criminal.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| The point is we won't find out because presidential
| immunity also protects against discovery. Cases that
| previously could have been decided on the merits won't even
| make it to adjudication.
| CalChris wrote:
| Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this
| Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the
| Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm
| unaware of.
|
| This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around.
| Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
| deeg wrote:
| I have absolutely no sympathy for Musk but the president--any
| president--shouldnt be able to do this.
| consumer451 wrote:
| The biggest self-indictment in that post by POTUS was "I
| was always surprised Biden didn't do it!"
|
| I am not surprised that Biden didn't cancel all SpaceX
| contracts for political reasons, neither are most rational
| people.
| jyounker wrote:
| Trump doesn't believe that smart people with power can
| have ethics or morality because he doesn't have them
| himself.
| majormajor wrote:
| It's not ethics or morality, it's just "not being a
| child." A president not personally retaliating against a
| critic doesn't need to have anything to do with ethics,
| it's just requires a post-middle-school mentality of "I
| may not be happy with this person but I [my country] can
| still benefit from things they do."
| ithkuil wrote:
| The property of "being a child" in an adult is
| effectively a matter of ethics and morality
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| No, it can be justified with rationality alone.
| belter wrote:
| 1 Musk = 13 Scaramuccis . Please update your SI unit tables
| accordingly.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| That 40% are in a cult about 1 mad rant away from an ivermectin
| Jonestown.
| yongjik wrote:
| On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash
| your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse
| course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract"
| does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A:
| Musk.)
|
| I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not
| _quite_ be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at
| least it looks more entertaining! : /
| Phenomenit wrote:
| That's the key right? It's world as content. Nothing means
| anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media
| platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this
| downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of
| "politics". But that's not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what
| happens next!
| blibble wrote:
| > Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
|
| did people expect any different when they elected a reality
| TV star to be president?
|
| one that's such an incredible businessman he managed to
| bankrupt not one, but two casinos
| martin-t wrote:
| He's first and foremost a narcissist (strongly grandiose
| subtype, and all over the place on the communal/malignant
| axis).
|
| That condition should make him ineligible for any position
| of power. This is what a society gets when it elects
| someone mentally ill (in the harmful-to-others rather than
| the typical harmful-to-ill-person sense).
|
| I am continually astounded by how many people, even if you
| explain the symptoms to them, will be unable to see it -
| not just in this one case but in general. There is
| something in many people that makes them attracted to those
| who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly
| above things.
| thoroughburro wrote:
| Narcissists are over-represented as CEOs and such, as
| well. I think a fair number of Americans like
| narcissists.
| btilly wrote:
| In order to see it, you must recognize the ways in which
| he fooled you. People would generally rather be fooled
| again than face the thought that they were fooled at some
| point in the past. And the more that they have been
| fooled, the stronger this bias is.
|
| Trump is an absolute genius at fooling people in small
| ways, then over time ratcheting up the cognitive
| dissonance until he fools them in big ways. See
| https://specialto.thebulwark.com/ for a detailed
| explanation of how he did this with one of the many
| people that he has turned into puppets.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| > There is something in many people that makes them
| attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider
| them only slightly above things.
|
| It's the slave moral and if you think the majority of
| people would be better (given the opportunity) you are
| naive
| jordanb wrote:
| > Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
|
| The revolution wouldn't have been televised but the
| polycrisis will be live streamed.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > he'll trash your business one day and then the next day
| he'll reverse course
|
| TACO, as the saying goes.
| rchaud wrote:
| > but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR
| to ruin.
|
| The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic
| entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door
| for a strongman ruler was:
|
| a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying
| vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by
| its business elite or by foreign leaders
|
| b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight,
| with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open
| looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites
| who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the
| country at the mercy of international creditors looking for
| deals heavily tilted in their favour
|
| c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of
| confidence in the country's currency and ability to service
| its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously
| led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term
| Capital Management.
|
| Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All
| it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like
| Chechnya.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Present circumstances in America are very different. When
| Putin took power, Russia's economy had been declining
| rapidly for a decade; then over his first decade, the GDP
| _dectupled_. If the US were to somehow achieve $600,000 GDP
| per capita by the end of Trump 's current term, yeah,
| Americans would probably want to reevaluate their
| conventional wisdom about what good governance looks like.
| But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Well, there's an easy way to get to $600,000 GDP per
| capita, just crash the value of the US dollar by 10x. And
| this may well be in Trump's reach.
| dh2022 wrote:
| If you really want to find out the reasons why USSR failed
| I suggest reading "Collapse the fall of Soviet Union" by
| Zubok or "Collapse of an Empire" by Gaidar. They are easy
| to read books. Said reasons are quite different from what
| is going on in USA at the moment.
| paganel wrote:
| By 1998 the shit had already hit the fan big time for the
| common people in Russia, all "thanks" to Shock Therapy
| (which you allude to at your point b)). That was the real
| tragedy, nothing a more "experienced" president could have
| fixed (other than doing what Putin ended up doing, which is
| trying to reverse some of the craziness of said Shock
| Therapy).
|
| I write this from direct experience, as I grew up as a
| kid/adolescent in nearby Romania in the '90s, where we had
| our very own Shock Therapy. In fact my present political
| stance (a return to nationalism and a reversal of what
| globalisation has brought about) is heavily marked by that
| very traumatic period in my life (and the same thing is
| valid for many of my compatriots).
| vkou wrote:
| Yeltsin _was_ the strongman ruler of the 90s. When
| parliament wouldn 't kowtow to him, he launched a bloody
| coup and then rewrote the constitution to consolidate power
| in his office.
|
| The only thing that he was truly unsuccessful at as a
| politician was failing to shrug off some bullshit credit
| card bribery scandal.
|
| When you've deployed tanks and mortars against the lawful
| government, _and everyone 's fine with that_ I can't
| understand why you'd let a few thousands dollars that you
| put on a company credit card bring you down.
|
| > Present circumstances in America aren't that different.
|
| They are different, in the sense that _all_ the damage
| happening right now is self-inflicted. Russia needed to do
| _something_ to transition from the USSR. Shock therapy was
| a terrible 'something', but it's at least possible to see
| _how_ it got there.
|
| 2025 is... Something else entirely.
| cma wrote:
| > an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a
| unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't
| respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
|
| Probably can't mention Yeltsin in the context of strongmen
| without mentioning the shelling of the parliament building.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_c
| r...
| tempodox wrote:
| I've said before that by the time Trump is through America will
| lie in ruins. I may have been too optimistic, it might happen
| earlier.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I agree entirely.
|
| Higher education and research are already being affected.
| Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt.
|
| Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally.
|
| Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure
| of the fragility of the base US system of government. The
| fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple
| carts is not something really forgotten.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| > by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins
|
| If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like?
|
| GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years? Dollar losing >50%
| of its value against a basket of major currencies? Credit
| rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies? Loss of reserve
| currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)?
| Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days? Mass
| emigration of >2 million Americans annually?
|
| I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your
| price.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Likewise that Elon can say Trump is "ungrateful" that be
| received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew
| the nomination for Elon's NASA administrator. It's just open
| bribery.
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| American democracy died on the day the supreme court
| overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US
| politics is a mere playground for billionaires and
| corporations.
| creato wrote:
| This is why the standard for something to be considered
| improper behavior is (or used to be) the _appearance_ of a
| conflict of interest.
|
| People stopped giving a shit about anything. This is just one
| of dozens of things that would have been totally unacceptable a
| few years ago.
| andrepd wrote:
| The world is no longer a serious place.
|
| Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't
| know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination
| of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel
| the need to _ _pretend to care_ _ about honesty, character,
| seriousness, etc.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think they might have figured out that a lot of that
| honesty and character was a facade. Is the false appearance
| of morality better than just showing yourself as you really
| are?
| dasil003 wrote:
| You mean that people lie and cheat? That's always been
| the case. The point of honesty and character is precisely
| that they reflect a person's ability to value a higher
| good than their immediate self-interest. Let's not throw
| the baby out with the bathwater.
|
| The fact that reputation has been subjected to
| unprecedented arms race in the face of the internet and
| social media doesn't fundamentally change the game, it
| just makes it more exhausting and overwhelming to pay
| attention to.
| Gigachad wrote:
| This kind of stuff would not fly in Australia. Not to say
| that there is no corruption, but that it isn't absolutely
| blatant and ignored.
| gambiting wrote:
| I remember when _certain_ social media networks argued that
| having a real name policy will lead to a more polite,
| kinder internet, because people won 't be as rude with
| their real names attached to their posts. Turns out, people
| really don't care. I see the most vile, disgusting, racist,
| xenophobic shit on Facebook every single day, with real
| names and pictures showing smiling happy people hugging
| their kids on every one of them. Like you said - people
| don't feel any need to care about honesty, character, or
| even appearance of politeness or good manners.
| pessimist wrote:
| It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of
| identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered
| a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we"
| are winning and "they" are losing.
|
| I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist
| to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language,
| religion and so on.
|
| It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted
| land.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in
| the US, especially at the local and state level. The main
| difference is a significant portion of governance was
| temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as
| leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying
| experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has
| been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the
| aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root.
|
| The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this
| erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch
| increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive,
| leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing
| the power of checks and balances.
|
| There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku
| in Japan, and Francois Mitterrand in France tried to
| decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
| pessimist wrote:
| Low-level corruption at the local/state level is related
| but its effects are different though. In fact even today
| low level corruption in the US is extremely low by global
| standards - you can't bribe your way to a drivers license
| openly, for example. I'm sure it happens but it's not
| common or openly boasted about (parts of CA or DC could be
| an exception).
|
| Here the corruption is _openly_ displayed as a kind of
| peacock-tail to the beneficiaries.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I'd rather not have a whole discussion over this atm (I'm
| out rn - maybe later), but I recommend reading Yuen Yuen
| Ang's paper on "Unbundling Corruption" - there are
| different typographies of what "corruption" is, and some
| nations have always had a similar type of corruption
| compared to others.
|
| In addition, low level corruption is orthogonal to grand
| corruption as can be seen in Singapore, Japan, South
| Korea, and the US.
|
| Finally, Indian public discourse around corruption is
| non-targeted, and fails to contextualize significant
| institutional differences in how local, state, and
| federal governments operate in India compared to other
| states (be they democratic like the US or authoritarian
| like China).
|
| [Feel free to add questions or points of contention, but
| I won't be able to reply quickly]
| pessimist wrote:
| Fine, I don't disagree with anything you point out.
| However where we differ is that I believe identity
| politics is the trigger factor here, all the other
| changes you mention (loss of balance of power etc) are
| downstream of this.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Your causal diagram is backwards. Identity politics isn't
| the path to corruption. Corrupt politicians like Trump
| use identity politics to gain power to practice their
| corruption. Nobody who wanted to bring back Christian
| hegemony and re-oppress minority groups is cheering that
| Trump is threatening to take away contracts from Musk
| because "their side is winning."
| neilv wrote:
| Interesting; is there an accessible 10-minute read on this
| US (edit: governance) de-politicized/re-politicized
| history, or does it have a name?
| medler wrote:
| The notion that this kind of politicization started in
| the 90s is fanciful revisionism. It wasn't really a thing
| in the US until about 2017. The word it's known by is
| Trumpism.
| neilv wrote:
| I'm familiar with the rise of talk radio, News Corp, Web
| propaganda, alt-right, etc., in politics and public
| sentiment.
|
| What's new to me is that the last couple decades might be
| a reversion to a pre-war mode of US governance.
|
| (I know WW2 was unifying in some ways, as we'd expect,
| but I don't recall much from school about how US politics
| was played before then, other than punctuated events like
| the Civil War, civil rights movement, etc.)
| alterom wrote:
| Trumpism is just Reaganomics brought to its logical
| conclusion.
| baobun wrote:
| This predates Trumpism.
| fcatalan wrote:
| 9/11 was a big turning point in my experience. American
| conservatives that I considered online friends were
| simple impossible to reason with within days and
| completely alien beings after a few weeks.
| bobxmax wrote:
| > It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of
| identity (race, religion)
|
| To be fair, that's exactly what Obama '08 was
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Only to white southerners (who on average felt very
| insecure about him for some reason). To most he was just
| young, articulate, and competent.
|
| Neither McCain nor Romney ever campaigned on racial issues,
| so it otherwise just never came up to most people in the
| election.
| bobxmax wrote:
| That's naive and you know it. A massive drive for him was
| electing the first black president. A less, but still
| not-insignificant drive was for Hillary as the first
| female president.
| Retric wrote:
| I'd be shocked if Hilary had a net benefit being a female
| candidate. We've had 2 chances to elect a female
| president and they both lost the general election with
| not that great turnout.
|
| John McCain's VP was female during 08 and he lost by a
| huge margin.
| Retric wrote:
| 52.9% vs 45.7% of the electoral vote doesn't come down to
| race here.
|
| Obama was vastly more charismatic and coming after for
| years of an unpopular Republican president, 28% on election
| night. https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-
| approval-ra...
|
| Not that idiot was enough to resonate with voters.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Obama taught constitutional law and served in the state and
| US Senate before running for president. He was some
| unqualified hack thrust into power because they needed a
| person of a different race in power.
|
| Obama's campaign was far less about race than Trump's
| campaigns in 2016 and 2024. Unless you can't hear the dog
| whistles.
| bobxmax wrote:
| Can you clarify what Trump's 2016 had to do with race
| onetimeusename wrote:
| This whole article is speculation about a war of words on
| social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the
| chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any
| citation.
|
| >One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the
| exchanges as "bluster" that neither Musk nor Trump would
| actually implement
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Part of the problem is that
|
| * those who were concerned about it happening to others have
| seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a
| bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms,
| etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts
|
| * there is a subset that is just super cult of personality
| around the current president and will bend over backwards to
| justify actions
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It's not they don't see it - they don't care. This has always
| been the moral compass of the US.
| vkou wrote:
| > It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon
| anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his
| government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that
| as corruption in any way, shape, or form.
|
| They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he
| didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it
| to a person he just decided that he didn't like?
|
| Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting
| him with accusations of pedophilia.
|
| So far, all of this is quite normal.
| JCattheATM wrote:
| ~40% of the country sees that as strength.
|
| Democracies only really work with an educated and altruistic
| population, and the US is only getting further away from that.
| bgwalter wrote:
| There is so much theater and reality TV in the Trump
| administration that it's hard to conclude anything. Most of the
| theater is there to play to his MAGA base.
|
| First there was the (staged?) row with Zelensky. A couple of
| months later nothing has really changed.
|
| Now Musk left as planned (he couldn't stay longer than 130 days
| in that position). Time for another public row to show that Trump
| is tough on subsidies for electric vehicles.
|
| SpaceX will of course continue to get funded. A large number of
| LEO satellites are needed for Trump's Golden Dome and Starlink is
| needed in crisis regions.
| krick wrote:
| That's a really good take, and I personally missed that his
| departure was pre-planned all along (you are the first I saw to
| mention 130 days). But, again. "So, thank you, Elon, as you are
| leaving your role anyway, how about making a little performance
| for the public? Be my friend, post on Twitter that I didn't
| release Epstein files because I'm in them..."
|
| ...Really?
| safety1st wrote:
| Yeah I think this is the most logical take.
|
| These guys are both masters of dominating attention on social
| media. It got them to where they are. The way to dominate the
| national attention in this world we've created, is to act like
| a child and call someone a pedo. They are not the leaders we
| wanted, but may be the leaders we deserve.
| someothherguyy wrote:
| https://www.justice.gov/jmd/ethics/summary-government-ethics...
|
| It looks like it is 130 days per year, not a rolling start from
| the date of hiring.
| deeg wrote:
| There is no multiverse where Trump would knowingly allow
| someone to mock or criticize him. If Musk grovels enough Trump
| may let him back; he loves emasculating his rivals.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I really don't think the Zelensky thing was staged, and I doubt
| this was either.
|
| As far as I can tell about Zelensky, he had every intention to
| cancel Trump's proposed deal after the white house meeting, but
| he is losing the war with Russia so badly that he absolutely
| needs US support, so he had no choice but to come back to the
| table.
|
| Musk pulling out the Epstein thing and Trump pulling out the
| SpaceX contracts are both two subjects these guys are very
| touchy about. If they were faking it, they wouldn't have gone
| for the (emotional) throat on this one.
|
| That said, Trump always chickens out, so there's no real chance
| SpaceX is getting its contracts canceled, even the ones that
| legitimately are a huge waste of money.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| The Zelensky interview was only staged (manufactured) by the
| White House. You may have noticed immediately after the US
| stopped intelligence sharing just long enough for Putin to take
| back Kursk.
| ndr42 wrote:
| "one in eight Americans thinking women are too emotional to be in
| politics" [1]. Well, I don't know, maybe men should not holding
| high political offices /s
|
| [1]
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03616843221123...
| jyounker wrote:
| A friend who studied political science an conflict made this
| observation about American politics: 30% of the voting
| population is insane. They will believe the most mind-bendingly
| illogical things, and then vote for them, so the best you can
| ever expect from the general population is 70% agreement on
| reality.
|
| In that light, we're doing really well with only 1/8 believing
| such a thing.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I blame the leaded paint
| patrickmay wrote:
| Maybe neither should. The problem is the power existing in the
| first place, waiting around for someone like Trump.
| tsoukase wrote:
| I am watching what's happenings in the US at the last months
| eating popcorn. It's unbelievable. World's strongest nation is
| reduced to a fight between an autistic and a f...er who happens
| to carry the nuclear codes that can annihilate the globe.
|
| Where are the official protocols, the dozens of federal lawyers
| and people behind the presidency, the century long political
| traditions, the Secret Services?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| > fight between an autistic and a f...er
|
| There are many better nouns to describe Elmo that don't involve
| disparaging neurodivergent folks.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Please don't attribute Musk's behavior to autism.
|
| It's a disgusting and inaccurate smear against people on the
| autism spectrum.
| AngryData wrote:
| I don't believe Musk's claim at all that he is autistic, that
| is just his excuse for being an asshole and/or high on drugs,
| depending on the day.
| dottjt wrote:
| Not quite relevant, but I've noticed that there's this trend on
| HN where if there's a non-tech-related happening that's
| significant and it's obviously something that people want to
| discuss, people will try and find a tech-related angle in order
| to discuss the wider issue.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| If we all worked in machine shops, we'd be talking about the
| steel tariffs.
| thinkindie wrote:
| At least Berlusconi didn't have access to nuclear warheads.
|
| Seriously, I visited the US few times between 2005 and 2010 and
| each time people were raising the topic of Berlusconi. How can
| you have a president like that, who voted for him, bunga bunga
| etc etc.
|
| Now you know how you can have such personality in power too. With
| even more power.
| andrepd wrote:
| The Italians truly invent everything first, eh? Fascism,
| trumpism, etc
| thinkindie wrote:
| Trumpism is just another league I believe. You may say it's
| Berlusconism on steroids, but the global impact makes this a
| thing by itself.
| baxtr wrote:
| Don't get me started on Roman Emperors...
| codedokode wrote:
| And alphabet.
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