Trump-Musk feud wipes $152 billion off Tesla, sparks Dragon spacecraft threat and Epstein files claim

[FrancB]

Pop-corn time or stagged?

 

[Kirby1]

Pop-corn time or stagged?

It clearly not staged.

No one stages being called a pedophile.

 

[GoldenGoat]

My interpretation of this: Musk thought he was a hero saving America. Musk wasn’t smart enough to figure out that a lot of people would not appreciate doge. Backlash hurt his brands and now he is trying to publicly break up with doge to try to save his bank account. Is that correct?

 

[AlexIL]

Better yet... on a plane to South America... let Elon experience that and then he can tell everyone on X about how people should be treated and the anger that incubates.

That's where terrorists come from... being treated as less than human.

About Elon you right, would be fantastic.

Regarding terrorists unfortunately not so. Israel treats them as human beings, they get much better treatment in Israeli jails than their own criminals. Daily meat by Red Cross, free cigarettes and unrestricted shopping. Family meetings, group therapy, personal psychologists. Rehabilitation options upon release etc. Guess what they do first thing upon release. Right, return to killing Jews. Terror furled by ideology and religious extremism. No amount of human treatment will solve that.

 

[GFitzpatrick47]

My interpretation of this: Musk thought he was a hero saving America. Musk wasn’t smart enough to figure out that a lot of people would not appreciate doge. Backlash hurt his brands and now he is trying to publicly break up with doge to try to save his bank account. Is that correct?

Even more mundane than that.

Musk, once again, made a bunch of promises that were always untenable. Finding $2 Trillion in the budget to cut? Absolutely impossible and farcical on its face. $1 trillion? Impossible unless you cut political "third-rails": defense spending, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security (and considering some of those are non-discretionary, you'd need new legislation to enact any cuts, and DOGE didn't have that authority). Hence you end up with the wholesale gutting of certain agencies, spurrious claims about fraud, waste, and abuse, and a whole lot of nothing that probably (in actual terms, not DOGE figures) ends up with under $100b "saved" out of federal spending that totaled roughly $6.7 trillion last year.

What Musk didn't realize is that the average American only cares about "saving money" insofar as it directly results in more money in their own pockets. So unless those "savings" would result in direct payments, all you'd end up doing is convincing people that DOGE is coming for their jobs and their social services next, without any attempt to make up for it.

What Musk also didn't realize is that his political usefullness fell to 0 the moment that Trump won the 2024 election, and became an actual liability once Trump took office and DOGE took actual form. There's no room in the Executive for competing loyalties, let alone amongst two massive narcissists whose desires aren't necessarily aligned. For Trump and the GOP in power (or looking to get into power), Musk is merely a bank account, a means to an end. He's useful so long as the dollars keep flowing, but once they've won election or gotten appointed or been confirmed by Congress, he's merely another bank account amongst many bank accounts, and his dollars are just as green as any other centimillionaire or billionaire who is willing to spend the money.

The moment that articles began coming out calling him "President Musk", his days were numbered, and it's obvious that he didn't do nearly enough to assuage Trump that he wasn't trying to be a shadow President. Also, Musk is profoundly, astoundingly weird and deeply uncool, and I can only imagine how grating his mere presence could be towards someone like Trump, who at the end of the day is still a near-octogenarian New Yorker with sensibilities far unlike that of a tech bro, formerly Cali-based foreigner like Musk. Hell, aside from JD Vance, there's no one within Trump's orbit or cabinet who is from outside of the real-estate, finance, Wall Street milieu. All the tech, AI, and Crypto bullshit is being dealt with by Eric and Don Jr, and notice how Trump keeps them far away from the White House whenever humanly possible.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

I guess it’s time to invest some money in Tesla shares.

You were right, TSLA is already up 3.7%.

It clearly not staged.

No one stages being called a pedophile.

He didn't go that far; he said Trump was in the files. It's reasonable considering it is already public information that they flew together multiple times on Epstein's plane, despite Trump denying it today: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-tru...frey-epstein-files-released-pam-bondi-2037648