It would violate the Takings Clause of the 5th amendment. If there is one thing that scares MAGA more than anything else it is the government taking their shit. Practically a cornerstone of their ideology.
Because both are malignant narcissists, and people like that can’t get along very well with anyone, especially each other.
A fascist leader cannot tolerate anyone with power approaching his own. If someone starts to claim such power, the fascist leader will take steps to squash that other person.
It was a natural progression.
It reminds me of what an insider said about Trump during his first administration:
Some people seem to think Trump’s playing chess, when most of the time the staff are just trying to stop him from eating the pieces.
And this was when Trump’s dementia wasn’t as bad as it is now. Also Musk has destroyed his consumer base with Tesla.
I don’t know if these 2 are competent to plan this out.
Sure, their shit. But not their enemies’ shit. MAGA doesn’t seem to have a problem with violating the constitution as long as it hurts others. They can’t seem to grasp that it’s possible it could come back to hurt them. See also abolishing due process.
Is this legal? Is the CEO of a public company then a full and complete corporate dictator? How can that be? Doesn’t the board of a directors have a legal duty to the stockholders to stop something so self-destructive to the firm?
Trump is doing the mirror-image, and Trump is breaking the law. But Trump is above the law (not a jibe, not a joke, just the simple truth), and, in the absence of a Trump pardon, Musk is subject to law. Will Musk then walk this back tomorrow, on account of Musk having to abide by contracts?
I’m waiting for Donnie Two Dolls to say that the Elon Musk he “knew” was actually an AI-generated cyborg.
Sounds to me like Trump has already started laying the groundwork for saying that everything Elon has is because of the US government. So he wouldn’t really be taking anything from Elon, he’d just be taking back what he graciously gave Elon in the first place. Remember, facts do not matter to Trump at all. He just needs to declare something to be true and it becomes true for official purposes.
I don’t think Elon would get much sympathy from the MAGA crowd either. He’s not one of them and these are the people who respond to the “first they came for the…” poem by shouting “she’s in the attic!” Elon will find no shelter among these people.
According to talking heads on MSNBC, there are also four astronauts up at the ISS who are never coming home if Elon decides to be a shit about it. So he should think about that before he takes another hit of ketamine and goes rage tweeting. If he’s threatening the lives of four astronauts who absolutely did not ask to be a part of this, I’d throw his ass in jail right now.
Musk is already backing down on decommissioning Dragon.
Seems that, like Yevgeny Prigozhin, Musk will back down. We’ll have to wait and see for any unscheduled disassembly of his planes.
FWIW there is currently a Dragon capsule docked to the ISS. If the four astronauts needed to they could use it to escape. They do not need Musk to send one up to save them. (Unless Musk could remotely disable it…that would not surprise me at all if Space-X could do that.)
Excellent analogy.
However, I do NOT extend the analogy to the the life and death aspect. The U.S. is still, relatively speaking, the less serious superpower. Yes, with exceptions.
This assumes a normative board of directors; I have no idea how independent of Musk that board is.
I wonder how long it will take Trump to realize that the Supreme Court truly gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wants? Musk is an enemy of the US cuz Trump says so…shoot down his plane. Congress would never impeach him and SCOTUS says he can not be held liable for those actions.
Not sure if I was a pilot for Musk if I’d want to keep that job (I probably would but this would cross my mind).
You don’t think he realizes/believes this already?
They’re trying to kiss and make up.
Link to the WaPo article (might be paywalled?), pre-election, which reports that Musk was working illegally in the US when he applied for citizenship, which could void his citizenship. Seems to be what Bannon is talking about.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/26/elon-musk-immigration-status/
I’ve said this before, but: no thanks, we don’t want him either.
And why do we owe the USA? You are the idiots that gave him citizenship. You can keep him.
Also, he would have to had renounced his RSA citizenship in order to obtain US citizenship. (Dual nationality is not an easy thing to obtain here) There are ways around this, but he’s too high profile to be ignored. He’s yours.
Good luck.
This is actually no longer true (I’m not sure if it ever was). Back when I got US citizenship in 2011 I could keep my SA citizenship as long as I filed an intention to retain form, and that was easy to do.
But even that requirement no longer applies: as of 6 May 2025 the Constitutional Court ruled against it, with the consequence that anyone that ran into this in the past is still a citizen: https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2025/8.pdf.
We took all those white supremacists off your hands and put them in Idaho.
Not enough of them.