Which is very unlikely now that Musk is using his wealth to threaten them. He’s promised to fund primary challengers to anyone who doesn’t support Trump 100% . And the loss of their own power scares them more than anything Trump will do.
I agree. Elon Musk is turning out politically scarier than I imagined. Him openly threatening republican senators to fall in line behind Trump cabinet picks or face primary challengers funded by him (Musk) did make Senator Joni Ernst and a few others “fall in line”.
From what I read it looks like Hegseth and Kash Patel are safe now. Possibly RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard too.
They’ve already lost their power. As soon as they show they can be intimidated by any sufficiently plausible threat to their seat, they have essentially lost whatever power they had.
What they’re scared of losing is their privilege.
That’s very true, they are ceding their power. Thanks for the correction.
For context, this nonsense has actually got a lot of our Conservative voters - generally the most pro-Trump, pro-MAGA set of our population, really quite angry. If anything saves Trudeau’s ass this week, and in the next election, it will be the groundswell of, “Hey, we can say ‘Fuck Trudeau’, you can’t, yankee!”
Unfortunately, to the MAGA crowd, this is a feature not a bug.
Someone I know said we should give the new cabinet a chance. I felt like replying, “you mean like giving a rabid dog a chance? Maybe if you are lucky it won’t bite you, but chances are it will and then both of your are likely to die.”
//i\\
You’re quite correct. The MAGA cult is basically a bunch of sociopathic malcontents who, depressed about their own lives, feel empowered when they kick puppies and laugh at disabled people. They also feel that by electing a felonious billionaire who is going to put the world’s richest man (and self-serving raving lunatic) in charge of pretty much everything, they will have a government that “looks after the little guy”.
This is inaccurate. He got $28,000 from his dad to develop Zip2 in 1995. He then sold Zip2 to Compaq in 1999 and made $22 million from that sale. In 2000 he makes the original X[dot]com that gets merged with Confinity, an earlier name for PayPal. In 2002 SpaceX is founded by Musk and PayPal is sold to Ebay, giving Musk $165 million in that sale. In 2004 he becomes chair of Tesla, later becoming CEO. He did buy Twitter, though.
So while he did get some money from his dad, that was miniscule compared to what he got from the sale of software that he had some ownership in, and did actually do developer work on some of that software.
The point remains he is not the tech wizard or creative brain people think. He poured money into Tesla and into SpaceX. He contributed nothing but cash to either of those companies.
So yes, he’s good at picking up and coming tech companies but he is not a creator or innovator.
Right. He’s put his money on risky ventures, made good calls, and for that I give him credit.
But he hasn’t invented anything, let alone being Tony Stark. It’s actually embarrassing hearing him attempt to explain about how any tech actually works.
And the ease with which he believes BS memes shows he’s not working with a full deck IMO.
Good luck, America.
Musk is an intellectual lightweight with the emotional maturity of a small child. Trump and Musk are a comical match in that both are intellectually-deprived morons with narcissistic personality disorders. Musk matches just about everyone else Trump has nominated for key positions in being utterly unqualified for the job, or worse, like RFK Jr, actively motivated to do the opposite of what the job requires.
Musk’s ability to use his immense wealth to control American politics is perhaps the most damning indictment yet of John Roberts’ disingenuous claim that money is not a corrupting influence in politics.
Good luck, America, indeed.
Innovator or not…he seems to have some unique positive traits as a ceo which explains why his companies are so successful. And yes it is from someone very tech and credible.
Doubtful he has any positive traits. He has the emotional maturity of a child and gets his way by being a bully. The takeover of Twitter/X is a perfect example of what a shitty leader he is.
He is also a beneficiary of the South African apartheid regime through his father’s business dealings. His upbringing and educational opportunities are a direct result of that system. His personality and values are warped as a result.
This is painting with way too wide a brush, unless ypu want to make the claim that all white South Africans (and us white Rhodesia-born Zimbabweans) have warped personalities and values as a result of our apartheid upbringing.
I mean, sure, I got a great education built on the back of racism and exclusionary policies, and so did Musk. But I like to think that my personality and values are VERY different to Musk.
Elon is an outlier, he is not representitive. Some people are simply arseholes, and Musk is one.
Later edit: I noticed too late that this is not specifically a Musk thread, so apologies for the hijack.
No; “containing” Musk and keeping him from doing damage was a key part of making the companies function as well as they did. When he took over Twitter there was no such culture for containing him and he brought ruin to it.
Trump is finally mad at Musk…or the public. He said: Trump tweet: “I am the President-elect of the United States. Not Elon Musk…”
Full text here, I can’t copy and paste as it is a screen shot from Truth social.
May be worth fact-checking that…
Well off-topic, please no replies.
I used to read Twitter a lot. But after Musk took over, the bots and haters just crawled out from under the rocks, and made it less informative.
After the election, I moved over to BlueSky. I have no delusions that BlueSky will be well-moderated forever. But it does seem promising for the near-term.
I don’t generally have a problem with a billionaire being involved in politics. It happens, and everyone has a right to express their views, including Musk. But he’s crossed the line into becoming a shadow president & the US is now bordering on being an oligarchy because of people like him. THAT is a dangerous trend, and he represents the worst of it.
off-topic
Yes, if you go to X, comments go: This post is not on Donald Trump’s Truth Social profile.