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The Trump-Musk friendship had already crumbled, but now it seems like it's actively imploding.
Musk went nuclear against Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill", calling it a "disgusting abomination". In response, the White House is "very disappointed" in the criticism. In other words, they're probably saying "fuck you, Elon" behind closed doors. Trump had previously been anomalously deferential to Musk, but if you read between the lines you could see there was trouble in paradise. Musk feuded with other members of the administration and Trump didn't back him up. Musk was causing enough chaos that he was starting to be seen as a political liability, and so Musk was somewhat gently pushed out of his role. People like Hanania who claimed the bromance would last have been proven incorrect, at least on this point.
Trump's budget is broadly awful, exploding the deficit to pay for regressive tax cuts, so I hope it dies.
Tesla is Musk's biggest source of capital, and it's sales, at least in Europe, were fueled by virtue signalling. Now imagine the look on the face of the exact type of person, that wants to be seen as saving the planet, suddenly being seen as a Nazi instead. Tesla's sales are tanking accordingly, so I consider Elon to be a dead man walking, if he loses political backing. The drama being about the budget, I wonder if he wasn't hoping for some bailout to be included there, which didn't materialize.
Anyway, if being cut loose is a foregone conclusion, he might figure that he might as well drag everyone else down with him.
That's an interesting play, since a fair amount of Trump's base isn't so hot on exploding budgets, so maybe he'll manage to stir the pot this way. But these days it feels like the budget can only explode, and if anyone tried doing something crazy, like balancing it, the whole system would collapse.
If you want a top tier electric car these days, get a BYD, not a Tesla. Tesla only has the best self driving these days and if that's not important to you or you don't think regulations will permit it in your jurisdiction any time soon there's no reason to go Tesla anymore. It has nothing to do with virtue signalling.
I don't know what to tell you man, from my neighbors to coworkers, it's a very specific type of person that even thinks of buying an EV.
Weird, I realize we're playing dueling anecdotes but I can't remember a single person I know talking about the environmental aspects of their Tesla. The comments they make generally included some mix of:
-- SEE HOW FUCKING FAST IT IS, 0-60 under 4 seconds, it has power instantly, etc...
-- I never have to get gas, sometimes justly limited to convenience but often with fuzzy math about costs
-- It's cool looking
-- It's an amazing feat of engineering
But never anything about the environment. Of course, I live in a much more rural area, so maybe people who live in more urban areas are making "excuses" for owning a car at all, where my compatriots are assuming that any functional middle class man must own a car? They might well have made the choice for environmental reasons privately and choose not to say so to me, but I know a lot of prius owners who talked about environmental reasons for their choices.
Certainly the idea that Tesla can only sell cars through left wing virtue signaling is belied by the number of cybertrucks on the road.
Where are you from, roughly?
Europe can be very weird about this sort of stuff. My wife got an e-bike figuring it'll be a bit healthier to get off her ass, even if assisted by electricity, and the whole office was oohing and aahing over her "social awareness" for weeks.
Oh, must be America, I think they're illegal here.
I'm right where the northeast boswash megalopolis gives way to farm country, the last highway exit on the east coast. Twenty minutes east I'm at a small city LGBT center, twenty minutes west I'm at an Amish farm stand.
I am now nearly certain we live within 100 miles of one another.
We must never meet. My mental image of you is as a 7'9" Ajax hurling kettlebells at random passers-by a la Donkey Kong. I cannot support the dismantling of that fiction.
If you ever wanna grab a Yuengling, just slide into my DMs I'm buying.
You'll have to go to good ol' @WhiningCoil for the great kettlebell exploits, though.
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