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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22620 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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The war between Trump and Elon Musk is heating up. They've been continuously escalating the fight on both sides, with Elon claiming that Trump wouldn't have won without him.

On the other side, Trump is arguing that Elon only got upset because the Big Beautiful Bill has plans to cut the EV subsidies in it.

The major dispute, at least on a public level, is over deficit spending. Elon was pretty clear during the campaign that deficit spending was a big issue, and indeed most of the "grey tribe" Silicon Valley types who switched sides to support Trump also are starting to regret their decision it seems. Notably David Friedberg from the All-in Podcast, and I'm sure there are others if folks want to fill me in.

Either way, to me this breakup seems to be a clear split between the classic red tribe which Trump seemingly still controls with an iron fist, and the grey tribe that Elon Musk typifies.

To quote the famous Scott Alexander article, I can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup:

There is a partly-formed attempt to spin off a Grey Tribe typified by libertarian political beliefs, Dawkins-style atheism, vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up, eating paleo, drinking Soylent, calling in rides on Uber, reading lots of blogs, calling American football “sportsball”, getting conspicuously upset about the War on Drugs and the NSA, and listening to filk – but for our current purposes this is a distraction and they can safely be considered part of the Blue Tribe most of the time.

It seems to me that with the flip to Trump, we're beginning to see the classic Kingmaker dynamic unfold, where Silicon Valley billionaires are playing the third mediator between the two major tribes. I'm very curious to see how this pans out. Personally, I'm very much on the "hey we have to cut spending now" side of things.

Some of the more optimistic folks are claiming that Elon will either support the Libertarian party, or start his own party, based on a poll he made on X asking if a new political party should form.

Either way this is all very entertaining from my perspective, and it actually leaves me a bit more optimistic than I was that something will be done about cutting spending. We will of course see where the chips fall.

most of the "grey tribe" Silicon Valley types who switched sides to support Trump also are starting to regret their decision it seems. Notably David Friedman(?) from the All-in Podcast,

I am the only David Friedman I know of associated with the grey tribe but I have no connection to the All-in podcast, have a Substack, and never supported Trump. You can find my comments on him by using the search bar on my web page: www.daviddfriedman.com.

Ahh my apologies, apparently his name is David Friedberg. I got you to confused somehow.

Did you Google yourself, or do you read this forum as well?

The other poster got confused, and was referring to David Friedberg.

Devon Eriksen effortpost on Twitter

He argues that Trump and Elon are sort of polar opposite personality types in terms of "guile". Elon being an autistic engineer has and expects a "guileless" communication style devoted to simply conveying the truth as you see it. Trump being a Machiavellian type sees communication as a tool of power (see also Scott Adams' talks on "persuasion" and Trump) and wants loyalty with no expectation that he'll give it to you straight.

Notably, despite calling Trump "Machiavellian" he sees both people as earnestly trying to avert disaster for America, with Elon seeing the debt as the most important existential threat and Trump seeing immigration and entrenched bureaucracy as the most important existential threats.

Fascinating take overall and worth the read, here's the full text:

These guys don't understand each other.

Elon Musk is too guileless. He says exactly what he thinks is true with little regard for how others will react. He alienates allies by airing disputes in public instead of settling them behind closed doors.

Because he is a sperg engineer who leads companies of sperg engineers, and to do this, you must be 100% truthful and transparent.

Donald Trump is too guileful. He says exactly what will advance his plans with little regard for telling people what he actually thinks. He alienates allies by expecting their unconditional support without sharing any aspect of his strategic plans with them.

Because he is a New York real estate developer, who thrives on winning negotiations and gaining advantage from unshared knowledge, and to do this, you must be 100% calculating and opaque.

Here's what happened.

Musk worked super hard, and took great personal risks, to get a head start on balancing the federal budget. He correctly believes that federal spending is an existential risk to the nation.

Trump regards those savings as a political asset.

And, since he lacks leverage in congress, he took them and traded them for other things he wanted, apparently dealing with border control, the courts, etc... problems which he correctly believes are an existential threat to the nation.

He may have concrete plans for balancing the federal budget in the future, but, frustratingly, he won't tell his own team what they are.

Trump could have squared this in advance with Musk, in private, but he appears to either have assumed his loyalty (treating an ally like a subordinate), or been unable to persuade him.

Likewise, Musk could have raised his complaints in private, but either he was too upset to try, or was not able to reach an agreement when he did.

Trump doesn't understand how to deal with spergs. You have to tell them the truth, not expect them to read subtext. They refuse to read subtext. They want to be spoken to honestly.

Musk doesn't understand how to deal with Machiavellians. They think of language as a power tool, and think of those who insist on truth as naive.

Both men are used to being in charge, and are used to dealing with subordinates, who must cater to their preferred style of communicating.

They are both therefore uniquely unsuited to having both the patience and the capability to speak the other's language.

The truth is that both the federal budget and the federal bureaucracy are existential threats to America. Maximum priority.

Trump's concerns about the "art of the possible" are probably valid, but Musk's sense of urgency should not be dismissed lightly.

It is churlish to leverage the superior strengths and talents of people on the autism spectrum while making zero allowances for their unique needs.

That said, spergs can be frustratingly dogmatic, even when they aren't the richest and most successful man in the world.

A few other things to notice:

The democrats have said nothing. That's because there are no democrats. They have no independent intellectuals, only paid schills.

A response will not be forthcoming until the wholly organic grassroots PR committees have met, and the wholly grassroots talking heads have been cut a wholly organic grassroots check.

There's also a strong case to be made for Team Nothing Ever Happens. Remember that Musk will sometimes shut up when he calms down, and Trump has no problem calling someone the Antichrist one day and working with him the next.

I've always thought they had the exact same communication style -- they both constantly make low-effort lies and say things for the effect, not because they have carefully thought it through. In the Isaacson's biography there is the story about how Elon lied upfront about the number of users his company had when they were negotiating the merger to create PayPal. There are his constant claims that Tesla's car will be "fully self-driving this year." There were all his claims on X about finding some fraud that turned out not to be the case. Neither are Machiavelli types that careful plot high-effort technically true deceptions.

The other thing that comes up his biography is that Elon has never worked well under others, never gotten along well with a boss or controlling investors.

In almost all famous successful partnerships (Augustus and Agrippa, Washington and Hamilton, Jordan and Pippen, Jobs and Woz, Brady and Belichick), there is one person who takes to being the face, and one person being great at checking their ego and being a deadly efficient operator. Elon has too much ego to be the subordinate, deadly efficient operator. And Trump just isn't actually very competent and has a fragile ego, and so has trouble delegating to more competent people and sticking with that person's plans when the going gets tough.

This is perhaps the most charitable possible reading.

I don't see what it has over the theory that two narcissistic Machiavellians who both believe they run shit clashed and the one with the guns won.

I don't believe that Musk is 100% truthful and transparent, he's uninhibited (but not so much that he doesn't know what he's doing. As someone said below, he manages to ride the line in terms of how he signals dissident right stuff which implies he knows how controversial it could be).

Even if we write off his optimistic estimates about his various products, there's still things like him calling the cave diver a pedo without much the evidence. That fits more with him just being an asshole. Assholes are always telling it like it is, in my experience.

Elon Musk is too guileless. He says exactly what he thinks is true with little regard for how others will react.

This is wrong. Musk has been consistently serving slop to the masses on twitter. Things he could not possibly believe but that were yet flattering the average 110 IQ twitter user.

I propose that Musk is not guileless, he has guile but is also erratic.

Things he could not possibly believe

I'm not sure about this. Sam Harris' account of his bet with Elon indicated that he's way higher on his own supply than I thought.

He included a link to a page on the CDC website, indicating that Covid was not even among the top 100 causes of death in the United States. This was a patently silly point to make in the first days of a pandemic. ...Elon and I didn’t converge on a common view of epidemiology over the course of those two hours, but we hit upon a fun compromise: A wager. Elon bet me $1 million dollars (to be given to charity) against a bottle of fancy tequila ($1000) that we wouldn’t see as many as 35,000 cases of Covid in the United States (cases, not deaths).

And it also showed how that happens:

5.A few weeks later, when the CDC website finally reported 35,000 deaths from Covid in the U.S. and 600,000 cases, I sent Elon the following text:

Is (35,000 deaths + 600,000 cases) > 35,000 cases?

6.This text appears to have ended our friendship. Elon never responded, and it was not long before he began maligning me on Twitter for a variety of imaginary offenses. For my part, I eventually started complaining about the startling erosion of his integrity on my podcast, without providing any detail about what had transpired between us.

Thing is, this seems to have happened in private (at first). So it wasn't purely a matter of grandstanding for his proles.

Whatever his problems, Harris will at least tell you what he thinks. You start behaving like this with Twitter "friends" and you end up surrounded by Ian Miles Cheong types sucking your nuts and then all of the epistemic brakes are gone.

What do you mean? Example? I think Musk is politically naive, or guileless, he will tell directly what his plans are. There is no subtext, no reading between the lines, no scheming behind the scenes.

I muted him on twitter in disgust months ago. It wasn't really outright lies or manipulation, but basically he was pushing stupid ideas that were generally aligned with what he wants, but were obviously unworkable and yet a person with an IQ somewhere around 140 thought 'fine, I'll post this'. I like the guy for his contributions to space but he is just like his dad. Shameless when it suits him.

There is no subtext, no reading between the lines, no scheming behind the scenes.

That you know of.

Musk also routinely drives traffic to various random X posts by posting one-liners like "Interesting" or "100%" in response to them. Which, while not any sort of heinous deceptiveness, nonetheless is clearly just a way to put his finger on the scales of what gets amplified without having to literally manipulate the algorithms. It's not the kind of action that a pure guileless engineering-minded person would take, I would think.

I also find it a bit hard to believe that Musk would get $300 billion without having some understanding of Machiavellians. In our society, pure brilliant engineer-types tend to max out at a net worth of a few tens of millions, don't they? To get more than that people generally need to have a lot of business acumen, and it's a bit hard for me to imagine having that level of business acumen without understanding how to deal with Machiavellians.

I do think that the overall notion of Musk as being more of an autist type and Trump more of a Machiavellian type seems correct to me, but I quibble with some of the details of Davon Eriksen's purported explanation.

In no particular order:

  • I am unsure if this is sooner, later, or right on time. I was 100% confident this would happen, but expected a smaller explosion.
  • If Trump thinks he's going to win against someone who is smarter and more driven than he is, with a high amount of innoculative safety via wealth, he's wrong.
  • However if Elon thinks that Biden's targeted attacks during his administration were tough, he's in for a wild fucking ride.

Ultimately I'm blown away by how selfish this explosion is to SpaceX and Tesla. All of his employees and perhaps even the human race are going to be hurt because of it. And over what? A completely intractable political reality?

The US electorate is too pants-on-head retarded to save itself from spending. That's it. There is only one way out of this, and it's riding the lightning until we're all consumed by a black swan event in the next couple of years.

The US electorate is too pants-on-head retarded to save itself from spending. That's it. There is only one way out of this, and it's riding the lightning until we're all consumed by a black swan event in the next couple of years.

Disagree. There is always hope to fix things, this mindset is a huge reason why we're in the political mess we are. We can and will fix spending, now or later. Unless a black swan comes of course, which is always a possibility.

The polling shows unequivocally that as a group we want lower taxes and almost limitless welfare.

The only practical way out is for our politicians to collude and work as one bloc to do what we need. Good luck

What is the point of this negativity? Do you just want to watch the world burn?

I truly do not understand why people take such cynical mindsets.

I'm not a negative person by nature! I think this is the most intractable problem in American politics and culture. People with high IQs and (IMO) higher-than-baseline morality still cannot fathom cutting benefits. Our political class doesn't even have to deal with physical violence through riots, but they're still too scared to do what must be done.

The problem with the glass > half full approach is that I have not heard of a valid approach to solving the problem. It has only gotten worse during my lifetime. This was the most significant and serious approach to cut spending in a quarter century, and it failed miserably.

I do not have anything to say apart from that the Western Right is totally fucked.

I think it's easy to see infighting and assume it's a sign of weakness. It's only a sign of weakness if it isn't handled properly. If Trump publicly "wins" the fight, it consolidates power around Trump as The Sole King. (And I think this is what will happen - Musk is definitely a live player but I don't think he has the proper levers in this situation).

Over the longer term, Trump consolidating power into the party could prove to be a weakness, simply because he's not going to be around forever, and after that the party could devolve into infighting. So perhaps the Western Right is in trouble over the long term. But this was always a possibility, and getting some of that infighting "worked through" now while Trump is still around to dictate winners and losers might actually help the right get some of that infighting sorted out before, making them stronger in the post-Trump stage.

Elon calling for a party that supports the 80% of Americans is sort of funny - balancing the budget [inevitably: by nuking Social Security/Medicaid/Medicare] might be good and necessary, but it's not an 80% position. Socially conservative and yet fiscally liberal is actually the closest thing there is to an American consensus, and right now Trump occupies that high ground.

Only some 15% of the American population currently receives retirement benefits from SS and some 20% are on Medicare. It doesn't seem unreasonable for the rest to be in favor of large cuts here due to their unsustainable nature and limited likelihood to benefit much more people due to the looming insolvency.

Three word rejoinder: sunk cost fallacy.

Words fail to convey how deeply black-pilling this particular subject has been for me. Not only is cutting entitlements generally unpopular in the abstract, cutting SS specifically would, I think, be generally seen as a massive breach of the American social contract, given that it is commonly represented not as an entitlement but as a retirement fund for the elderly. I've spoken with a lot of people over my decades about the inevitability of Social Security's demise, and even run into a few that understand that it's always been a massive Ponzi scheme, but the vast majority of them have a level of emotional investment in getting their fair share of SS that precludes any productive dialogue or planning to avoid the inevitable shortfalls. The common refrain that I've heard when talking to people is that the FICA taxes they've paid are, "their money," making me a pedantic asshole if I point out that no, what you've paid is a tax and what you'll receive if you live to retirement age is an entitlement, and moreover, there have been several Supreme Court cases that reaffirm the actual underlying legal reality of SS. I have actually heard the, "it's my money," refrain even from the very person (whom I admire greatly) that introduced me to ancap philosophy and is generally anti-government!

So while I'd agree that what you're proposing isn't unreasonable, I don't think that reason has a thing to do with it.

A lot of Americans who aren't part of those groups will be taking care of those groups if Social Security and Medicare are cut.

They will have the choice of how much to care for them. Also, cuts doesn't mean abolishment. Balancing the budget for SS and Medicare means less care, not no care, especially if combined with a mild tax increase, which seems it could be sold through everyone having to do "their part".

You can see how running for office as "that insurer who denied you the care that you wanted" might not be popular even if it is fiscally smart.

It might be popular with the 80% that are paying.

We don't have to speculate, though, we know that's very literally an 80/20 issue in favor continuing to fund social welfare programs.

Are you armin ferman? Also what makes you think that?

He is indeed my long lost, blackpilled, twin brother.

It escalated to threats to cancel Musk company subsidies and contracts and threats to decommission the rocket that can supply the ISS, I think. Popcorn futures are definitely limit up! I wonder if the spicy bants come out late, or if they simmer down.

The problem with cutting spending now is you pretty much have to cut social security, medicare and defense (or stop paying interest) there isn't enough to cut everywhere else and the grey tribe doesn't have any good answers to the many people who believe they'vebearmed every penny of those social security checks and other benefits and they have a lot more votes.

Probably the best shot is when the trust fund runs out in 8 or so years if the public appetite for us debt is strong enough to absorb all of it.

It's actually worse than that- democrats really need the urban political machines soldiering on their side like true fanatics and not by half measures. There's also several dozen large municipal debt crises gonna blow up, and political/economic realities mean someone is going to have to get bailed out, at least partially(the entire US insurance system is underwritten by municipal debt). Republicans have a strong incentive to drop a big bailout to keep the urban machines from going whole-hog with the democrats again, democrats have a strong incentive to drop an even bigger bailout to get them to go whole hog for the democrats again, everyone has insurance industry lobbyists in their ears explaining how the crisis needs a bailout.

Republicans have a strong incentive to drop a big bailout to keep the urban machines from going whole-hog with the democrats again

GOP has no incentive to bail these guys out, and every incentive to let them go bankrupt. The gop will never pull these cities and they know it. Slight chance they could have pre trump, 0% post trump. If (when) they go bankrupt, they have a huge chip to bargain with and will force concessions.

Agreed. Forcing cities into receivership that puts state legislatures into an oversight role can only help Republicans. Even in Illinois, the Democrats don't control the state as strongly as they control Cook county.

To me it seems that if you have to pay 10% on interest payments for the debt, you could easily reduce spending by 10% and not to pay this interest payment and be in the same situation. Obviously, that would cause short term pain but long term benefits.

I personally can easily spend 4-5 years at college and/or training and live frugally to get better job or whatever. Everybody can.

You are suggesting the US stop paying interest on treasuries? All this will do is rinse out current US treasury holders (whose nominal value will drop like a stone until the implied yield is even higher than it was before the whole fiasco) and make it impossible for the US government to raise any further money for next year's deficit. Plus the US dollar will absolutely tank.

What? You interpret what I said in the worst way. What about a different interpretation – the US reduces borrowing. The borrowing is only a small part of the budget which means that by small reduction, let's say 10%, you could even not only stop borrowing but also pay off some of the debt (the numbers are as example only), and in 5 or 10 years, the US has no debt at all or very insignificant one.

As apposed to in 20 years the US debt is 100% or 200% of the GDP and interest payments comprise 20% of the GDP.

Your numbers are off and your explanation is more confusing. The $1.8T deficit is more than 25% of federal spending. (Debt issues are far worse if you include more local government.) Interest payments are 15%. As others noted, it would take 10 years to pay off the debt, if all current tax revenue only went to that. In reality, we'd have to cut spending by 30+% and spend the rest of our natural lives paying down the debt. None of this will happen. The government will simply inflate it away as it has done before.

Inflate? It doesn't work mathematically. Sorry, you are not making any sense.

you could easily reduce spending by 10% and not to pay this interest payment and be in the same situation

What?

What?

See above.

I believe he means that if the USA just exercises some fiscal responsibility for a few years they can eliminate the debt and stop paying interest on it.

Yes. When I hear “fiscally responsible” on news I have no idea what it means. I just tried to offer a better phrasing that could resonate with people. If something wasn't clear, now I have provided interpretation above: https://www.themotte.org/post/2015/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/332917?context=8#context

Mandatory spending (mostly social security, medicare, pensions, and welfare), plus interest, now exceeds total federal revenues. We could eliminate every discretionary budget item, shut down everything from NASA to the Army, and we'd still see the debt continue to increase.

The debt is about to hit $37 trillion. If we cut all spending in half, everything down to Grandma's social security check, that would give us a $1 trillion surplus, and it would still take half a lifetime to pay everything back.

If we eliminated all spending, including collecting social security taxes but paying no more benefits, it would still take around 9 years to pay off the debt, not just a few.

You probably are better with numbers and can provide better estimates. Tyler Cowen has analytical blog post about this issue: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/06/claims-about-debt-and-productivity-growth.html

My understanding is that it is a time to become “fiscally responsible”, i.e., try to cut expenses. The current growth is not enough to stop interest payments to skyrocket.

The time to become fiscally responsible by just cutting expenses was 30 years ago. Today we'd need to become fiscally responsible by cutting expenses and raising taxes. We won't voluntarily do that now either, so barring a miracle we'll eventually be forced to do it later (when lenders no longer imagine getting paid back for US treasuries and stop covering our deficits), and we'll grossly inflate away the US dollar too.

Not true. There have been times when printing money was correct policy, for example, after big crises of 2008.

And that's also assuming that cutting spending so drastically wouldn't have negative second and third order effects on the overall economy that lowered tax revenues in the process.

On one had, I did not expect this fight to actually happen and I was profoundly disinterested in the media that seemed to be egging it on and trying to make it happen for the last few months. On the other hand, does anyone else get the sense that this is a staged fight? It seems so ridiculous and performative that it maps closer to WWF wrestling or Biggie/Tupac feuds that were purely stage managed events. Jon Stewart suggested as much this morning before all the big fireworks went off this afternoon. I cant help but think that he's got it right here, even though I'm sure people will say this afternoons attacks make that less likely.

No, if it was a staged fight there is no reason for Musk to use what in our society is the rhetoric equivalent of nuclear weapons, which is implying that Trump had sex with underage girls on Epstein's island. It would be easy to effectively stage a fight without going that far.

Also, there's Occam's razor. It seems more likely to me that these two guys, both of whom have a track record of being emotionally volatile, abrasive, and vindictive, actually did just get into a real spat, than that it is staged.

Yep. I don't see why Elon would go straight for the Epstein accusation except as a result of being too volatile.

One problem is that he probably doesn't have any strong enough evidence. And even if people really believed Trump had screwed a 14 year old - would it fell him? Maybe not.

To what end? If you were to say one or the other of them is picking a fight, sure, but what benefit does having a fake falling out serve?

It wouldn't be a singular benefit, but benefits. As long as both parties have their own interests being advanced, they don't need a singular.

As for specific potential benefits: the clearest benefit is for Elon getting to politically distance himself from Trump and Doge as he returns back to being 'just' a business man and the various other actors who might want to capitalize on a Trump-Musk 'split.' Benefits to Trump are more nuanced, but could serve an internal political party management- the nominal straw that is breaking Trump-Musk is the budget, annd this could be used as a circle-the-wages call (demand) to get the Republicans on board to pass the bill despite the fiscal conservative objections.

If this was a coordinated break, however, I imagine it would be to bait the Democrats in Congress towards the Epstein file that Musk called attention to. This feud is the insinuation that it incriminates Trump, which is catnip to the Dems, but if this were coordinated, then both parties could know that Trump himself is not condemned, but also that other (mutual) political opponents might be. If the Epstein file was released by Trump directly, it could be dismissed as a political attack fabrication. If the Democrats 'force' it open during Congressional hearing discovery, they'd be owning the responsibility / consequence for any fallout. When you consider how MeToo ended up scalping more notable Democrats than Republicans....

(And- at the same time- the previous individual benefits listed above.)

To be clear- this isn't saying/claiming this is the reason. Merely that this is an example of a political ploy a fake falling out could serve.

Remember that weird moment when Colbert announced that Comey had been fired by Trump? The audience cheered, before being corrected by Colbert that Comey was now a good guy and was to be lionized if you're anti-Trump (the updated narrative which went on for the next month or so in the media).

So it potentially helps Elon to some extent, to make a more dramatic break from Trump with big WWF promos cut from both of them. It depends on how the media plays it, but this could be the same kind of whiplash that erases a fair amount of elon derangement among democrats and lets him slip out of washington with a bit more independent posture intact.

So it potentially helps Elon to some extent, to make a more dramatic break from Trump with big WWF promos cut from both of them. It depends on how the media plays it, but this could be the same kind of whiplash that erases a fair amount of elon derangement among democrats and lets him slip out of washington with a bit more independent posture intact.

Hmm, this brings to mind the old chestnut about how Howard Hughes used to denounce all of his former executives when they left his employ. If I remember the story correctly, this was a deliberate ploy on Hughes' part. Said employee would then sue Hughes for defamation and Hughes would settle, thereby giving his former employee a large sum of cash that was, thanks to the court involvement, free of taxation.

That's insane but also almost admirable.

You could see this playing out in modern satire, or satire in modern intrigue fiction. The BBB has sections in it, Stephen Miller's posted on this, expanding the authority of the executive in deportations. It would go, the media will care more about the Trump-Elon alliance breaking and Elon's very public tantrum than something dastardly buried in the bill, so fake a fight, and go loud and brash so it's not "insider sources" but the men themselves who force the story. Bill is passed and signed, Trump and Musk post a picture shaking hands with the caption "lol pranked" and the administration proceeds with using whatever new authority they've been granted.

But that is (probably) not how the world works, and I think @nopie has described the truth of it.

To be sure, I was saying how I would act and it would be a similar tantrum like what Elon does. But I am no politician nor a successful man and I don't know if Elon's actions will be ultimately victorious or destructive. The later is more likely. But his track record shows the opposite. Obviously, we don't understand the world well enough to predict the outcome. But from what we know, the world has a potential of unlimited growth. We are in a different era now, the humanity in all of its history was static, with no growth or very little growth over centuries, but then something changed and rapid growth appeared. It started with the industrial revolution and the world has never been the same since.

Musk vs Trump is the new world vs the old one. The new world will win for sure but expect many battles.

I did not expect this fight to actually happen

Really? Two unbelievably arrogant, thin-skinned men? Who fell into a buddy relationship so quickly? This was the most predictable thing in the world.

Not staged, it is real.

Obviously, many things said in anger now, can and will be taken back. Don't take them too seriously. But the fight is real.

Don't take them too seriously. But the fight is real.

It's almost like negotiating these things in public isn't done for a reason or something, especially in the Internet Age.

If you understand how to deal with people that work that way (or aren't one of those people whose salary/political standing depends on you not knowing how to do that), you probably really aren't that concerned. They'll probably rapidly screw around and reach a settlement in a few months, just like the last time.

But maybe I'm weird and find that that "cutting subsidies that allow people to buy inferior electric cars pisses off rich guy whose fortune(s) lie partially in those cars" is not particularly interesting news. At least, it's not interesting yet, no consequences beyond the inevitable stock market dip.

I'm pretty sure the part where Elon started insinuating Trump is a pedo wasn't staged:

Time to drop the really big bomb:

@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.

Have a nice day, DJT!

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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