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NYTimes is reporting that aides to Trump are urging him to "cancel all of Musk’s contracts and launch several investigations into [him]" Bannon is quoted as saying “They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately.” The Investigations would look at Musk's alleged drug use and immigration status, and his security clearance would be revoked.
Quote from NYT megathread: „House Democrats are jumping on Elon Musk’s allegation that President Trump’s name is in the supposedly secret documents the federal government has on powerful men who were in the orbit of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. They immediately called for the release of the Epstein files.
„Elon Musk’s friends and associates on Thursday are in a state of disbelief. Several said they, like the rest of Washington, are glued to their computers as they watched their friend joust with President Trump, unsure what exactly his plan is.“
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State of disbelief? Me too, me too… What the fuck is happening?
On the personal level everyone knows that two galaxy sized egos will sooner or later clash, on the cultural level the MAGA jocks and the grey tribe nerds are not natural allies: As soon as Musk was out of the door Jared Isaacman‘s nomination for NASA director was revoked.
I am still shocked about the sudden implosion. The coming Moon landing and Artemis missions with SpaceX lander … not happening. Mars mission? Not happening with a hostile administration. Musk supported MAGA because Biden ignored him? Boy, will that be a rude awakening. On the other side: Trump has now an enemy with 200 million followers and who owns the dominant conservative online corner.
Elon isn't an idiot. He knows how math works. He successfully gutted foreign aid. Congradulations, DOGE shaved 0.5% off of the federal budget, maybe, who really knows?
Anyone who has ever spent more than ten seconds investigating the federal budget already knows that the bulk of the money goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense. I suspect that Elon has finally discovered the haunting truth that the rural white underclass loves gibs almost as much as the urban black underclass. Arguably, it is insulting to human dignity to be tasked with cutting waste while at the same time being barred from touching the giant money pit.
He does however have a history of aiming high and then working it out if he doesn't meet his deadlines.
He gets somewhat of a pass from people (going by Tesla's share price) because it's assumed he'll eventually get to whatever he shot for but this obviously doesn't work in a time-limited, government position like DOGE.
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In retrospect, the biggest "win" of DOGE was cutting off some of the federal funding that was paying the salaries of ideologues and activists.
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Insult to human dignity? Elon basically asked for this; he loved it until he realized that he was just a hype man. There's a reason the DOGE Twitter is spilling digital ink crowing over defending legume studies instead of posting sober cost/benefit analyses of Social Security.
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He didn't even successfully cut foreign aid. Congress kept punting it, now they've said they'll cut 9b which is only 1/4 of USAIDs budget.
Yeah because it turned out that most of USAID’s budget was bribe money to local elites in the third world so they don’t defect to China, which Trump is set on antagonizing and competing against.
Yeah but everyone knew USAID was just a regime change operation and wanted it cut for that reason. That was the whole point. Neocon Rubio swept in and pretended like we really cared about mosquito nets to Africa or w/e
That’s more the CIA’s territory, it’s likely they sometimes get slushy with the aid budget but it isn’t its purpose. It’s mostly stuff like health/‘community cohesion’/education programs that get skimmed off by local elites who then bribe their own cascading hierarchies of clan members. Whether it’s value for money is debatable, but its purpose is clear and political especially because most of these countries have competing US and Chinese influence operations, and the current Trump admin policy is about maximally antagonizing the Chinese.
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