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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tribe nerds are not natural allies: As soon as Musk was out of the door Jared Isaacman‘s nomination for NASA director was revoked.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.
Ah, the press. Always exaggerating.
Remember 2015, when Musk was unironically used by Scott as an example of someone who was doing good effectively?
Back then, it could be assumed that a Grey Tribe member would admire Musk, and there was certainly much to admire. By making EVs cool, he certainly made an important contribution to the decarbonization, and the SpaceX concept of recycling rockets certainly has decreased the cost of space flight a lot.
But since then, there have been few obviously pro-social successes of his. His social media persona was not very endearing, calling random people pedophiles will not make you look a great role model. Buying Twitter did not improve things. Openly supporting election denier Trump likely cost him most of his friends outside the MAGA bubble. Now this messy breakup with Trump likely cost him his friends within MAGA.
I am sure that he still has a following of loyal fanboys, self-interested grifters, and yes-men, who will sit in silence while he lashes out against them, but with his break with Trump, I doubt that anyone with an ego of a similar size as his is anywhere near him on a social graph.
You mean in the eyes of Blues / Greys, or actually? Because in my opinion it objectively did.
Very dependent on individual experience, of course, but it definitely seems like Twitter is much more of a slop factory under Musk. If we just look at things which are not just directly related to the changed political valence of the platform, scams and bots are way more prevalent than they used to be, even paid advertisements are pushing scams and the comments under any big post are utterly worthless because of the boosting of blue-check replies
First, people are acting like the political valance of the platform has flipped, this is false. Progressives can post just as easily as they used to, they just don't want to do it when non-progressives have the right to respond.
Secondly, that's stacking the deck already, you can't just not look at it. It was total woke narrative control, even mild jokes used to get accounts nuked. A bit more spam is a fair price to pay for that, as far as I can tell. And it's objectively better that it's not like this anymore, as opposed to just better for one side, because you can't have a healthy ecosystem with one side nuking everyone that disagrees with them. Or put another way - a non-political person is better off having access to info from all tribes.
In other words, they were accustomed to privilege, and now equality feels like oppression?
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