Elon is Going Through Some Things

Plus: Reed Galen on the disconnect between voters and the establishment....

Mar 11, 2025

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Transcript

The rapid, unscheduled disassembly of Elon Musk is truly breathtaking to watch.

To be sure, he still has the favor of the Orange God King; and his capacity to do damage remains more or less intact. But I need to call your attention to the fact that Elon Musk is going through some things. And the massive outages on X (formerly known as Twitter) were the least of it.

Meanwhile:

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On today’s “To the Contrary” Podcast, I’m joined by the legendary Reed Galen for a discussion of the fight against Trumpism. You can listen/watch right here, or: Watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.

But we really have to start with Elon’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

There was the massive clusterf*ck on X, where tens of thousands of users reported outages. Musk blamed a massive cyber-attack, suggesting that "either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved".

But his day got worse: Tesla’s stock crashed in yesterday’s market bloodbath — and has now lost nearly half of its value. Trump now says he’ll buy a Tesla himself, but…. “Tesla stock is still a sell after its 40% plunge, UBS warns.”

And we haven’t even gotten to the really bad stuff yet.

For reasons best known to the pharmaceutical industry, Musk chose yesterday to pick a fight with Senator Mark Kelly — a decorated Air Force veteran and astronaut. After Kelly visited Ukraine, Musk took to X to call him “a traitor.”

As Matt Lewis notes: “Musk — a man who’s never put his own skin on the line for anything tougher than a bad quarterly report — is now gatekeeping patriotism against a guy who literally flew combat missions for America? You can’t make this stuff up.”

Via the Wapo: “The incident underscores the hostile attitude of the Trump administration toward perceived adversaries and its striking turnabout of policy toward Russia and away from Ukraine.”

It also underscored the inanity of Musk’s mind, which was on full display yesterday.

Kelly replied: “Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.”
Kelly, who flew dozens of combat missions in the Middle East as a Navy pilot and took four NASA missions to space, also told reporters at the Capitol later Monday that Musk is “not a serious guy” and that he “should go back to building rockets.”
“He’s slashed and burned the federal government to make room for a giant tax cut for billionaires like himself,” Kelly said, referring to Musk’s work leading the U.S. DOGE Service. “I’ve sworn an oath to this country, flown in combat, I served in the Navy for 25 years. It appears to me the oath that Elon Musk stands by is the oath of billionaires, to make their lives easier, not the American people, not veterans.”

Amazingly, however, that might not have been Musk’s most damaging moment. In the course of his day of merde-slinging, Musk also took time to touch the Third Rail of American politics: “Musk eyes Social Security and benefit programs for cuts” | AP News.

Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman sees the launching of a thousand ads:

Meanwhile…

The market sours on the economy. And it’s all Trump.

Via the WSJ:

[Worries] about a trade war, signs of flagging growth and splinters in the artificial-intelligence trade have taken some of the shine off that optimism. President Trump over the weekend refused to rule out a recession this year, setting off a fresh wave of declines in U.S. stocks. The S&P 500 fell 2.7%, while tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 4%. Bank stocks slid, along with shares of smaller companies perceived to be sensitive to the economy. Bonds rallied.
“This is the first time we’ve had an administration pretty much say with a straight face… the objectives are going to cause pain,” said Shelby McFaddin, investment analyst at Motley Fool Asset Management.

Catching up on Marco Rubio’s in-house bigot: “Deleted tweets show top State Department official spread false rumor about Rubio’s sexuality, called him ‘low IQ’” | CNN Politics

A top acting State Department official deleted at least half a dozen tweets that ridiculed his now boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, including ones calling him “low IQ” and repeating a false rumor about Rubio’s sexuality.
The deleted tweets from Darren Beattie, the acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy, were uncovered as part of a CNN review of his social media and include a mixture of insults and harsh attacks against Rubio.
Beattie, who was fired from his role as a speechwriter during the first Trump administration after CNN’s KFile revealed he attended a conference featuring White nationalists, made a series of attacks over the years against other Republicans, including a number of offensive, homophobic and racist comments.
Though Beattie left up several of his most inflammatory posts, he does appear to have purged criticism of Rubio from his feed. Beattie deleted tweets suggesting a deep hostility toward Rubio — particularly after the then-senator voted to certify the 2020 election results and condemned the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. One deleted tweet also attacked Rubio for criticizing possible Russian actions in Ukraine.