How Far Will Elon Go to Elect Trump?
WWED?
Rates are dropping, pagers exploding, Elon Musk hyper-ventilating, Congress flailing, JD lying, and Trump just throwing sh*t against the wall.
Happy Thursday. There are 46 days until Election Day.
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“Trump must win”
I’ve written pretty extensively about Musk’s transformation from Planet Bestriding Cosmic Genius, Savior of Civilization to trollish homunculus. Here: “Elon Musk: The Bigot in Full.” And here: “Elon Musk, Savant Idiot?”
In a single week, the World’s Richest Man, who launches rockets into space, electrifies cars, and was Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year”, exposed himself as… what’s the opposite of an idiot savant? A savant idiot? Shallow, petulant, erratic, endlessly needy, and basically absurd.
“I am Iron Man” became “I am Zoolander.”
But we need to talk about Elon today, because the soon-to-be trillionaire man-child is going through some things. The red-pilled Musk has opened up X to swarms of conspiracists, antisemites, and racists, and has distinguished himself mainly by his willingness to amplify disinformation.
But his latest iteration as a perfervid hyper-zealous Trumpian fanboy deserves a moment of our attention, because it raises the question: What is he prepared to do? How far will he take this?
The first thing to note is that Musk is new at this. The would-be oligarch is a callow enthusiast who is deeply ignorant of how politics actually works. He is also without guardrails or, apparently, shame of any sort, which makes him the perfect avatar of our insane political moment.
After the second incident involving a gunman and Trump, Musk Xeeted:
Faced with blowback, he insisted that was supposed to be a hilarious… joke.
“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on 𝕏,” Musk wrote in a post on X. “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”
This, naturally, raises the question: Who was this “group” in Musk’s world who thought that this was rib-ticking humor? What group of stooges, henchmen, flunkeys, and turd-polishing lackeys stroked Musk’s ego by laughing at his assassination humor? And, apparently, keep fluffing his impulse to spread fake news.
Yesterday he was at it again, amplifying a fake story about a bomb at a Trump rally (Police quickly debunked the story, and readers of his own site quickly pointed out the rank bullshittery of the tale.)
He also pushed an anti-Zelensky meme that was “actually created in a Russian troll factory….”
But special attention ought to be paid to his efforts to elect Trump.
In recent weeks, his efforts on Trump’s behalf have spiked sharply and hysterically. Musk seems especially excited by Trump’s promise to put him in charge of a government efficiency commission if Trump wins reelection.
On Monday, though, he upped the ante, declaring that “Unless Trump is elected, America will fall to tyranny.”
“Trump must win,” Musk posted to his (alleged) 198 million followers
And he is increasingly paranoid about the alternative, reposting the claim that if Democrats win, “their first move will be to ban X and arrest Elon Musk.”
“Yup,” Musk commented.
This is the point: Elon deeply, desperately, passionately, and intensely wants — no, he absolutely needs — Donald Trump to be elected.
If he actually believes (and no one can actually know what goes on inside the tangled, twisted contrails of his prefrontal cortex) that the election of Kamala Harris means “tyranny,” then what is he prepared to do to stop it? The word itself is freighted with historical connotations. Thomas Jefferson once said that, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
So, we return to our earlier question: WWED [What Would Elon Do]? In his desperation, how far will Elon go? What is he prepared to do on X? What corners is he prepared to cut? What messages throttled? What fabrications and fakery boosted? And what about calls for violence? And the blood of tyrants?
**
BONUS: Russia propaganda group behind fake Kamala Harris hit-and-run story, says Microsoft |The Guardian.
A false claim circulating on social media that Kamala Harris was involved in an alleged hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011 is the work of a covert Russian disinformation operation, according to new research by Microsoft.
Researchers found that the group created a video, paid an actor to appear as the alleged victim, and spread the claim through a fake website for a nonexistent San Francisco news outlet named KBSF-TV. The Russian group responsible, which Microsoft dubs Storm-1516, is described as a Kremlin-aligned troll farm.
BONUS BONUS: “JD Vance says US could drop support for NATO if Europe tries to regulate Elon Musk’s platforms.”
Because in Trump’s World: Elon > NATO.
The lies of JD Vance
"I'm still gonna call them an illegal alien" — Vance, talking about the Haitian migrants who are in Ohio legally.
I think it’s safe to say that Trump got exactly what he wanted when he picked Vance: a man who will lie with the facility, ease, and shamelessness of the master himself.
Kudos to The Wall Street Journal for committing this flagrant act of journalism: “How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants—After Being Told They Weren’t True.”
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio—City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield.
“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
By then, Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers on X. Yet he kept the post up, and repeated an even more insistent version of the claim the next morning.
That night, former President Donald Trump stood on a Philadelphia debate stage and shot the rumor into the stratosphere. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said to 67 million viewers. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating, the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in this country.”
In an instant, the everyday struggles of a typical American city grappling with an influx of immigrants were transformed into a bombshell political message laser targeted at voters distressed by immigration.
**
Trump and Vance did this: “Ohio Haitian immigrants say they are afraid to leave home after recent backlash” — ABC News.
And of course, the dogs…
Eli found a soccer ball. It’s his now.
**
After a busy day at the lake, the boys unwind with some television.
Finally
Spot on!
What Musk is doing can be strongly construed as putting his finger on the scale using his power in media to impact the result. This for someone who accuses everything else of being election interference. Total projection.
It’s so great to have you writing these pieces again. Morning newsletter has remained great on the Bulwark but have totally missed your perspective on some of that stuff.
Elon needs to have some controls put on him at least in government contracts. Space X and Starlink are of global strategic significance. No individual should be free to do as he pleases from the safety of a home country in ways that may be deleterious to our foreign policy or cause significant harm to others. Were he subject to significant taxation he might find he had a little less ready cash to throw around.
I read, but cannot remember the source, a piece suggesting X is getting into increasing financial difficulties which might have to be covered by Tesla stock?
As to Vance, he is more frightening than Trump. The latter does evil things but does not always seem to register how evil they are. Vance sets out to be evil.what is worse is his absolute lack of moral compass or guiding principles. H switched everything in the blink of an eye. His conversion to Catholicism seems to be aligned with a secretive branch of the religion. This story is worthy of further investigation. And he is heavily involved with Project 2035z