Of Musk and Morons

Elon, let me introduce you to your other colleagues.

“I feel liberated,” said a top banker. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.” — The Financial Times

Indeed, bliss it is to be alive in this dawn of the Golden Age of Trade Wars. And fortunate, especially, for Elon Musk, who is now free to call his fellow architect of chaos, Peter Navarro, “dumber than a sack of bricks,” “truly a moron” and — because he is a liberated man-child of the New Age — “Peter Retardo.”

In case anyone thought the slur was unintentional, Musk added: “@IfindRetards @RealPNavarro”.

“Boys will be boys,” Trump spoxperson Karen Leavitt said as the ugly exploded around her. “We will let their public sparring continue,” because “we have the most transparent administration.” But “transparent” is not really the word of the day, is it?

Despite the gaslighting, the disaster is real; and so is the rift in MAGA world.

Happy Wednesday. Thank you for subscribing.

Thanks to your support, this newsletter had 3.6 million views in the last 30 days and now has more than 72,000 subscribers.

By now it should be clear that we cannot count on traditional outlets — including the corporate media — to stand athwart this madness and shout “Stop.”

To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. There are no investors. No sugar daddies. We’re not affiliated with any PACS. Or parties. Just me. And the dogs.

To receive new posts — including cross posts, podcasts and videos— please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. (And I’m immensely grateful for your generous support.)

Mr. Musk, let me introduce you…

Peter Navarro is, of course, an easy target, because he is so obviously an idiot, a fraud, and a crank.

Even through the cloud of hubris and ketamine that surrounds him, Musk sees that. Navarro is, indeed, the completest moron. And yes, he does rival a sack of bricks in his understanding of the world economy.

But, dear Mr. Musk, let me introduce you to the man who has empowered him, models his policies on his advice, and who grabbed the world economy by the pussy.¹ And while we are at it, you might want to take a look at the rest of your colleagues in what you dubbed so hopefully, a “Novus ordo seclorum”.

Yes, They Were Warned

Let’s go around the table, shall we?

*Let me introduce you to Kristi Noem, who was named Secretary of Homeland security on the strength of her willingness to shoot puppies and now spends her time LARPING in camo.

*In case you haven’t noticed, the president is now taking national security advice from this freaky bigot and conspiracy-monger.² Meet Laura Loomer, who just got top national security officials fired.

*How about RFK, Jr., whose crackpottery extends from vaccines to his latest batshit crazy proposal to ban fluoridation in water?

*Dumb as a box of rocks? Let me introduce you to Dan Bongino, the new deputy director of the FBI.

*Or how about the dipsomaniacal chode who runs the nation’s national defense? The guy who was pushed out of a non-profit group because of his incompetence and assholery³; and who couldn’t name one member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (known as ASEAN)?

*Or the other real men of genius who chatted about bombing the Houthis on a Signal chat, while the editor of The Atlantic was listening in?

*How about your buddy, Howard Lutnick, who reminds us every time he opens his mouth that he shouldn’t?

**

But, Mr. Musk, since you are searching for the morons who are crashing the global economy, why don’t we talk about the man who is really at the center of all of the idiocy and incoherence? The man who says shit like this:

• “For nations that treat us badly, we will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers, and other forms of cheating.”

• “To any company that objects to our common-sense reciprocal tariffs, again, reciprocal back and forth, back and forth. And we would -- I call this kind reciprocal. This is not full reciprocal. This is kind reciprocal.”

• “But likewise, an old-fashioned term that we use, groceries -- I used it on the campaign. It's such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term, groceries. It sort of says a bag with different things in it.”

So, yes, Peter Navarro is a charlatan and a cretin. But what about the guy who posts gibberish like this? “If you got a letter in the mail like this,” remarked Andrew Sullivan, “you would assume the person who sent it was mentally ill, a deranged crank firing off letters to anyone who might hear, a fringe nutcase.”

Well, Elon?

Beyond the snark: the rift is real

Because I am skeptical of coincidences, it seems relevant that Musk’s break with Trump on tariffs comes just a week after (1) his humiliation in Wisconsin, and (2) the news that he was being edged out of his co-presidency.

But in generosity of spirit, let’s also be open to the idea that Musk is genuinely alarmed by the madness of the Orange King.

The man who cosplays with chainsaws is shocked to find out that Trump wants to use one on the wealth of nations.

Although Musk’s personal attacks were triggered by Navarro’s criticism of Musk’s own businesses, the schism over trade and tariffs is very real — and may even be substantive.

Via the Wapo:

Over the weekend, as Elon Musk launched into a barrage of social media posts criticizing one of the lead White House advisers for President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff plan, Musk was going over that same official’s head — and making personal appeals to Trump.

The attempted intervention, confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks, has not brought success so far…

Musk has also gone public with his objections to Trump’s protectionism, posting a video to X featuring the late conservative economist Milton Friedman who explained the importance of free trade.

Musk’s break with Trump over a signature administration priority marks the highest-profile disagreement between the president and one of his key advisers, who poured nearly $290 million into backing him and other Republicans in last year’s elections and has been leading the U.S. DOGE Service’s cost-cutting efforts since January. Musk has also disagreed with other members of Trump’s coalition on issues such as H1-B visas for skilled immigrants.

Exit take: It’s one thing to take on a minion like Navarro, quite another for Musk to call out Trump’s own incoherence and ignorance. So don’t hold your breath.

But others may be realizing that when you elect a malevolent, ignorant, and delusional clown, you get a circus like this one.

Finally…

Peter Hamby: Honeymoon Over? Trump’s Poll Numbers Say Yes

Trump’s economic agenda is very much getting clobbered in the polls. In public polls we can all read, not private ones we aren’t allowed to see. Even before last week’s “Liberation Day,” Trump was already fumbling the public’s trust on the economy, choosing to focus on DOGE and D.E.I. orders rather than lowering prices. “If you reduced 2024 to one core thing, that thing was inflation,” said Kevin Madden, a former strategist for John Boehner and Mitt Romney who is now a senior partner at Penta Group, where he advises clients on trade issues. “Voters wanted inflation tamed, and they wanted more certainty, more growth, more jobs. If you shake the confidence of voters across all of those core concerns, especially this early, both the downside and long-term risks should be obvious. Ya gotta make the main thing the main thing. The main thing was inflation.”

A victory for the First Amendment. At least for now.

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the White House to restore The Associated Press’s full access to President Trump, finding that the effort to ban the outlet over objections to its coverage violated the First Amendment.

The order dealt a blow to Mr. Trump, who, in a departure from decades of tradition, has moved to leverage access to presidential events as a way of asserting more direct control over how news organizations cover his administration. Trump officials began barring the outlet from physically covering events with the president in February, citing the wire service’s refusal to adopt the administration’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Wednesday dogs

Flashback: The Pack.

Five-month-old Eli jumping into the lake.

1. The bizarre back-story of how Navarro inspired Trump’s tariff fiasco:

The memo in question was the brainchild of author and economist Peter Navarro — also the senior counselor for trade and manufacturing for the administration — who entered the Trump sphere after Jared Kushner found his book “Death by China” and asked him to join Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as an economic adviser.

In his books, [Rachel] Maddow continued, Navarro often cited the work of a so-called economics expert named Ron Vara. “V-A-R-A, Ron Vara,” Maddow said. “Vara” shared a memo in Washington D.C. circles after Trump won the presidency

“At one point, Ron Vara wrote in the memo that Trump could, quote, ‘Ride the tariffs to victory,'” Maddow said. The problem is, Ron Vara doesn’t exist. He never has. The economics expert that Peter Navarro has long cited to explain why he’s so gung-ho on tariffs, this person, Ron Vara, is a made-up person.”

“He is a fictional person. Peter Navarro invented Ron Vara as his expert source, so he could quote this expert source over and over and over again in his crackpot books,” she continued. “Who is Ron Vara? Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro, which is his last name.”

FFS.

2. “It is extraordinary. Laura Loomer is not just a bigot, she is a freak. She is at the far edges of the fever swamp. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene described her as racist and offensive. And yet Donald Trump is associating with her; these are the kinds of people who have his ear right now. So, at this moment of the campaign — I mean think about this we're less than two months away from the election — Donald Trump is associating with some of the craziest, weirdest figures on the right.” — Me on “Morning Joe,” September 12, 2024

3. Via CNN:

The report, according to The New Yorker, alleges that Hegseth had to be restrained from joining the dancers on stage at a Louisiana strip club where he had brought his team — and that the organization ignored a female employee’s allegation that another member of Hegseth’s staff attempted to sexually assault her at that strip club.

It claims that his management team “sexually pursued” employees and divided the organization’s female staffers into two groups — “party girls” and “not party girls,” The New Yorker reported.

In a separate complaint, which The New Yorker reported was emailed by a different employee to Hegseth’s successor as head of Concerned Veterans for America in late 2015, the employee alleged that while on a work trip to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Hegseth and someone traveling with the group’s Defend Freedom Tour closed down a hotel bar and yelled multiple times, “Kill all Muslims!”