Trump-Musk bromance is a love that can’t last
Donald and Elon. Trump and Musk. What’s going on there? Ostensibly, officially, the Republican running-mate is JD Vance, he of the most anxious facial hair in western politics. In practice, though, he’s now a third wheel. In his place, the richest man in the world.
What is he doing there? What does he want? Increasingly, no big-ticket Trump appearance is complete without Musk, as the Democratic running-mate Tim Walz puts it, “on that stage jumping around, skipping like a dipshit”. He was there, most recently, at Madison Square Garden last Sunday. “Give it up,” screamed the speaker before him, “for the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America!”
Whereupon Musk bounced on his heels, not unlike Liz Truss does, screamed “rouaaaagh!” and continued, himself, to introduce Melania Trump. He did not appear to have prepared any remarks. He just seemed to feel he belonged there.
He did. At times, he may even have belonged there more than Trump himself. This was the rally at which the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage”. That’s targeted, Muskovite edgelord energy right there; perhaps meant and perhaps not, but you’re the mug for even caring. Trump’s own insults are entirely different; altogether more self-righteous, and also, somehow, more sincere. When toddler Trump had an accident, I’d imagine he just wandered off, assuming somebody else would clear it up. Toddler Musk would have remained next to it, smirking and proud.
The strangeness of both men, and the absurdity, shouldn’t blind us to how big a deal their partnership is. Quite abruptly, Musk has become Trump’s second-largest donor. He has also become his biggest cheerleader, leveraging not only his own 200 million-strong followership on X, the social media site he owns, but also, by means unclear, turning a formerly left-leaning platform into one that appears to boost pro-Trump content and marginalise liberals.
Over the past month Trump has started talking about putting Musk in charge of a “government efficiency commission”, which Musk has since taken to calling the “Department of Government Efficiency”, or “Doge”, as a reference to an internet meme dog that most people don’t know about but Musk will doubtless assume everybody does. He intends, he says, to cut government spending by dollars 2 trillion, just under a third of everything. This, while also persuading Trump to persuade Nasa to help him to go to Mars.
There is no historical parallel for this relationship. I suppose it would be a bit like if Henry Ford had not only cultivated Herbert Hoover, but done so while dancing, raving about Mickey Mouse and dreaming of living on the moon. What’s more, it has virtually come out of nowhere.
Back in 2017, when Musk had the environmental credentials you’d expect from a maker of electric cars, he resigned from an advisory role after Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords. Two years ago Musk said that Trump was too old to be chief executive of anything. Trump said Musk was “a bullshit artist” with “driverless cars that crash” and “rocket ships to nowhere”.
There are various theories as to why everything changed. One, as circulated by Walz and others, is that Musk sees an opportunity to steer regulation and get even richer, and is basically just being a businessman acting for his own commercial advantage. Bear in mind, though, that X now seems to be valued at about a fifth of the dollars 44 billion that Musk paid for it 2022. So I suppose the obvious response would be “well, there’s always a first time”.
A more nuanced and probably more accurate interpretation would be that Musk has dreams and Trump represents a way of achieving them. In a post on X last month, Musk called this election “a fork in human destiny” and declared his “absolute showstopper” was that bureaucracy would grow under continued Democratic rule, which would “destroy the Mars programme and doom humanity”. If you think this sounds a bit mad (note the order of priorities, for one thing) well done for noticing.
For Trump’s part, I suppose it’s not altogether odd that one unearthly orange-tinted mass would hold a certain attraction for another one. One has to wonder, though, for how long an actual President Trump would be prepared to indulge Musk’s manic futurism. In office, blue-sky gurus never last long. Think of Trump’s disastrous partnership with Steve Bannon, or Boris Johnson’s with Dominic Cummings. This would be that, on speed. Or perhaps, given Musk has discussed using it with a prescription, on ketamine.
Musk is clearly a genius of sorts, and a mesmerising one. Since buying what is now X, though, he has also become a case study in self-radicalisation, increasingly incapable of seeing a difference between the online bantersphere and the real world. Probably this is the real root of his affinity with Trump, but his journey doesn’t end there. Just this week he was to be found on X declaring that Trump’s economic policies would lead to immediate “hardship” and, when asked about “a severe overreaction” and tumbling markets pending eventual recovery, mused “sounds about right”.
Does he mean it? Does he want people to think he means it? Does he even know the difference? We cannot know. But we can probably assume this isn’t the message Trump himself wants voters to hear. It’s precisely this that makes their bromance so peculiar. Neither man, you sense, is quite what the other imagines him to be. Sooner or later, one of them is bound to notice. What then?
The Times
Crows can murder a grudge for 17 years
The birds can harbour a grudge for as long as 17 years against those who upset or threaten them, a scientist has found.
US, South Korea simulate blitz on North
Some 110 aircraft participated in joint show of force after Pyongyang’s intercontinental ballistic missile test, as Kim Jong-un promises continued nuclear expansion.