‘All about men’: Elon Musk’s latest White House video reveals Trump 2.0’s ‘bro-pocalypse’

At first glance, it seemed like a sweet moment - “First Buddy” Elon Musk taking his young son to work. But it masked a twisted truth.

OPINION

In 1963, a nearly three-year-old John F. Kennedy Jnr was photographed monkeying around under the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

Ahh, the symbolism. Sweet innocence, the naivety of pure youth in the crucible of absolute power.

This week, when it happened again, there was some high-level nose picking.

On Wednesday, Elon Musk brought his four-year-old son X Æ A-Xii, who goes by Lil X, to the White House to give a press briefing about how he is totally not leading a less-than-covert government takeover.

Throughout this, Lil X looked, by turns, bored, bewildered, on the cusp of a full-blown tanty and darn tootin’ ready for snack time. So did President Donald Trump, who was sitting inches away. Another Go-Gurt, Don-Don?

It’s the perfect image to sum up something fundamentally rotten about Trump 2.0: It’s the bro-pocalypse. The dude-mageddon is here.

Lil X looked, by turns, bored, bewildered, on the cusp of a full-blown tanty and darn tootin’ ready for snack time. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

This month it was revealed that when Mr Musk went to Washington in January, he did not go alone, taking with him a posse of young men ranging in ages from 19 to 25 – interns and engineers who are, with chilling velocity, dismantling the very foundations of US government while slopping sticky Monster energy drink into the gears of state and getting pizza grease all over the Constitution.

It might be Mr Trump who gets to doodle on the back of the nuclear codes when he is dead bored on the phone with the Secretary of the Treasury – yap, yap, yap about inflation – but it’s Elon Musk and his pack of boy wonders who have been given the highest level of clearance to gut US institutions.

The billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked by Mr Trump with slashing spending and gutting federal bureaucracies, has already begun decimating the US government - but let us consider just a couple of Mr Musk’s kidults in his sideways coup, the boyos who sound less like masterful Oz-ish winged monkeys and more like red-pillers in need of a decent Neutrogena face wash.

Don’t think skilled political operatives, think a laser tag team who are really into pick-up artistry.

It’s the perfect image to sum up something fundamentally rotten about Trump 2.0: It’s the bro-pocalypse. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

There is 19-year-old Edward Coristine who is known online, charmingly, as “Big Balls”.

Swoony, no?

Or Marko Elez, who only temporarily found himself unemployed after the Wall Street Journal linked the 25-year-old with a social media account that had posted such choice titbits as “I was racist before it was cool”. In September last year, the account also shared, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity”.

Mr Elez briefly resigned, only for Mr Musk to come out swinging and say he would rehire him. (The posts have now been deleted).

Turns out the road to hell is paved with high fives. (Or should that be, heil fives?)

Or take Gavin Kliger.

This week, just before 1am on Monday, the Washington office employees of the United States Agency for International Development (USAid), the world’s biggest aid agency, were sent an email telling them to work from home that day. It was sent by Mr Kliger, 25 who until last month was, according to LinkedIn, a senior software engineer in San Francisco who had logged a stint as an intern at Twitter prior to Mr Musk’s takeover.

According to Reuters, between October last year and last month, Mr Kliger reposted social media content from white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who has become known for the heinous aphorism, “Your body, my choice”, and from self-described misogynist Andrew Tate, who is being investigated by Romanian prosecutors for human trafficking and rape charges.

(He denies any wrongdoing).

19-year-old Edward Coristine is known online, charmingly, as ‘Big Balls’. Picture: Reddit

DOGE team member Gavin Kliger, 25 used the term ‘huzz’, a highly offensive term for women, online. Picture: Substack

Mr Kliger, per Reuters, also used the term “huzz”, a highly offensive term for women, online.

Ladies, form an orderly queue now. And please BYO white hood.

What that Lil X photo op, what the installation of these bro-tenants in the highest levels of Washington spell out, is that Trump 2.0 isn’t just about the execrable abuse of power for personal gain, but it’s about the surging of a poisonous, horrifyingly regressive masculinity.

The revolution will smell like Lynx Africa.

And it goes beyond Mr Musk’s braggadocious bro-squad.

When Mr Trump picked a running mate last year it was JD Vance, who used one of his first major interviews to take aim at “childless cat ladies”.

When Mr Trump was inaugurated on January 20, the scene inside the US Capitol building was like a real life revenge of the billionaire-creatine-chugging nerds. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chew, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber all got primo seats.

(From left) Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, US businessman Jeff Bezos, CEO of Alphabet Inc and Google Sundar Pichai and Teska and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Pool/AFP

The geeks who could never get dates in high school had officially inherited the earth.

(This is not just about political expediency or keeping the big boys in Washington sweet. In January, Zuckerberg, the formerly hoodie-clad boy genius, was a guest on Joe Rogan’s testosterone-oozing podcast and said, “Masculine energy, I think, is good”).

Also prominently featured at Mr Trump’s coronation last month – all that was missing were some Beckham-esque gold thrones borrowed from a Floridian prop rental firm – were YouTuber turned boxer Jake Paul and his brother Logan, who it turns out is a wrestler and, of course, an influencer too; mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, who days earlier was accused in civil court of trying to rape a woman (McGregor denies the claim), and the Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive Dana White.

What this scene inside Washington’s Rotunda made explicitly clear was that this bulked up, corrosive brand of hyper masculinity is no longer just something that lives in the corners of the internet, a nesting ground for disenfranchised Lonely Boys, but has long since oozed into the political mainstream.

Jake Paul (L) and Logan Paul (R) sit the VIP viewing area in Emancipation Hall for the Inauguration of Donald Trump. Picture: Jasper Colt - Pool/Getty Images

MAGAland, in case it was not perfectly clear, and Trump Two: More Fast, More Furious, More Fake Tan, is all about men.

Every political pundit worth their New Yorker subscription has, since Kamala Harris’ loss last year, eagerly pointed out that it was the manosphere that got Mr Trump elected.

Consider what was happening this time around in 2017. The 500,000 women who marched on Washington, the sea of pink pussycat hats, the Resistance always spelt with a capital ‘R’.

Former President Joe Biden named the most women ever to his cabinet; Mr Trump has four – out of 24.

Mr Musk taking Lil X to the White House wasn’t just about using his child as a prop to perhaps soften his image and to humanise him, but it was also deeply symbolic.

The Tesla founder has daughters too, but where were they?

It is Lil X and his brothers who will inherit the earth that Trumpism is trying to wreak.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘All about men’: Elon Musk’s latest White House video reveals Trump 2.0’s ‘bro-pocalypse’