No! Hell no! By no means! The enemy of your enemy remains to be a corrupt plutocrat who desires to destroy democracy.
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Musk and Trump: Breaking apart this dictatorial duo is nice for the nation.(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Photographs)
Donald Trump’s second time period has usually been a time of soul-crushing despair for liberals and leftists, so it was pure that there was an excessive amount of enjoyment of a uncommon bit of excellent information: the very public and very nasty breakup between the president and his chief plutocratic ally, Elon Musk. The Trump/Musk rift was lengthy predicted, since each males are boastful narcissists liable to messy public divorces with each their romantic and enterprise companions. However the separation occurred extra rapidly, extra viciously, and extra hilariously than anticipated.
After a mere 114 days, Musk left his White Home job (the place he had so firmly planted himself within the administration that he slept in authorities places of work and introduced his 4-year-old son, named X, to presidential conferences). Immediately, final Thursday, Musk and Trump went from being tight buddies to foes. Musk accused Trump of financial mismanagement and selling a tax-and-spending invoice that may be a “disgusting abomination.” He additionally claimed that Trump “is within the Epstein information. That’s the actual motive they haven’t been made public.” Trump responded by asserting“The simplest manner to save cash in our Price range, Billions and Billions of {Dollars}, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I used to be at all times stunned that Biden didn’t do it!”
Whereas the leisure worth of the spat is invigorating, its precise political penalties are extra ambiguous. The feud undeniably strengthens the anti-Trump opposition. As medieval folks knowledge teaches us“When thieves fall out, sincere males come by their very own.” Trump and Musk, who ganged collectively to loot the federal government for their very own enrichment, are definitely thieves on a paramount scale. Their falling out advantages the sincere.
However ought to the sincere (or not less than the much less thievish) align themselves with one among these two miscreants? That’s an concept that has been floating by some distinguished Democrats who wish to recruit Musk to hitch a grand anti-Trump standard entrance. On Friday, Consultant Ro Khanna informed Semafor, “Having Elon converse out towards the irrational tariff coverage, towards the deficit exploding Trump invoice, and the anti-science and anti-immigrant agenda might help verify Trump’s unconstitutional administration. I look ahead to Elon turning his hearth towards MAGA Republicans as an alternative of Democrats in 2026.”
Khanna is a little bit of an anomaly in staking out this place, since he’s probably the most progressive members of Congress. His progressivism is typically in pressure with the truth that he additionally represents Silicon Valley and has been keen to fix the damaged alliance between the Democratic Social gathering and Massive Tech. Till the 2024 election, Silicon Valley strongly leaned towards the Democratic Social gathering, however the broader shift to the precise by some distinguished billionaires corresponding to Musk frayed this relationship.
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Except for Khanna, a lot of the different advocates for a Democratic Social gathering rapprochement with Musk have been centrist and even conservative Democrats. Anthony Scaramucci, himself a brief-serving Trump adviser who was rapidly fired and is now a Trump critic, prompt that if Democrats deserted their left-wing insurance policies and tacked to the middle they may “carry Elon Musk again into the fold as a prodigal son.” The pundit Mathew Yglesias, a centrist Democrat who was intently aligned with the Biden administration, supplied comparable recommendation on X: “I really feel like (Hakeem) Jeffries and (Chuck) Schumer ought to give Elon Musk a name and inform him in regards to the Democratic Social gathering’s longstanding curiosity in electrical vehicles, photo voltaic panels, house exploration, and balanced deficit discount.”
These arguments are all examples of crackpot Machiavellianism—superficially intelligent, however truly deeply self-destructive. The logic right here is the widespread one among realism: “The enemy of my enemy is my pal.” However on this case, the enemy of your enemy (Musk) is as dangerous as, if not worse than, your enemy (Trump). Each Musk and Trump are plutocrats intent on plundering the workplace of the presidency and degrading democracy, however Musk’s nice wealth makes him a higher long-term hazard. In a tweet, Musk threatened Republicans by writing“Trump has 3.5 years left as President, however I might be round for 40+ years.” This menacing message ought to scare not simply the GOP however all People: The world’s richest man is warning that for the following 4 many years or extra, he’ll use his huge wealth to be a puppet grasp pulling the string of primaries and normal elections.
As David Weigel famous in Semafor, “Some Democrats consider that Musk may have stayed of their coalition, had they paid him a little bit extra respect—particularly, had Joe Biden invited Musk to the White Home electrical automobile summit early in his presidency.” This can be a very shallow interpretation of Musk, whose wild shift to the precise is formed by quite a lot of interwoven causes. Musk has turn out to be essentially the most distinguished advocate of hard-right insurance policies due to a way of racial superiority rooted in his background as a white South African, a dedication to gender norms that makes him each wanting to procreate on a mass scale and indignant in regards to the gender transition of one among his youngsters, and the pure proclivity of the ultrarich towards Social Darwinist economics. Musk’s embrace of the racist delusion of a “white genocide” ought to itself clarify that he’s not a mistreated centrist however an ardent, ideological right-wing extremist.
The author Kat Abughazaleh, who’s working in a Democratic congressional major in Chicago, summed up the case towards aligning with Musk effectively by writing“I can’t consider any Democrat would THINK of allying with Elon Musk. I gained’t take cash from the man who does a Hitler salute.”
In The New Republic, Greg Sargent expanded upon this fundamental level by noting that the Trump/Musk feud is known as a battle between two competing variations of hard-right coverage, with Musk supporting the extra radically pro-austerity and anti-welfare place:
Ultimately, Musk would use deficit fears to intestine the state extra totally than Trump would, whereas Trump appears extra centered on dramatically decreasing the tax burden of the rich and slashing the security web to pay for it. They’re at odds, however primarily as a result of they merely fall at completely different locations on the identical spectrum of impulses. And people impulses all tilt towards the identical place—towards making our society a much less egalitarian, extra unequal, meaner, crueler, and far more savage place.
For Democrats to align with Musk, they must do greater than shift to the middle; they must shift to the far proper. Any suggestion of an alliance with Musk is predicated on the premise that the one solution to struggle Trump is to assault him from the precise. This can be a pure intuition amongst elite Democrats (as evidenced not solely by the 2024 elevation of the Cheney household as Democratic Social gathering surrogates but in addition Chuck Schumer’s latest lambasting of Trump for attempting to barter a nuclear cope with Iran).
It’s doable to oppose each Musk and Trump, as Bernie Sanders did on Friday in a publish:
Trump’s proper: The simplest manner to save cash is to eradicate the “Billions and Billions” in company welfare Elon Musk has obtained. Musk’s proper: Trump’s “Massive, Stunning Invoice” is a “disgusting abomination” that should be defeated. Let’s do each. It’ll be a win-win for America!
The Democrats are divided not nearly Musk but in addition about billionaires basically. There’s a hope amongst centrist Democrats that the get together can win the help of “good billionaires” to struggle the dangerous billionaires. However leftists and lots of progressives don’t purchase the idea of excellent billionaires as a category price profitable. They need the Democrats to win again the working class. Changing into buddy-buddy with Musk is a certain solution to persuade everybody that Democrats are unprincipled and uphold the established order in any respect value.
Jeet Lord
Jeet Heer is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He additionally pens the month-to-month column “Morbid Signs.” The creator of In Love with Artwork: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Artwork Spiegelman (2013) and Candy Lechery: Evaluations, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for quite a few publications, together with The New Yorker, The Paris Overview, Virginia Quarterly Overview, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
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