Is Trump Really Setting Elon Musk for a Fall?

 

Is Trump Really Setting Elon Musk for a Fall?

March 10th Suggests it Has to Happen

Unless Trump can find a way to circumvent the 2026 midterms, the already plunging stock market, based on Trump’s ill-defined “little disturbance” in the economy as the layoffs and federal cuts are implemented, went into a steep dive on May 9th when Trump was on the Fox Business Channel and stated he could not rule out a recession. The next day, the bottom began dropping out of our stock markets, followed almost immediately by parallel plunges in stock markets around the globe. Trump’s major asset, his ownership of Testa shares, took a 15% haircut, cutting the value of that company, compared to its high point, in half. $800B lost. European Tesla car sales were now at half the sales from just a few years ago. Tesla salesrooms were now the easy-button target for protestors. And Trump may have precipitated a genuine recession. Masses of fired workers facing higher prices just stop spending. Wal*Mart’s revenue projections sustain that view.

Unless Trump can find a way to stop or rig the mid-terms, by which time the emperor’s new clothes concept should kick in, he needs a big reassuring blame victim to assuage his electorate. Right now, his MAGA followers, fed off of social media, believe and hang on Trump’s every word… easily forgiving him for “stuff that just did not work out.” But if you scratch the surface of Musk’s “how do we reconstruct after we’ve cleaned house?” strategy, you’ll find the answer: replace necessary fired federal employees everywhere possible with an AI-driven bureaucracy. Those close to Musk are suggesting that with so many jobs that will never be replaced, the US will need to consider instituting a substitute for income from working, a guaranteed income floor, to all Americans, called a Universal Basic Income. Do Americans really want that?! A capitalist entrepreneur embracing socialism? Adding that to the massive federal subsidies and support shown to corporate America without a peep from Republicans, and… well.

Neither Musk (who has undergraduate degrees in physics) nor Trump (Wharton undergrad, with a hint that he was not a good student) have the expertise necessary to guide our nation. As masters of their universes before public life, they only protected extreme loyalists and were notoriously insensitive to most of their workers. The turnover rates at Trump and Musk companies are legendary. And do you believe that a man who once called crypto a “scam” has the slightest ability to describe a multilevel decentralized blockchain security system? Note that Trump did not make his fortune, post-inheritance and daddy’s bailout, by investing in stocks. He dealt almost exclusively in real estate and catering to people’s dreams (we call them schemes). They know how to make money for themselves, are autocratic bullies without any significant skills in managing people, understanding the consequence of their actions or that government is supposed to care for its people… and neither cares nor even tries to step into the shoes of the vastly less affluent constituents.

Everyone wants to eliminate fraud, corruption and waste in government spending… but meat-axe firings and decimating the ranks of federal Inspectors General (who were very good at solving those issues) and replacing what was working relatively well with conspiracy theories, immediately taken as the Gospel truth by MAGA believers, is an unsustainable path. Musk believes that those taking Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid are the “parasite class,” participating in a governmental Ponzi scheme. He touts “waste” numbers which, examination, are wildly overstated. No, Musk, there are no people over 115 years old receiving a dime of benefits.

“Billionaire Elon Musk suggested in an interview Monday [3/10] he wants to eliminate up to half a trillion dollars in entitlement spending—claiming that’s how much ‘waste and fraud’ is in the system—after he and President Donald Trump have repeatedly alleged without evidence that Social Security is subject to widespread fraud, but vowed to leave people’s benefits alone.” Forbes, March 10th. Still cutbacks loom. There is no way in hell that Congress can pass their promised tax cuts for the mega-wealthy without decimating the social programs noted above, clearly Musk’s primary target.

If Trump figured that Musk will do lots of unacceptable (for an elected official, which Musk is not) dirty work, shutting federal agencies and firing tons of federal workers, the majority of whom are veterans, when the pressure from red states and GOP officials (Trump clearly does not represent blue states) reaches an intolerable scream, one way or the other, Musk will join the litany of former Trump major players with tire tracks from the bus they were thrown under. Gone! Can Trump, who engaged and fully enabled Musk, under the ruse of a non-governmental (false) Department of Government Efficiency, that continues to alienate and terrify Americans on both sides of the aisle, escape direct blame? He’s totally worn out the Biden blame card already.

The disconnect from old world Reagan values is being expanded every day. Putin is our friend. Europe is out of touch and is too needy. And when Arizona Senator, veteran and astronaut, Mark Kelly retuned from a trip to Ukraine, calling for continued US support, Musk called him a “traitor” on X. Kelly responded on X: “Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do.” Remember when Donald Trump castigated Vietnam War hero and later US Senator from Arizona, John McCain, for being captured by the enemy. Trump has no love for America’s fallen soldiers… they’re just “losers” to him.

Yet, the Democrats are still deer in the headlights. Leadership is lacking. And they need to know: MAGA voters believe every word Trump says and are almost impossible to convince otherwise. This cohort also believes that Jesus Christ has ordained Trump as our going-forward leader. They believe that even though Trump’s margin of victory represented a 1.5% of the popular vote, Trump has a mandate for massive change. They believe tariffs will be a major source of revenues will cut our reliance on imports (more jobs for citizens) and that immigrants from south of our border are criminals sucking the life blood out of our country.

They generally hate Dems, particularly the progressives… While Dems stand for diversity, DEI and support “trans athletes playing in women’s sports” should be deprioritized. If those concepts remain pillars of the Democratic platform – assuming there are midterm elections – they might not get elected. If they do not take back the House and Senate, they will have no shot to reinstate the notion that we are nation where being different is an American right.

Trump needs to be pinned for everything Musk has done and will do, even when he discharges Musk. Think… don’t take the roil litany of bait and respond to every little autocratic move. Trump is a master of the autocratic “divide and conquer” by picking targets to instill fear in everybody else. Woke law firms that opposed Trump, a major member of the press excluded because it wouldn’t accept Trump’s renaming the Gulf of Mexico (as it was known for hundreds of years) as the Gulf of America. Immutable progressive issues cannot be anywhere near the top of the Democratic platform. They have huge topline issues like Trump’s greedy billionaires targeting less affluent Americans as sacrificial lambs to their question for even more massive wealth.

I’m Peter Dekom, Dems, stop lighting candles and get mad as hell so you won’t have take it anymore: a huge impairment on the quality of American lives.