The Week that Was ...
Ending Sunday, June 8, 2025
Welcome to the latest edition of The Week that Was, my rundown of what happened last week, curated, in the loosest sense of the word, for your reading pleasure, or displeasure.
I saved the Trump/Musk drama fest for near the end of today’s newsletter. First up are the adolescent sci-fi fantasies of our tech overlords, a combination of 1950s rockets and flying saucers and late 19th century apocalyptic Christianity, powered by hubris like never before. Then the scam economy—privatize that which the government (profitably) saved, and turn the profits over to well-connected insiders. Because our billionaires need help. Trump orders investigations and declares trade wars. Trump bans Chinese students. Because we need rare earths. The U.S.A. goes back to an imaginary past, while China creates the technology that really will define the 21st century. Americans resist ICE while Trump calls in the National Guard. Elections around the world happened. Trump’s New York roots. The bromance breaks up in a “tweet war,” while Stephen Miller’s wife starts a new job with Musk and posts a SpaceX (her employer) rocket on her X profile. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, sometimes a rocket is just a rocket.
1. Photo of the Week: Gas FIares in Iraq
© Paulie Grauer
Big Oil Is Fueling a Rise in Cancer in Iraq’s Basra
2. The Adolescent Delusions of Our Tech Overlords
Many of us had, while high in one way or another, or perhaps many ways, fantasies of living on other planets
“It’s tempting to believe that tech billionaires’ embrace of Donald Trump and the far right is a sudden rupture with the usual political ideology of Silicon Valley. Op-eds in The New York Times and elsewhere have made this case. Even Marc Andreessen, one of the billionaires in question, claims that this is what happened – he said that it was a change in the Democratic party that pushed him and his fellow oligarchs into the arms of the GOP.
“Yet this is a serious misunderstanding of the situation. There wasn’t a sudden shift in the politics of tech – it was a homecoming. While it’s true that Silicon Valley has long supported Democratic candidates for political office – and that rank-and-file tech workers still vote overwhelmingly for Democrats – the fundamental ideology underpinning the culture of Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists and CEOs has always had a far-right libertarian core.”
And what does this mean? It means fantasies of life in space on planets with too little gravity, light, or air for human or other terrestrial life forms (somehow “terraformed” into habitability, although no one explains how to create gravity so that human life can grow normally). And fantasies of artificial intelligence that is way smarter than the dumbass stuff we’re seeing now. This is not AI, but AGI (“advanced general intelligence”) so advanced that it will solve everything—climate change in particular—magically, and humans will no longer need to do anything. It helps to be an adolescent male and high to believe these things. Most of us grew up. But being a tech billionaire means that you don’t have to grow up. (See 16. The Bromance Explodes in a Tweet War: How Bromantic!, below.)
This vision seems so futuristic, so modern! Anyone who doesn’t agree must be against the future.
But the reality is that this is all derives from mid-twentieth science fiction and from late nineteenth century apocalyptic Christian movements.
“Space is the location of the tech billionaires’ futuristic dreams, but AI is the magic that fuels them. Such AI is always depicted as being able to do as least as much as humans can, if not more. Yet there’s little reason to think that AI like that is coming anytime soon. In a recent survey of AI researchers, 76% said that neural networks, the general architecture that underlies nearly all advanced AI, are fundamentally unsuitable for creating “AGI”, a hypothetical AI that can do everything humans can do. …”
“…. The idea of a singularity and all its attendant miracles can be traced back through these groups to mid-20th-century science-fiction – with its trappings of robots and rocket ships conquering the final frontier – and back beyond that to apocalyptic Christian religious movements of the late 19th and early 20th century. These ideas about the future were originally about using technology to ascend to heaven and live forever in the presence of God. They have come down to today’s tech oligarchs with AI playing the role of the deity and space as a substitute for paradise, but they are no less of a religion than they were a century ago.
“The tech billionaires’ unshakable faith in this religion of technological salvation leads them to believe the end of this world, and the advent of a perfect one, is nigh. AI and space colonization will lead to utopia, algorithmically guaranteed. This is why they need to believe that AI is amazing, beyond the fact that it’s propping up a bubble – it’s central to their entire worldview.
‘Tech billionaires are even gambling the planet on the imminent arrival of AGI. …. Sam Altman … even explained … “I think once we have a really powerful super-intelligence, addressing climate change will not be particularly difficult for a system like that,” he says. “If you think about a system where you can say, ‘Tell me how to make a lot of clean energy cheaply,’ ‘Tell me how to efficiently capture carbon,’ and then ‘Tell me how to build a factory to do this at planetary scale’ – if you can do that, you can do a lot of other things too.’”
That, my friend, is a fantasy.
Tech oligarchs are gambling our future on a fantasy
The fact is that we, that is, the human race, already know how to solve climate change: stop using carbon to generate energy. Use other sources of energy, which are abundant. The problem is political: the industries based on using carbon to fuel our economy have a lot of power, and are ascendant, bigly, in the U.S. right now. As Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever and What Is Real?, explained in a recent episode of The Majority Report.
In which he also noted that, when you get right down to it, the reason these guys have all this money is because, in the casino that is American capitalism and Silicon Valley, they’re the ones who happened to pull the slot machine arm at the right time.
The Dystopian Future Pushed by Right-Wing Tech Oligarchs w/ Adam Becker | MR Live
3. Scam Economy
If AI and AGI sound like scams buttressed with delusions and lots of money and a credulous neoliberal media, way beyond anything we’ve seen before and almost incomprehensible, take heart: We’re still producing old-style, old-school, analog rip-offs, just like in the past.
Specifically, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two agencies that underly the U.S. mortgage market, in other words, houses, are now in the process of being “privatized,” which means sold off at a fraction of their actual worth. And with hundreds of billions of dollars in their coffers, for the taking.
“President Donald Trump’s plans to take public the two finance agencies that buy the majority of mortgages in the US could generate a giant windfall for a handful of hedge funds, including two of the president’s most strident billionaire backers.
“Trump recently vowed to relist the government’s shares in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, federally-backed agencies that purchase the majority of home loans issued in the US and which were taken into conservatorship during the 2008 financial crisis.
“While details of Trump’s plans are scant, hanging in the balance are tens of billions of dollars in potential gains for hedge funds along with the proper functioning of the US mortgage market itself.
“Trump’s recent comments have invigorated long-running bets made by investors including hedge fund billionaires Bill Ackman and John Paulson. The companies’ shares still trade over the counter, instead of on one of the mainstream exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange. The stocks of both have jumped more than 400 per cent in the past year.”
Donald Trump’s plans for Fannie and Freddie would mean payday for hedge funds
4. Trump Orders Investigations
President Trump is not given to investigating anything, in the sense of taking the time to learn and explore.
But Trump certainly knows how to order investigations. He tells his staff, verbally, no doubt (what, type?) to investigate someone whose actions have for, seemingly any reason whatsoever, aroused his ire, and for whatever excuse comes to hand. Such as the use of an autopen.
“President Trump directed administration officials to investigate former President Biden's use of autopen to sign documents in a Wednesday evening order that raised doubts about his predecessor's cognitive state.”
And, yes, it does appear that Biden’s abilities were in decline.
So, Trump issues an order that essentially holds that every action of the Biden Administration, including:
“… the White House issued over 1,200 Presidential documents, appointed 235 judges to the Federal bench, and issued more pardons and commutations than any administration in United States history.”
In other words, everyone in the Biden Administration can be called in to give testimony on all of these decisions.
Since the invention of the autopen, just about every President has used it. And don’t get me started on electronic signatures. These are applied probably tens of thousands of times every day to documents of great legal and financial import.
Trump orders investigation into Biden
Not surprisingly, Trump has no actual reason for investigating Biden.
It’s actually not easy to find a straightforward news story on this. Just about every news organization is falling over themselves to show how smart their analysis is. So this screenshot will have to do, for now.
This on top of the investigation of Andrew Cuomo, which, admittedly, might have some actual factual justification.
US Justice Department investigating former New York governor Cuomo, sources say
That is, when Trump is not simply calling for investigations.
Trump wants investigations into Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah and Bono
Or calling off investigations.
Trump admin ends police investigations in Trenton, 7 other cities
Or ending cyber security protections.
Trump Drops A Cybersecurity Bombshell With Biden-Era Policy Reversal
In fact, Trump’s investigations are so popular with MAGA people that they are also calling for investigations, when they feel like it.
Steve Bannon calls for federal investigation into Musk after split with Trump
And even Democrats, or doctors who treated Democrats, and getting into the act.
Biden’s doctor failed to properly assess fitness for office, Obama’s doctor says
The assessment of Obama’s White House doctor would seem to conflict with the theory that Biden was murdered in 2020 and replaced with a clone, as shared on Trump’s Truth Social account (but not shared on X).
5. Trade War
The trade war is continuing. And Trump imposes tariffs on whims.
This chart shows the growth and decline of U.S. tariffs since Trump became president.
And this chart shows U.S. imports since November 2024.
As is clear, tariffs have varied more over the last few months than imports. The only discernible effect is somewhat increased imports in anticipation of increased tariffs, followed by a fall-off as inventory built up during the period of heightened tariffs worked its way through the supply chain.
And the tariff policy without an industrial policy is just flailing in the dark. Or, alternatively, businesses making big pledges with large, round, figures, such as Apple’s pledge to invest $500 billion in the U.S. in the next four years. (By the way, almost all of that was stuff that Apple was planning on doing already..)
On top of that, the tariff policy, inspired by President McKinley, is blitheringly ignorant of reality 120+ years later.
“’For a president who is intent on building U.S. manufacturing, the tariff strategy he’s laid out is remarkably short-sighted,’ said Gordon Hanson, a Harvard Kennedy School professor whose groundbreaking 2016 research work, The China Shock, was among the first to sound the alarm about the threat to American industry. ‘It fails to recognize what modern supply chains look like.’
“’Even if you’re intent on reshoring parts of manufacturing, you can’t do it all,’ he said. ‘Steel and aluminum are part of that.’”
Trump wants a manufacturing boom. The industry is buckling.
6. Trump Says No to Chinese Students
At the end of last week, Trump started complaining that China had “TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US.” [emphasis not added]
“What to watch: It's not clear what action Trump could take [emphasis added] against China next.
“The tariff reduction is supposed to last until August 12.
“In the meantime, a federal court ruled the tariffs Trump imposed on China were illegal anyway, a ruling that's been stayed for now.”
Trump claims China has "totally violated" tariff pause deal
It soon became clear what action Trump could take.
“When Secretary of State Marco Rubio abruptly announced plans Wednesday to cancel the visas of all Chinese students in the U.S., the Trump administration was quick to cast it as a way to root out spies from the communist nation.
“But behind the scenes, what really set off Rubio was the administration's realization that China was withholding precious rare-earth minerals and magnets as a tariff negotiating tool, sources tell Axios.”
The rare minerals battle behind Rubio's ban on Chinese students
For the moment, Trump and Xi have spoken, and presumably, TACO will not be invoked.
Trump tariffs live updates: US, China set for next round of talks after Trump-Xi call
7. The U.S. Pushes Back(ward)
The U.S. is going backward into a never-never land of cheap gas and big cars.
Chairman Lee Introduces Bill to End Biden's Trillion-Dollar "Green New Deal" Subsidies
And military parades.
US Army tanks and vehicles arrive in Washington for military parade
8. Meanwhile, China Pushes Forward
While the U.S. is doing nothing effectual except making things worse (an endeavor in which we are succeeding), China is moving forward.
“More passengers shuttling between China’s two biggest cities are choosing to hop on a bullet train rather than a flight, as airlines struggle to match the convenience offered by the country’s ultra-modern high-speed rail network.
“The shift to rail has become so pronounced on the busy Beijing-Shanghai route that China’s air travel industry has warned its market is being “eroded”, with airlines scrambling to lure back customers with cheaper tickets and free limousine services.”
China’s airlines raise alarm as travellers ditch planes for bullet trains
China’s high-speed rail network on track to breach 50,000km milestone in 2025
And the PRC, the People’s Republic of China, is surging way ahead in electric car productions.
“Range anxiety has long suppressed sales of fully electric vehicles as drivers opt for the peace of mind that plug-in hybrids and old-school gas-guzzlers offer.
“But in China, the emergence of extended-range EVs — which run primarily on electricity but use a gasoline engine to charge the battery when it runs low — and the rise in ultra-fast charging could solve the issue once and for all.”
“With Huawei’s “Giant Whale” 400-volt platform, the SUV’s battery can charge from 20% to 80% in just 15 minutes.
China’s 1,000-Mile EVs Render Range Anxiety Obsolete
9. Even Europe Is Doing Better
And, wonder of wonders, even the European Union economy is showing positive signs.
Eurozone economies led by Ireland and Germany expanded twice as much as previously reported to begin the year, with exports surging in anticipation of US tariffs. Eurostat’s upward revision to 0.6% growth caught most economists by surprise and capture a currency union that’s so far proving resilient.
Euro Economies Doubling Growth Grabs Investor Attention
10. Your Permanent Record Brought to Trump by Peter Thiel and Palantir
Remember “your permanent record,” as in your second-grade teacher telling you that if you did some bad thing again, he (or she) would put it “on your permanent record.”
Well, guess what, they’re finally creating it, in the name of liberty and freedom.
“The Trump administration is collecting data on all Americans, and they are enlisting the data analysis company Palantir to do it.”
Trump Taps Palantir to Create Master Database on Every American
And the U.S. Supreme Court says that is just fine, thank you.
Supreme Court allows DOGE team to access Social Security systems with data on millions of Americans
11. Life in These United States
There is cutting off your nose to spite your face, and then there is sabotaging a great business because it doesn’t involve oil—in fact, a business that holds out the promise of freedom from oil—a business which is strong in your state, but threatening to the vested interests of yore.
As anyone who has driven through Texas knows, Texas is home to a lot of wind farms. In fact, Texas leads the nation in renewable clean energy. Which does not sit well with the paid help of the oil business.
© Sue Agroki/AP Photo
“On April 30, the Texas Economic Development Corporation published a blog post boasting that Texas is ‘rapidly becoming the renewable energy capital of the U.S. … As wind, solar, battery storage, and hydrogen energy continue to expand, the Lone Star State is helping shape a more resilient and diversified national grid.’”
But that didn’t stop fossils backing fossil fuels from trying to destroy clean energy in Texas.
“Several state Senate bills backed by deep-pocketed anti-renewables interests would have curbed wind and solar installation on private lands. The bills, respectively, would have implemented onerous permitting requirements; mandated that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s independent electric grid operator, be sourced from dispatchable generation (read: natural gas) and other fossil fuels rather than wind, solar, or battery storage; and required that new and existing renewables projects buy backup generation from fossil fuel plants.”
For the moment, they’ve been stymied. But don’t count on that lasting.
Texas Legislature Beats Back Assault on Clean Energy
12. Zohran!
Meanwhile, New York City may just elect a socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Now, if you are thinking NYC is some bastion of progressive, liberal, lefty politics, think again. We specialize in conservative establishment Democrats. (See 18. Trump’s Roots: Sorry, He’s All New York, below.)
“Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign received a key endorsement Monday from state Sen. John Liu, one of New York City’s most prominent Asian American politicians. ….
“At a press conference in front of City Hall, Liu noted he and Mamdani are both immigrants who attended public schools. He also pointed to the thousands of donors who have contributed to Mamdani’s campaign as evidence of grassroots support.
“’He doesn’t owe anybody anything,’ Liu said. “He’s not beholden to any moneyed interests.’”
Mamdani gets key endorsement for NYC mayor in battle for Asian American votes
And then Mamdani got the endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City’s most prominent progressive leader, endorsed Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani for mayor on Thursday, throwing her clout behind an upstart socialist who has galvanized young voters. ….
“Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her aides spent weeks studying the race. They asked candidates to submit polling, and opposition and strategy memos, to make the case for their viability.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Endorses Zohran Mamdani as Top Choice for Mayor
On Wednesday, June 4, there was a debate among the various candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York. Listening to the establishment, you. would think Cuomo is a shoo-in.
We asked Dem insiders how it’s going. They think the attacks on Cuomo aren’t working.
For a better account of the debate, you can’t do much better than Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report.
13. America America
In San Diego and across this great country, Americans are standing up to ICE.
“In the early-morning twilight on a cool Friday in April, a half dozen people gathered in a small parking lot in the San Diego neighborhood of City Heights. It was quiet, before the working-class neighborhood had come to life with the bustle of traffic, commuters, and the sounds of children walking to school.
“One of the men there, Benjamin Prado, grabbed a bullhorn and a radio. “You all have your walkies, right?” he asked the others as he got into a car. Its rear bumper had a decal reading in bold Spanish, ‘Patrullas Comunitarias’ or ‘Community Patrol’. The group nodded. They agreed to meet back up later that morning before dispersing in several cars that disappeared in the predawn darkness to carry out their mission of patrolling the neighborhood in search of suspicious vehicles and activity.
How Volunteer Patrols Are Working to Protect San Diego Immigrant Communities From ICE
To listen to Sam Seder’s interview with Roberto Camacho, click here.
And guess what? It’s getting worse. People in Los Angeles and New York City have protested against ICE raids. In Los Angeles, Trump called in the National Guard, who will get there tomorrow (Monday, June 9). That didn’t stop Trump from praising them for doing a great job, though.
14. Gaza
In Gaza, the humanitarian disaster has taken a new form entirely.
“Throughout the war in Gaza, U.N. agencies and experienced aid groups have overseen the distribution of food aid in the territory. Now, Israel is set to transfer that responsibility to a handful of newly formed private organizations with obscure histories and unknown financial backers.”
New Gaza Aid Plan, Bypassing U.N. and Billed as Neutral, Originated in Israel
And the result has been deadly.
“Israeli soldiers opened fire Tuesday morning near crowds of Palestinians walking toward a new food distribution site in southern Gaza, the Israeli military said. The Red Cross and Gaza health ministry said at least 27 people had been killed.
“It was the second such shooting in three days near the same site in the city of Rafah, where thousands of desperate and hungry Palestinians have been coming early each day in hopes of securing food. Israeli soldiers opened fire on Sunday near an approach to the distribution center. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said at least 23 people were killed.
“The United Nations has boycotted the new system, saying that it endangers civilians by forcing them to walk for miles to get food on a route that goes past Israeli military lines. The U.N. has also argued that the positioning of the distribution points, mostly in Israeli-occupied areas of southern Gaza, could facilitate an Israeli plan to displace the population of northern Gaza.”
Israeli Soldiers Open Fire Near Gaza Aid Site. Gaza Officials Say 27 Are Killed.
15. Foreign Affairs: Outside the Bubble
To hear the neoliberal press tell it, the world is going right right right! To their gleeful delight disguised as rueful resignation. But is it?
Well, in Poland the nationalist right candidate did win the presidency. By a narrow margin. And to hear the New York Times tell it, it was all about liberalism vs. traditional values. (Please note that we’re talking about a “center” party and a “populist right” party.
“But the election in Poland highlights a broader struggle faced by Europe, particularly in the formerly communist East. Battles have raged over divisive issues like migration, abortion and L.G.B.T. rights. National sovereignty has also become a rallying cry on the right, against the power of the European Union to mandate changes many see as being in conflict with traditional values and, in Poland’s case, the Roman Catholic Church.
“Jaroslaw Kuisz, a political analyst affiliated with the universities of Warsaw and Oxford, described it as a battle between ‘two Wests — two power centers that are ideologically very different.’”
Caught Between Two Wests: New Global Divide Runs Straight Through Poland
But look at the map of Poland showing who won and who lost. The orange areas are where the “liberal” candidate, Rafal Trzaskowski; the blue area represent the “rightwing populist” candidate, Karol Nawrocki, was victorious.
The orange blob to the surrounded by blue represents Warsaw and its suburbs, a region of Poland that has done well, economically, since the fall of the Soviet Union and especially since Poland’s entry into the European Union.
Now look at a map of Poland showing income. The correlation is clear; the poorer areas of Poland voted conservative.
In South Korea, the leftist, Lee Jae-myung, won the electoin, on a platform that including reducing economic inequality. By a wide margin. 49.4% against 41.2% for the conservative, with a little over 8 percent for a third candidate.
But try telling that to The New York Times.
“If there is one characteristic that defines Lee Jae-myung, South Korea’s new president, it’s that he is a survivor.
“He has survived criminal charges, a near-fatal stabbing attack and the martial law enacted by his fiercest enemy, former President Yoon Suk Yeol. Now he is taking on what may be his toughest test yet. He must lead a deeply divided nation through daunting challenges, both at home and abroad.”
He Survived a Knife to the Neck. Now He’ll Lead a Divided South Korea.
On June 1, Mexico started implementing a constitutional reform, one of twenty that were part of MORENA’s election campaign in 2024, mandating the election of all federal judges. It is quite difficult to find accurate coverage of this important event in English, but there is a podcast, Soberanía, which can provide excellent coverage, in English.
Poetic Justice: Mexico Holds UNPRECEDENTED Judicial Election
BreakThroughNews also had some pointed and accurate coverage.
US Media Loses Its Mind As Mexico Votes for Their Own Judges
16. The Bromance Explodes in a Tweet War: How Bromantic!
It was easy to wonder how long Elon Musk would last in Washington, in the ostensible Trump Administration.
Of course, it no longer seems reasonable (if it ever did) to call what is happening in Washington an “administration”—after all, “administration” implies administering something, somehow, and this is nothing but lies to disguise what undoubtedly go down in history as the greatest single episode of looting of all time.
Musk left on last Friday, with a shiner, improbably explained. By Sunday, though, Musk seemingly spontaneously decided to come out against the big beautiful bill while being interviewed by David Pogue of CBS Sunday Morning.
By Tuesday, it was personal. Musk called the bill “a disgusting abomination,” which it is, of course.
"’I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,’ Musk wrote. ‘This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.’"
Elon Musk calls Trump agenda bill 'disgusting abomination' days after White House send-off
And then Musk claimed he was betrayed. At 2:07 am on Wednesday, June 4, Musk tweeted that the BBB
“… more than defeats all the cost savings achieved by the @DOGE team at great personal cost and risk.”
By then, the people around Trump who do the actual work knew that @DOGE had not saved any money at all: in fact, government expenditures were up!
“… by looking at the claims made by DOGE itself. In late February, its website claimed to have achieved $55 billion in annual-spending reductions. However, its ‘wall of receipts’ detailed only $16.5 billion of this total. Half of that figure came from a typo claiming $8 billion in savings from terminating an $8 million contract. As The New York Times has reported, that was far from the only accounting error.
“These spending data do not flatter the Musk project. Total federal outlays in February and March were $86 billion (or 7 percent) higher than the levels from the same months a year ago….”
The Actual Math Behind DOGE’s Cuts
At this point, the people around Trump who do the actual work also observed Musk’s utter failure in Wisconsin. Musk has poured a shit ton of money into outside spending on Trump’s campaign. And Trump won. Now he poured $21M into a Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, and lost.
“Musk dove into Wisconsin and helped make the race the most expensive judicial contest on record. It produced high turnout for an April election but ended almost the same way as the prior, double-digit loss by conservatives during a court race in 2023.”
Democrats’ win in Wisconsin court race also is a big loss for Elon Musk
Musk accused Trump of, wait, drum roll, hypocrisy.
On Thursday, June 5, at the White House and in front of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in town to be serious, Trump conveyed in escalating tones his “disappointment” with Musk.
Trump says he's 'very disappointed' with Elon Musk: 'Trump derangement syndrome'
A few minutes later, Musk tweeted that Trump owed him his election.
And then accuses Trump of “ingratitude.” Ungrateful? Trump? Say it ain’t so!
This went on for a while, until Musk said that Trump was “in the Epstein files.”
Kanye West, Trump’s personal friend, tried to calm the two down. West recently posted a new song on X with a phrase heard in rallies in the Third Reich (initials HH).
And then Musk tweeted that the reason the Epstein files had not been released was because Trump is in the files. This has led the QAnon world to conclude that the spat is a ruse to trick and expose the real pedophiles.
Conspiracy Theorists Think the Elon-Trump Feud Is Just a Ruse to Expose the Real Pedophiles
Meanwhile, Musk threatened to “decommission” the Dragon spaceship, which takes crews to the International Space Station.
Elon Musk says SpaceX will decommission Dragon spacecraft after Trump threat — or not
So Steve Bannon called for SpaceX to be nationalized under the Defense Production Act.
Steve Bannon: Nationalize SpaceX
And that Musk be deported.
Trump Adviser Urges Immigration Investigation Into Elon Musk's Past as "Illegal Alien"
Meanwhile, Trump called for an end to subsidies for Musk’s enterprises.
Trump threatens to cut off Elon Musk's federal subsidies. That could cost Tesla and SpaceX billions.
Vladimir Putin, for his part, offered Musk asylum in Russia.
Russia Offers Elon Musk Asylum as Fight With Trump Intensifies
Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, of Silicon Valley, thought this would be a good chance to get Elon Musk to donate to the Democratic Party again. This was first reported by Politico.
Then Rep. Khanna doubled down on this craven idea in a monumentally sanctimonious tweet which decried sanctimony.
And the Republicans are also trying to heal this breakup, starting with Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire with an interest in the privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
But Trump is not interested, or so he says. Let’s see what happens if that $100M pledge materializes.
Trump Calls Anyone Who’ll Listen to Prove He’s Not Thinking About Elon
But the juiciest bit of the whole sordid mess is that Musk has supposedly “cucked” White House Deputy Chief of Staff, the sepulchral Stephen Miller.
And the Millers were close to Musk before Musk’s departure from DOGE. Rumor has it, maybe even a “throuple.”
And it is absolutely true that Stephen Miller’s wife Katie is now working for Elon Musk.
In fact, the banner on Katie Miller’s X account is a SpaceX rocket launch, seen below. Avoid any obvious Freudian comments, please.
And Musk’s black eye, well, it was on the left side of his face. And Stephen Miller is left-handed.
Stephen Miller and His Wife Are Caught Between Musk and Trump
17. DOGE, Alas, Lives On
Remember the adolescents, such as “Big Balls” Edward Coristine, who were laying waste to the government as operatives of “DOGE”? Well, DOGE is still going strong.
“Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, and Ethan Shaotran’s employment designations at the General Services Administration (GSA) have been officially converted to full-time from the restricted special government employee classification that limited their time in government to a period of 130 days, according to documentation viewed by WIRED.
“Coristine, who has gone by ‘Big Balls’ online and previously worked for a telecommunications firm known for hiring former blackhat hackers, was converted to full time on May 31, along with Farritor. Shaotran became full time on April 10.”
‘Big Balls’ Is Officially a Full-Time Government Employee
18. Trump’s Roots: Sorry, He’s All New York
New York City has the reputation for being a “liberal” city, or even left. I would dispute that. New York City is fundamentally conservative, and can be downright reactionary. It’s more like a few precincts in Manhattan and Brooklyn are “liberal.” And that liberalism can have its blind spots.
“Our received narrative of the movement encompassed by Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley and Strom Thurmond and Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan just doesn’t cut it any longer. I’ve done my best to begin the work—thinking through, for instance, Trumpism’s connection to fascism, a political tradition not heretofore considered all that relevant in the American context. Other bodies, however, are buried closer to home.
“No history of modern conservatism I’m aware of finds much significance in the 22,000 Nazi sympathizers who rallied for Hitler at Madison Square Garden in February 1939, presided over by a giant banner of General George Washington that stretched almost all the way to the second deck, capped off by a menacing eagle insignia. Nor the now-infamous Ku Klux Klan march through the streets of Queens in 1927, when The New York Times reported “1,000 Klansmen and 100 policemen staged a free-for-all,” in which according to one contemporary news report all the individuals arrested were wearing Klan attire, and that one of those arrestees was Donald Trump’s own father.
“It is in this saga that we locate the formation of “Donald Trump’s mature political vision of the world, in continuity with America’s racist and nativist heyday of the 1920s, and within the context of a cultural world much more familiar to us: New York in the 1970s, that raging cauldron of skyrocketing violent crime, subway trains slathered with graffiti, and a fiscal crisis so dire that even police were laid off in mass—then the laid off cops blocked the Brooklyn Bridge, deflating car tires, and yanking keys from car ignitions.
“We might start with William F. Buckley—though other scholars can surely date it back further.
“What he also injected was an unprecedented reactionary thuggishness. Like his idea to “undertake to quarantine all addicts, even as smallpox carriers would be quarantined during a plague.” Or “relocating chronic welfare cases outside the city limits”—in what his critics described as concentration camps for the poor.
“Two years later, George Wallace brought his independent presidential bid to Madison Square Garden. “We need some meanness,” Wallace brayed. And he got it: police had to rescue black protesters from a mob that surrounded them and chanted, “Kill ‘em!”
And remember Bob Grant? You are forgiven if you have forgotten that awfulness.
“… beginning on WMCA in 1970, and then on WOR (until he was fired in 1979 for saying the only reason a black woman got her job was that ‘she passed the gynecological and pigmentation test’), virtually invented right-wing talk radio—and when you think about it, it hardly could have been invented anywhere else but New York.
“In 2011, Bob Grant, impressed with Donald Trump’s campaign to force President Obama to produce his birth certificate, announced he had found his presidential candidate for 2012.”
Avenging Angels: The New York Values that Shaped Donald Trump
