After the Earthquake

I think it’s hard to separate the (well deserved) pointing and laughing at the Musk/Trump antics from the political damage (or benefit) that will come from this little episode in our common disaster. Just look at this:

Clicks are up, I’m sure. I’ll confess to watching AOC’s “the girls are fighting” clip a few times. And thanks to a reader on BlueSky who pointed me to this:

Josh Marshall has a good piece on what he calls the Thunderdome Musk/Trump meltdown. He concentrates on SpaceX, and I think that’s the right place to look. Trump has some power over Tesla — mainly electric car subsidies — but that meme stock has somewhat recovered from yesterday’s dip. It’s the stock that is the basis of his fortune. At some point it will all come crashing down, but not today, and anyone who thinks they can predict Tesla’s downfall is playing a fool’s game.

But SpaceX, as Marshall points out, is absolutely crucial to the US space program. Musk tried to leverage that by threatening to decommission the Dragon spacecraft that is used to transport astronauts to the ISS, but he quickly walked it back.

That all said, here’s my take on the lasting political impact of Trump throwing Musk under the bus:

1. Trump has someone to blame for all the unpopular things that DOGE did, if he chooses. Since Elon is apparently a serious drug addict, Trump can spin a tale of Elon being fine when he started DOGE and that addiction took over, and the media will eat it up. They love gossip.

2. However, Trump fighting Elon over the Big Ugly Bill makes Trump and the rest of the Republicans own it. This is interesting since even MTG has flipped on the bill and Fox is reporting on that.

3. Elon out of the government means that Big Balls and the rest have lost their power, maybe. We can only hope on that some of the agencies they’ve destroyed can recover.

I think the net of this is that the main damage that this little breakup does is to increase the feeling that a Trump administration is pure chaos.

Open thread. Relatively obscure musical reference below, but it’s a breakup song.