The Bro-Mance Is Over

Like all mud fights, Elon vs The Donald has a certain entertainment value. But the more serious issue is not the cracks in MAGA/America First, but the lack of definition to begin with.

How it started . . .

How it’s going . . .

Followed by . . .

CRAZY I tell you!

And then . . .¹

Actually, Elon Musk may have a point. In fact, he probably does. Now whether Trump is in the files or “in” the files, who knows. But I believe his name comes up.

But if he is in the files, that would explain a lot.

Well, Trump’s ego and a tendency to be swayed by flattery could also explain the same things.

Others said the post went way too far. I don’t know. It’s not like people haven’t suggested it before.

Besides, it’s easy enough to disprove. Just release the files.

Ah, yes, the old “trust us” game.

The more things change . . .

Of course, the complication is that if Elon Musk really did believe Trump was in the Epstein files, and he still was willing to back him without mentioning that fact, then what does that say about Musk?

All that aside, we’re left in a very strange place.

Two things here: she practiced that line . . . a lot . . . in front of every mirror she passed and has been dying for a chance to use it.

And . . . Elon Musk and Donald Trump have done the impossible.

They have made Sandy Cortez look clever and mature.

Now by the time I’m writing this, things are calming down. Elon is acting conciliatory on X.

He deleted the post about Trump in the Epstein files and started posting things like this.²

And Trump for his part . . .

Some said the fight was “fake.” 🤷‍♀️

That’s a little too 36D chess for me, so we’ll assume for the moment it was real, because the larger world did and because two people with titanic egos and thin skins taking potshots at each other seems more likely than “some great mind game.”

There were three main reactions to this little spat, among those who reacted.

On the one “side,” you had the El Gato Malos of the world.

trump had a once in a generation opportunity and all he had to do was sit still and win. let DOGE demolish the deepstate, drag it into the light, and expose it. let them wreck the chains of command the partisan permanent state had established, the dirty money, the captured agencies and purloined justice. control the border, tear out DEI root and stem, and shrink the regulatory state. get the schools back.

this was the clear obvious path to making america great again and the alliance of trump populists and sili valley and fin bro builders was incredibly potent, a literal dream team set up for a walkover win. . . .

no one wants to deal with him because no one trusts him. and that’s because trump will always need to be the center of attention, places no value in his word, and always stabs his friends and business partners in the back. this has been his whole career. “the art of the deal” is basically “make a massive mess, who cares about rules or law, and rugpull all your friends to grab their stuff for personal gain.”

And on the other you had the Sasha Stones . . .

I have defended Elon Musk so many times on this site. I’ve written about, praised him, and given him so much credit for buying X to give a voice to the voiceless. I have condemned him when he exhibited his emotional immaturity, as he did when he threw yet another hissy fit because Matt Taibbi would not produce work at X. He also threw a hissy fit at Bari Weiss for reporting the truth about him, though the details escape me.

Somehow, I could overlook these things. I understood him as a complicated person, but look at him now. He is giving the Democrats everything they need for a blue wave. He never cared about “gender affirming care” or the “woke mind virus” at all. He cares about his fragile widdle boy ego. What a huge disappointment.

He’ll pretend it was all over the budget bill, but his reaction is emotional, and that goes way beyond politics.

And then you had the Marjorie Taylor Greenes . . .

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) said she agreed with parts of both President Trump’s and Elon Musk’s arguments in their debate over the GOP tax bill. “I love many of the policies because they fund the president’s campaign promises,” she said Friday. “I can also say I don't like the price tag, I can agree with Elon there. I can agree with the president on the good things in the bill.”

I can defend them all, and I’m not a particularly big fan of either Musk or Trump as they both have, as I said, gigantic egos and thin skin. That and somewhere around Obama I made a vow never to praise people, in power especially, for doing the things they should be doing in the first place.

So I didn’t react. Fine, they’re fighting. It’s not like we all didn’t see this coming. Both were wealthy spoiled little boys who grew into wealthy spoiled men.

I get so tired of the drama and the chaos, I just let it flow around me, hoping that like the theory of how life itself came to be, something wonderful emerges from this hot mess.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts about the bigger picture, as it were.

The MAGA movement or the America First movement, sort of the same but not quite, was always bound to fall apart. Why? Well, what do you mean when you say make America “great” again? What does “greatness” mean to you? What do you mean when you say “America” should come first? What is “America” to you?

Let me give you an example. Watching Trump for the last few months, I’ve figured out what “greatness” means to him. This doesn’t reflect badly on him. It just shows his age and his “station.”

The streets of central D.C. are soon to be filled with thousands of soldiers, massive tanks and artillery, and the cacophonic rumble of Vintage warplanes and sleek Blackhawks flying overhead.

That's because the U.S. Army is marking its 250th anniversary with a pomp-filled procession through the streets of the nation’s capital Saturday, June 14, showcasing military might in a display with few, if any, precedents.

The date also coincides with President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.

I know, you say, but, Lillia, it’s the Army’s 250th anniversary.

I say, yes, I know. But . . .

I remember the hoopla during his first term when everyone on the left screamed “We’ve elected Kim Jung Un,” because Trump wanted a military parade.

No, I don’t think we elected a tyrant because he wants/wanted a military parade. But I do think it’s a sign of what he thinks American “greatness” means. American “greatness” means American military might, even at the expense of balancing a budget or the welfare of the American people. Look at his “Big Beautiful Bill” he’s managed to alienate Thomas Massie, Rand Paul, and now Elon Musk over. It does a few cuts, but it manages to wipe all of that out for an increase in military spending.

We already have the most expensive military in the world and the Pentagon can’t pass an audit. It’s a black hole of corruption and lack of accountability. But still Trump can’t bear to give it less money. (Medicaid, similar black hole, similar lack of accountability, but we cut it. Again, shows you the priorities.)

You add in the whole “let’s conquer Greenland thing,” and you get a picture of a man who thinks American “greatness” is very much wrapped up in foreign policy, even outright imperialism. How much weight does the American elite have to throw around? How much do other countries fear our military? A lot? Then America is “great.”

And when Trump says “America First,” what does he mean?

But the Trump administration sees Section 899 as an important tool — like tariffs — to help negotiate better deals for American multinational corporations.

What exactly is “America” to Trump? Well, from this, at least policy-wise, it sounds like he means corporations headquarters in America who make their stuff overseas and sell it overseas.

So basically American companies who utilize the American infrastructure, American influence, and American military might to make the world a better place for them.

So “America First” is really “America(n Corporations) First.”

Again, that’s the result of Trump’s age and “station,” and by “station,” I mean a person for whom America is already great, and America already comes first. America has made Trump fabulously wealthy.

To be fair, America has made Elon Musk fabulously wealthy as well, though he’s not so short-sighted as to not understand that debt is a huge problem. But debt never was a problem for Trump. He just declared bankruptcy and started over.

I don’t think it occurs to him that countries can’t do that.

But this above always was the problem with putting one’s hopes and aspirations into two people who never had the “average” Americans’ experiences, for whom money was never a problem, and who never directly experienced the “shell-like” nature of America: wealthy corporations, overpriced but still frightening military, but a homeland that is a mess, where the government is run by powerful often predatory people for the benefit of their own bottom line while most people struggle more and more each year just to make ends meet.

To us down here on the ground, we want to put America(ns) first. Not other countries. Not even American™ companies. But the people around us. And America will only be “great” when it’s working for the masses, when we can find decent jobs, not struggle to get by, not worry about how we’re going to retire (or if), not worry about getting sick because our insurance sucks (or we can’t afford insurance), not worry if that drug is really safe because the FDA is bought off, and not constantly be paying loads of taxes to fund a debt created in our name but not on our behalf.

What we were looking for was, in some small way, this . . .

Let’s get past the hysteria.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday said he is “retiring” all 17 members of a crucial government panel of vaccine advisors, a shocking step that could help to sow doubts about immunizations in the U.S.

Yeah, like that. As if the immunizations themselves didn’t sow the doubts.

“A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. . . .

The advisor overhaul is the latest move by Kennedy – a prominent vaccine skeptic – to change and potentially undermine vaccinations in the U.S. since he took the helm at HHS. Under Kennedy, HHS stopped recommending routine Covid-19 vaccines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women and canceled programs intended to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics, among other changes.

Kennedy said Monday HHS will put “the restoration of public trust above any pro- or antivaccine agenda.”

This is what “greatness” looks like to me: the willingness to make bold moves to give actual Americans more confidence that government is actually working for them, not drugmakers. The focus is put back on what is best for Americans, not just using Americans as backs upon which to rest a system that benefits a few.

And that was always going to be where the cracks would come. Not everyone was going to define “greatness” or “America” the same. And it was important to nail down right out of the gate what those terms meant for all concerned to make sure we’re elevating people who share our goals.

On the other hand, better late than never. This fight is good, because it forces the question: What really was the point supposed to be?

Maybe next time, we’ll have an answer to that question before we line up behind someone.

And that might be the one good thing that comes out of the hot mess.

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I didn’t include it because it is an hour long, but Dave Smith had an interesting take on the Trump-Musk thing.

He sides with Musk, and his reasons I have to say are sound, but then I find myself agreeing with Dave Smith a lot.

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I’ve turned the paid subscriptions off because the writing is going to be hit and miss here for a while. But there’s always the old tip jar if you’ve found a little extra change in the sofa.

1. Okay, I’m a little hazy on the timeline. I’d have to care more.

2. Because he thought it went too far or because he actually thought through what it would mean if he knowingly supported a pedophile. You can figure that out.