What I really love about this is that Trump is so narcissistic that he earnestly believed that Elon liked him. That he believed in his vision for the country and that he wouldn’t want anything in return, like a load more juicy government contracts, a bill to mandate that petrol cars would be phased out, or all safety regulations about self driving cars to be torn up.
Bless his cold dead heart for being exactly what everybody knows he is. Everybody except those idiots who jump into bed with him, because all those other people he betrayed were losers who just weren’t smart enough.
i mean…you could just as easily say the reverse, it honestly seemed like they needed each other just as much both ways
Yeah, but Trump got what he wanted first.
Who could see this coming said that one clueless guy who didn’t.
I have this feeling that JD Vance is way worse than Trump
He is much worse, but he’s also far less of a threat, as he doesn’t have ANY public mandate, in the form of any kind of following or cultish fandom.
Trump’s power is almost ENTIRELY a product of how he tapped into the country’s stupid fucking redneck hogs and narcissists and delusional conspiracy nuts. JD has exactly ZERO flat-earthers driving around with his face painted on the side of their van. Having a following of millions of people, even if they are mentally-deficient to a degree that is literally breathtaking, is still power, a great deal of power too because he has them under such tight control.
Vance might be dangerous in short-term policy decisions, but he doesn’t have electoral power, he doesn’t have chips in the game, he won’t make a dent in senate/house bill votes, he won’t have influence on local and state elections. He’s pre-neutered. The only ones who should be worried about Vance are the white-house sofas.
Vance also has no charisma or personality to speak of. He can’t lead a movement like MAGA.
I feel like you could have said the same thing about Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela…
While I do believe America is spiraling towards autocracy and dictatorship, it won’t be Vance’s face on the armbands. It will be someone but the way America falls into that hole will be a different path than Venezuela took, mostly because our government is so much larger and more complicated with far more international interests at play, requiring more long-term political capital to be spent to bend the system until it breaks.
Vance is absolutely worse. He’s the true disciple of Curtis Yarvin, and that’s the end of the country as we know it.
Yes, I said he’s worse. First line, first paragraph.
Do you understand political power though? It’s a deep game but even at the highest levels, you can see that just being “bad” or “good” isn’t enough to shape policy and leadership. A president has a job to do, and that job is almost entirely negotiating political favors between various groups and committees and lobbyists. To be able to do this, you have to have both a shrewd understanding of political law and precedent, AND you need political capital.
Donald Trump has very little understanding of political law and precedent, but he has MASSIVE political capital.
Vance has none. Just like Stephen Miller, someone who is also literally a sack of insects in human skin, someone like him even being as close to the president as he is, he has no political capital. He would never get elevated to an electoral position so he had to worm his way to an advisor status.
They could do some harm, but all their attempts at passing policy without political capital will get shot down in the other branches of government. There are a lot of examples of this in history, even recently with presidents who had waning capital like Biden. If you aren’t actively gaming the game, you’re getting left behind.
You seem to be ignoring the entire class that owns them. Peter Thiel, Marc Andreeson, etc. can “create” political capital through manufacturing it. That’s how Vance even got elected to Senate in the first place.
He doesn’t resonate as strongly with the MAGA base as Trump of course, but since when did the will of the people matter, especially now that there are loyalists in every notable and important position in the whole of the executive (all agencies), legislative, and judicial branch.
Yes, but he won’t be backed up by maga. There will be more internal fighting.
OKey at least there is that. I just want somebody in the US office who will fix the political system to be more compromise based, but I think I’ll sooner see a unicorn irl.
He might be, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take given how fucking terrible Trump is.
Vance is totally owned by Peter Theil, who is a well-known Psychopathic Oligarch.
Yeah, unfortunately, there’s no one in the line of succession I particularly like. At least RFK is #12 and Linda McMahon is #16, both pretty far down.
That’s because he’s dumb enough to follow the dumb guy. We all know he’s a fuckin moron.
Is this a massive gamble by Elmo to rebuild his brand image by forcing me to agree with him on certain issues? Let’s not forget this was the same guy Nazi saluting this dude at his Inauguration a few short months ago.
I’m not forgetting anything. I’m just enjoying two enemies fight it out.
No, its not. Musk is just salty Trump used and discarded him. You have to understand, these are just children who stumbled into power and never really grew up.
Yeah - nepo babies are like this. Made the mistake of marrying one, and any perceived slight needed punishment and retaliation.
It’s all just show. Elon well get government contracts and we’ll get wealthy from the stock market. Everything else is showmanship he’s the current fall guy look everything thet sucks is Elons fault
Impeach Trump, deport Musk… but then Vance gets couch-cast ? I’d rather not see this happen
So let me get that straight, you spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get a guy, who you think should be impeached and is guilty of underage sex, to be the president of the United States?
He KNEW about the underage sex stuff when he spent the nearly 300 billion dollars too.
He spent hundreds of millions to scrape personal data of all US citizens and cripple investigations into his businesses.
This is the real bottom line, right here
Can we have both of these? Please please please?
- Trump impeached
- Musk deported
If we’re dreaming of fantasies that will never happen, I also want nationwide ranked-choice voting, and maybe we can overturn Citizens United Vs Federal Elections and stop allowing corporations to literally run our country.
I know there is some clause or stipulation that allows for the seizure of assets obtained by illegal immigrants.
Musk is an illegal immigrant who pursued business ventures in violation of his school visa and lied about it.
now we are talking
Yes, I agree. We should put Trump in a peach and roll him off a cliff.
A flaming peach.
Now i have an image of Trump in a peach dress in my head. Thanks for that :/
What a absolutely wild timeline we are living in
Both deserve some Piazzale Loreto’ing
Did the simulation break?
This is so fucking bizzare.
Some truman-show shit to see how we (the non-actors of this world) react.
I seriously don’t know anyone didn’t see this coming or how anyone is remotely surprised. I’m just surprised it took this long, I thought they would keep it together for at least half the term to meet their own goals.
They hated each other from the beginning, they always were about to shred out the throat of the other one. Smarter people in roles of power are good at keeping their shit under their hat, but neither of these men are smart.
Just the inevitable result when two thin-skinned narcissists are in the same room.
The main character of the world was that guy who did dumb shit like shipping coal to newcastle and bed pans to the tropics but was massively successful anyway, all of the rest of us were just NPCs for that one guy and now that he’s dead the rest of the universe has no meaning anymore.
Careful, Elon, or you might get another black eye.
Who will win this fight?
Everybody!
Let’s see if it’s real or more kabuki.
If Trump announces cancellation of major contracts with Musk-owned firms, it’s probably real. Otherwise, not.
I wouldn’t even hold announcements in stone, he has been flopping back and forth on massive, world-altering policy decisions for months. A spat with his rival narcissist isn’t going to be more or less scatterbrained.
They could just shell company their way out of this. It’s all kayfabe.
Most likely they’re going to patch it up, roll-back their rhetoric and continue milking the federal piggy-bank for as long as they can, and their supporters won’t give a shit because they’re not supporting either of these clowns because they want sound fiscal leadership, these guys gained a following because they “hurt the right people” and that’s all anyone cares about now.
I’m sorry to be the bucket of cold water, but we gotta remember we’re not in a functional democracy anymore. This is more like some “last days of Rome” acts.
Consider this, JD Vance is Peter Thiel’s Acolyte, who desperately wants to bring about a global technocracy. What if all of this hasn’t been a genuine attempt yet. What if it’s merely theatre that has been setting the stage for Vance to take over. Trump gets to enrich his family beyond their wildest imagination, then he peaces out and the real horror begins.
On the other hand, Vance is a loathsome piece of shit who even the MAGAts don’t like much.
I don’t see Vance flags on people’s trucks. I see Trump flags. I just don’t know that Vance gets the backing Trump does. I think the Rs capitulate to Trump so much because of his rabies base, and there’s this concern they’ll be replaced by someone who Trump endorses.
I do think it’s all a game for wealthy people, and we will just pay for it one way or another, regardless.
MAGA is a classic cult of personality. It’s all HitlerPig, there is no #2 waiting in the wings, not even his own spawn. When HitlerPig goes, MAGA is dead, and the backstabbing will become open warfare.
If the Dems can get their shit together, and have the spine to act, they’ll have the opportunity to sweep up the most corrupt traitors, and remove them from politics forever. They can hit a giant reset button on American politics.
Let’s see if they have the nerve for bold action on America’s behalf.
Ok, so let me try to make sense of this:
Around the year 2010-2020, i and many other vehemently warned against the issue of rising national debt. Yet “experts” said “it’s fine, we can make as much debt as we want to, nothing bad is going to happen because of it lol”.
Starting in the last 5 years or so, lots of experts say “oh no, the national debt is way to high, that’s a disaster, that’s a catastrophe, we can’t let that happen, who put us into this situation?” Just let me appreciate the irony for a bit. I fucking called it. I said this was going to happen. I was called insane. This feels really validating to me.
Anyways, since now lots of people, including economists, are angry that the debt is too high, people want it lowered. The obvious and straightforward solution would of course be to introduce a wealth tax (i.e. a tax on millionaires and billionaires).
In the beginning of 2025, Musk and Trump both agreed (at least in public) that the debt has to be lowered. Musk’s attempt was to cut the federal government. Well, the federal government spends money for two things, mostly: subsidies (social security, medical bill assistance, …) and data-processing (i.e., enforcing regulations, tax collection agency, …). The first one costs most of the money, but reducing it gets the public angry (understandably) and is therefore a political suicide. The second one doesn’t really cost that much, yet that is the one that Musk attempted to reduce to the point of dysfunctionality. Since it didn’t cost much to begin with, reducing it didn’t save a lot of money. In May 2025, Trump says “was Musk’s DOGE all a hoax?” and the feud begins. Musk realizes that Trump is against increasing taxes for the rich and publicly accuses Trump of having no actual intention of lowering the national debt. This is where we are now.
Was anybody else around for the BBA in the 90s? We literally fixed this once and then Dubya fucked it up immediately.
The ultimate irony being that the “national debt” is simply the tally of all interest bearing and non interest bearing dollars created by the government that haven’t been taxed out of existence.
There’s no scenario where we can’t pay debt denominated in our own currency, unless the government chooses not to pay.
There’s no scenario where we can’t pay debt denominated in our own currency, unless the government chooses not to pay.
Well, yeah, but having an exponentially inflating debt leads to hyperinflation which makes the dollar worthless, and that has real-world consequences.
I think if the dollar loses its value, society will jump to another alternative payment method, maybe crypto or sth else entirely, and that would be worse because it means you end up without state control. I.e., it is like having no state regulations anymore, and then who protects the citizens from corpo’s overreach? A lot of regulations are tied to things-being-measured-in-dollars. Like corporate taxes, or social security.
You may already know about this, but increasing the national debt has been the point. For five decades.
The rethuglicans have literally used false concern about the debt for decades now? They then get into office and blow it up, but the next time a dem is in office, the debt is once again the worst problem ever and is out of control. Rinse>repeat, again, for decades now.
Edit: oh, the article posted by SoleInvictus lays it out much better than I tried
70% of the country can’t stand him, but Rand Paul has been saying this too, and sometimes voting against the Republicans on spending.
