The Lindsey Graham part isn't obvious to most people, but it seems clear to me. We're told that Trump and Musk is a clash of egos, but Musk shows Graham-like deference to Trump when he needs to. This is from a recent New York Times story:
... it is notable that Mr. Musk has appeared concerned about the perception of his influence. On Wednesday, in response to a headline describing him as Mr. Trump’s “closest confidant,” the tech billionaire went out of his way to praise “the large number of loyal, good people at Mar-a-Lago who have worked for him for many years.”But Trump also likes and admires the people he calls "killers." Sometimes he likes them because they're literally killers. Here was Trump in 2018:
“To be clear, while I have offered my opinion on some cabinet candidates, many selections occur without my knowledge and decisions are 100% that of the President,” he wrote on X.
Mr. Trump had ... praised Kim [Jong Un] as very "talented." [Bret] Baier [of Fox News] pressed Mr. Trump on his praise for Kim, pointing to the North Korean leader's murderous regime record....Musk may not literally be a killer, but it appears that he's trying to get people killed:
"You know you call people sometimes killers, he is a killer. He's clearly executing people," Baier said.
"He's a tough guy," Mr. Trump responded.
"Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don't care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have," the president continued. "If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean that's one in 10,000 that could do that. So he's a very smart guy, he's a great negotiator. But I think we understand each other."
... this week, Musk has escalated from targeting government agencies to singling out individuals....He also targeted a relative of Nancy Pelosi, an adviser to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who's criticized the safety of Tesla vehicles, and "two obscure federal officials with climate-related jobs—including one who had actually left her job at the Energy Department in August."
One recent post by the billionaire zeroed in on Ashley Thomas, a little-known director of climate diversification at the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., after another user on Musk’s social-media platform X questioned her role.
Musk’s repost—“So many fake jobs”—garnered 32 million views, triggering an avalanche of memes and ridicule from his followers against the employee....
What does Ashley Thomas do?
An agency official said the climate diversification portfolio is highly technical and is focused on identifying innovations that serve U.S. strategic interests, including bolstering agriculture and infrastructure against extreme weather events.Merely acknowledging the existence of climate change is heresy in the Trump administration -- or maybe the tweeter whose post Musk amplified saw "Climate Diversification" in Thomas's job title and thought it had something to do with diversity.
So many fake jobs https://t.co/aVH8QtMcLE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2024
This stochastic terrorism has had the intended effect:
LinkedIn and Facebook pages for Thomas, who lives in the Seattle area, were no longer live as of Wednesday.To Trump, Musk is also, obviously, a potential source of money -- both his own and that of his tech billionaire friends.
And I think Trump sees Musk as some sort of science genius (which makes him no different from millions of people all over the world, including many credulous journalists). To Trump, Musk is the master of social media, where Trump has taken up residence for a decade or so. But it's not just that. Notice how Trump can only gaze in awe at Musk waving a model rocket in the air:
We know that Trump thinks there are genius genes in his bloodline, but when he says this, who is his go-to example? Uncle John Trump, a "super genius" MIT professor. Trump has said of his uncle that he "used to discuss nuclear with him all the time."
Trump didn't invite classical musicians to his White House, like JFK. He doesn't read serious fiction or nonfiction, like Barack Obama. Musk is a tech genius, so he's a genius as Trump defines genius (which probably means that he manages to make Trump feel as if he's a genius).
And as I said a couple of weeks ago, there seems to be a weird father-son dyamic here:
... I think it's noteworthy that Trump is the same age as Musk's father. If Musk is an alpha male, he's a weirdly wounded one -- before he went full Nazi on X, he seemed to be using it to get love, in a quest to become the world's most famous shitposter. Now Trump seems to be giving him the love he needs.And Trump might be looking for a son. He seems disappointed in his three biological sons, although he appears to be grateful to Barron for steering him in the direction of the bro podcasters who helped him win this election. Maybe Trump sees Musk as Barron if Barron found a way to be a "killer" as a result of being extremely online.
I could be wrong about all this, but I think this relationship could last.
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