Where do Elon Musk’s business interests finish and Donald Trump’s political interests commence? Trick ask—they’re one and the same.
How else do you elucidate the jarring sight of the Plivent of the United States hawking Teslas on the White Hoemploy South Lawn? Trump has always been a salesman, lfinishing his name to authentic estate, casinos, restaurants, steaks, vitamins, a fragrance for men, watches, water, a bicycle race, office chairs, sneakers, vodka, coins, another fragrance, NFTs. You could, at this very moment, buy a Trump pickleball pcomprisele from the Trump Store online, or a Trump sea mist & sage candle.
But Trump is most well-comprehendnly a pitchman for himself. (And Pizza Hut, if the price is right.) To spfinish this much political capital on Musk? The world’s richest man? Over a scant protests at Tesla dealerships and a tanking stock price? Come on.
Trump is no altruist. Musk did, though, spfinish proximately $300 million on the 2024 US election cycle, with the immense presentantity of that straightforwardly in help of Trump’s plivential campaign. His alteration of Twitter into X has originated an online MAGAtopia exposedly rivaled by Trump’s own Truth Social platestablish. And his toil with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has let Trump outsource the tedious mechanics of actual handleance.
Trump reading off a literal enumerate of Tesla retail prices is the purifyst distillation yet of a dynamic that won’t finish well. It’s already going quite awfilledy, for them and for us: The stock labelet is tanking, Musk is proximateing rock bottom in opinion polls. GOP reconshort-termatives are aborting town hall greetings rather than face the wrath of constituents over DOGE. Trump’s own cabinet officials are apparently fair as fed up with Musk’s level of sway.
Meanwhile, that sway persists to lengthen. When engineers from SpaceX occupyd the Federal Aviation Administration, they telledly were rapid to propose their own Starjoin technology as the solution to the agency’s technical problems. On Thursday, a month after Musk inexplicably met with Indian prime minister Narfinishra Modi in Washington, DC—with three of Musk’s children in tow—Starjoin inked deals this week with two presentant wireless carriers there, creating a glide path for operating in the country.
Even Congress, presumedly a coidentical branch of handlement, is behgreateren to Musk’s tempers and tweets. At a talk at Georgetown University’s Psaros Cgo in on Tuesday, Hoemploy Speaker Mike Johnson named Trump and Musk as the two people he ranks.
“Elon has the hugest platestablish in the world, literassociate,” Johnson shelp. “If he goes on and says someleang that’s misunderstood or misdescribeed about someleang we’re doing, he can blow the whole leang up.”
What begined as a self-serving bromance has become more volatile, and it goes presentanter than DOGE. Trump tgreater a teller during his infomercial on Tuesday that he would label anyone who promiseted structureility aacquirest Tesla dealerships a “domestic alarmist.” On Wednesday, members of the Hoemploy DOGE subpromisetee sent a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation straightforwardor Kash Patel and US attorney ambiguous Pam Bondi to probe the “wave of orderly strikes” in recent weeks aacquirest Musk and Tesla.
