Why Trump-Musk Feud Suddenly Has White House in "Full Panic Mode" (Greg Sargent & Rick Wilson, The New Republic)

[highplainsdem]

Podcast here:
https://newrepublic.com/article/196222/trump-musk-feud-suddenly-driving-white-house-full-panic

Transcript here:
https://newrepublic.com/article/196225/transcript-trump-musk-feud-white-house-full-panic-mode

Wilson: Look, when I shuffle off this mortal coil at some point, I will be remembered for one rule: Everything Wilson: They’re going to try to go after SpaceX. They’re going to try to go after Starlink. And this is the kind of thing that Trump will do because he thinks it’s like a power move against Elon. And the problem for Trump—and I say this advisedly … Elon Musk may be a freak and a weird white supremacist and a neo-Nazi and a ketamine junkie and all that other crap, but his company made this rocket called the Falcon. And the Falcon is the backbone of the American space program, the backbone of the American military space program. It’s a fucking great rocket, and we use them every day, and there is no substitute. There is no other thing out there in the market. Trump will say, Oh, we’ve got to do this. And Department of Defense and NASA are going to have to go to him and go, We can’t, boss. We’re stuck.

-snip-

Wilson: Look, I keep saying this: Elon has more weapons here than Trump does. And I can envision what’s happening in the White House right now. They are in full lockdown. They’re in full panic mode. They don’t know what to say. Susie Wiles and her people will be saying, We’ve got to end this story, cut it off, stop talking about it. It’s going to hurt us. John Thune and Mike Johnson are calling Trump saying, Please, please, please stop. This guy will blow this thing up. We want to pass this tax cut for our donors. There is no good outcome here for Trump. None at all. And look, Elon’s fucked too, but there is no upside here for Donald Trump. He is in a deep, deep, deep, deep hole.

-snip-

Wilson: He’s of that troll culture. And look, there are two normative forces in Trump’s space: Twitter and Fox News. Elon controls a lot of the mindshare of the Republican base. And he’s out talking about Maybe I form a new political party. Maybe I should advertise against people supporting the bill. We are in the middle right now of a cataclysmic political change on the right in this country. The last six hours while we’re … well, it’s been about six hours since this broke—you and I are recording this in the in the late afternoon on Thursday—but I think this is going to continue to unfold and expand because Musk is not stopping.

-snip-

Wilson: Yeah. Look, this country would not be better off with Donald Trump being in power or JD Vance. It’s two separate pathways of hell. But man, that alone is going to cause Trump inside the White House to begin going after JD Vance—maybe not publicly but to begin to be paranoid about Vance and worry about who Vance is meeting with, and who he’s talking to, and so on.

-snip-

I posted Wilson's video message for Musk last night: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220369586

Here's that video again:

[Wild blueberry]

1. That was interesting

Thank you.