Elon musk

Forget Elon Musk. House Speaker Mike Johnson is President Trump’s new partner, delivering the victory that he needed to ensure the transformation of the 887-page mega-bill into mega-law, right on the cusp of July 4. The vote was close – 218-214 – but decisive. The internal opposition crumbled. The Democrats could only impede, not stymie, the passage of the bill.   When the Louisiana legislator replaced the luckless Kevin McCarthy as Speaker in October 2023, Republican diehards pledged that they would sink Johnson, too, should he deviate from conservative orthodoxy. But again and again, they have proven to be all hat and no cattle. Despite the bluster of the Ralph Normans and the Thomas Massies, the House has remained solidly behind Johnson and a fortiori Trump.

The President needed One Big, Beautiful Vote in the Senate to move forward with his One Big, Beautiful Bill. It was a close call. This afternoon senators voted 50-50 to pass the act which will solidify Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, increase child tax credits, reduce Medicaid spending – to name a few of policies in the 940-page proposal. Vice President J.D. Vance acted as the tie-breaker, passing the bill and sending it back to the House of Representatives, where it also passed by just one vote back in May. Trump, unsurprisingly, is delighted. “MAGA VICTORY,” tweeted the White House just minutes after the bill had been passed. In many ways, the knife-edge victories have boosted the President’s agenda.

The Trump presidency is giving us all a type of news-related diabetes. So much sensational information is spewing out of our screens all the time. There are so many stories, so much richness and history and irony, and so much silliness and seriousness entwined. We are dangerously overfed and now the lines of reality are blurring and people feel mad and sick. The Trump-Musk saga goes on, as Elon telephones Donald and shows his contrition on X. Trump sends in troops to control anti-ICE protests. Trump attends Les Miserables at his increasingly camp Kennedy Center.

"I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far," Elon Musk wrote on X at 3 a.m., after six days of soul-searching. Since this wee-hours confession from the onetime right-hand man of the President of the United States, several of Musk's most searing posts about Trump from last Thursday have vanished from the internet – though screenshots are forever. Looking for Musk's post alleging that the President was connected to the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein? Now you'll see, "Hmm...this page doesn’t exist." Based on the X CEO's track record on the topic, Cockburn thinks "Godwin's Law" could use a variation.

The Trump-Musk spat is not the sign of a new split between oligarchs and populists, as some have claimed – but of the growing pains involved in reassembling this old coalition.  Keeping capitalism going under mass suffrage is no small feat, and capitalists used to be much shrewder in how they went about it. Electorates wouldn’t reliably go for laissez-faire – except after a crisis – and so the only option for the capitalists was to hitch themselves to the wider lower-middle-class coalition for law and order, low taxes and national swagger. Musk’s attacks on Trump yesterday, which included a pitch for a new party “that actually represents the 80 percent in the middle,” represent something drawing to a close rather than being born.

The Elon-Trump bromance may have breathed its last today, with their relationship descending into a social-media flame war – on their respective apps, of course. The source of the discord is Musk's opposition to the "Big, Beautiful Bill" presently being debated in the Senate, which, among other things, does not codify the cuts his Department of Government Efficiency had made since Trump's inauguration. The bill also strips away Biden-era tax credits for consumers who purchase electric vehicles, which had been benefiting Musk's firm Tesla. Musk took his grievances to his over 200 million X followers and, let's face it, everyone else on the app too. On Tuesday Musk wrote, "I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore.

Elon Musk’s departure from Washington was celebrated by many in the media. In the space of just a few years they had transformed him from a “Yay Science!” rocket-building Tony Stark stand-in doing awkward cameos on Rick and Morty into a crazed inhuman boogeyman, whose cars must be keyed, firebombed or layered with bumper stickers saying, “I bought this before Elon was a Nazi.” (Before you say that’s an exaggeration, there’s literally a Tesla with that sticker in my neighborhood – you can buy them on Etsy.

Sporting a black eye and a shirt with the words "The DoGE Father" on the chest, Elon Musk joined President Trump in the Oval Office Friday afternoon to announce the formal departure from his role in the Department of Government Efficiency. While Musk will no longer be a special government employee and will direct his workday back to his several companies, the world's richest man will remain a "friend and advisor" to the President when needed. "Today it's about a man named Elon, and he's one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced," Trump said, opening the press conference.