Elon musk

Why you should fear the post-DoGE right

From our US edition

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.

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Elon Musk is right: America’s spending is out of control

From our US edition

Elon Musk rarely bites his tongue. Just ask the Treasury Secretary, who the tech billionaire branded a “Soros agent,” or the UK’s Prime Minister, who Musk accused of going soft on grooming gangs in January this year. But it seems the founder of the Department for Government Efficiency (DoGE) has been holding back a rather explosive opinion – one he could never share while he was popping in and out of the Oval Office, working for President Donald Trump. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote this afternoon on his platform X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.

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British journalist talks America’s ‘authoritarian culture’ with Jon Stewart

From our US edition

Cockburn is not a regular viewer of The Daily Show. It is no longer as epoch-defining as it was in Jon Stewart’s heyday. But he did take an interest in Stewart’s segment last night with Carole Cadwalladr. For the uninitiated, Cadwalladr is a former Guardian and Observer columnist from the UK most prominent for her reporting on Cambridge Analytica. CA is the political consulting firm known for its contentious use of Facebook data in the 2016 US election and Brexit referendum. After Brexit came what Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill dubbed “the middle-class meltdown to end all middle-class meltdowns.” “And at the heart of it all,” wrote O’Neill, “was a writer for the Observer called Carole Cadwalladr.

Can anyone balance America’s books?

From our US edition

Donald Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill was supposed to slash government waste and inefficiency. So why is it going to result in an even bigger, uglier deficit? The legislation was still being picked over in the Senate as this magazine went to press. But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has calculated that the bill will add $2.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade – and that estimate is far more likely to go up than down. The President’s opponents have characterized the Big, Beautiful Bill as a swindle that steals from the poor to give to the rich. That may be true to some extent, in that it could become harder for some people to qualify for Medicaid, while wealthy Americans will enjoy the extension of lower tax rates.

elon musk bill debt books

Left-wing violence is being normalized

From our US edition

Something has changed in America’s psyche. Violence has become more acceptable. It’s not just that we’ve seen two attempted – and very nearly successful – attacks on Donald Trump’s life, it’s that a worrying number of young Americans cheered on those attempted assassinations and still wish they had succeeded. Since early this year there has been widespread public support for smashing up Tesla dealerships – and for shooting Elon Musk. An unprecedented 10,000 new threats have been made against Senate and congressional members just this year, according to Capitol Police. Applause for the actual murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December goes on, unabated, online.

luigi mangione political violence

Trump bids Elon ‘the DoGEfather’ farewell

From our US edition

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.

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liz truss

How much is ‘Truss Social’ learning from Truth Social?

From our US edition

Zuckerberg, Musk, Trump… Truss? Cockburn was surprised to hear from across the Pond that Liz Truss – who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom for just 49 days – had plans to set up a social media site. “What I am doing is establishing a new free speech network, which will be uncensored and uncancellable, to actually talk about the issues people don’t want to talk about,” the former PM said at a conference in England last month. The move would see Truss compete with X, Parler, Gettr, Gab and, yes, Truth Social, Trump’s social media app. How will she pull it off? With some American assistance, it seems. Cockburn understands Truss’s network is set to be part of the media conglomerate John Solomon and Mark Meckler are working to establish.

DoGE should make ending the opioid crisis its legacy

From our US edition

As President Donald Trump trots the globe shopping for a new Air Force One and takes long-distance phone calls in a quest to end the “bloodbath” in Ukraine, a clear and present – and costly, in more ways than one – danger persists on his own country’s soil. A new, first-of-its-kind study from Avalere Health has found the annual average cost of each opioid use disorder (OUD) case in the US “is approximately $695,000 across all stakeholders analyzed.” Per the report’s executive summary:  The costs to the federal government, state/local government, private businesses, and society are driven by lost productivity for employers ($438 billion), employees ($248 billion), and households ($73 billion).

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Donald Trump should visit a black beer hall in South Africa 

From our US edition

If Donald Trump and Elon Musk really want to know if there is a “white genocide” happening in South Africa, as they claim, I’d suggest they start in a beer hall. Such speakeasies are common in the black townships around Jo’burg and in rural areas. Size varies from a shed to a small aircraft hangar, some are licensed, others not, and as a journalist, it’s where I read the pulse of the nation. The townships are where millions scrape by on next to nothing, crowded in shacks with few street lights and open sewers, while the political elite enjoy their mansions in the city.I am always the only white face in a sea of black. I don’t own a gun and move about engaging with drinkers who are mostly under the age of 30, the majority unemployed.

White genocide

Donald Trump – the Orange Mandela?

From our US edition

Diplomatic heads are still spinning following Donald Trump’s extraordinary Oval Office press conference with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday. The media has taken to using the word “ambush” to describe the way Trump sprung his evidence on Ramaphosa to make the point that white South Africans are being violently persecuted. The scene turned into gemors, as they say in Afrikaans, or chaos, and reminded many observers of the wild meeting between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in the same room back in February. Ramaphosa had wanted to perform the usual niceties, flanked by a delegation including three white South African golfers, Elon Musk, some of his officials, his minister for agriculture John Henry Steenhuisen and the luxury goods billionaire Johann Rupert.

Exclusive: my son Elon and Trump are right about the ‘white genocide,’ says Errol Musk

From our US edition

Elon Musk stood silently in the Oval Office, eyeballing the South African President while Donald Trump tore into the ANC leader for permitting “white genocide.” The exiting Department for Government Efficiency (DoGE) chief said nothing as the President dimmed the lights and required an unsuspecting Cyril Ramaphosa to watch a short film about white farmers being targeted and South African politicians chanting “kill the farmer.”As Donald Trump berated Ramaphosa, Trump didn’t call on Musk, standing just a few feet away. He didn’t need to intervene: according to Elon’s father, Errol Musk, his son – an outspoken critic of Ramaphosa's government – had already briefed the President about what he agrees is “white genocide”.

My foolproof plan to avoid speeding fines

The online speed awareness course cost £101, or a few pounds less if you didn’t want to book ‘flexible’ so you could change it if something went wrong, which it was bound to. Quite how companies like the AA, which deliver these courses, divvy up the spoils with the police I have no idea. I don’t want to know. I just want to be left alone once they’ve all got what they want out of me. Naturally, when I logged into this course at the appointed time I couldn’t get the camera working on my laptop. Obviously, I had to phone my IT guy and he had to get me to download a program which allowed him to access my laptop remotely. ‘Slide the slider!’ he kept saying. ‘What slider?’ ‘You’ve got your camera covered! They’ll be a slider!’ ‘There’s no slider!

Will Jeff Bezos steal Elon Musk’s electric crown with a $20,000 truck?

From our US edition

Though it got somewhat lost in our daily swirl of World In Crisis, last week marked a potentially significant moment in American industry: the formal introduction of a new, low-cost US-based car company. This company is called Slate, mercifully no relation at all to the online magazine. The startup, significantly backed by Jeff Bezos, last week pulled the sheet off a $27,000 fully electric pickup truck, which should be available by the end of 2026.The Slate Truck is significant for what it doesn’t have. The body is plastic, the manually adjustable seats cloth and it lacks electric windows. The driver will operate the windows with a manual crank. It has two doors, a 4x5 bed and black painted steel wheels. It comes in basic gray.

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The Trump White House is The Real Housewives of Pennsylvania Avenue

From our US edition

In the latest episode of “As the Trump Turns,” Elon Musk and Secretary Treasury Scott Bessent, two incredibly powerful billionaires, got into a White House screaming match over who gets to be the acting commissioner of the IRS. According to Axios, Bessent accused Musk of going behind his back to get Trump to appoint Musk’s favored candidate. Musk “clapped back,” calling Bessent a “Soros agent,” and accusing him of running a “failed hedge fund.” “Fuck you!” Bessent screamed. “Say it louder!” shouted Musk. There were no reports of anyone ripping down drapes or tossing a champagne glass in anyone else’s face. But this is how Donald Trump runs his White House.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC (Getty Images)

Book Joe Biden for your quinceañera!

From our US edition

Biden his time Cockburn struggles to get inside the mind of a billionaire. You amass or inherit a great fortune and can spend it however you please. You could send your spicy second wife to space with Katy Perry, or import Instagram influencers to your Gulf state. But surely there are more charitable uses of great wealth? Here’s one: help the aged and get Joe Biden to speak for you, as best he can. Steven Nelson of the New York Post revealed yesterday how the former president had been struggling to find takers for speaking engagements after leaving office. “CAA is having trouble booking gigs, which isn’t surprising,” a source told the Post.

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Who should have Elon’s next child?

From our US edition

The Wall Street Journal has published an eye-opening exposé on Elon Musk’s “harem drama,” diving into the relationships the world’s richest man has with his baby mamas – and the labyrinthine system by which he allegedly manages them. Musk is on a mission to help “seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence,” per the Journal’s Dana Mattioli. The White House senior advisor has at least 14 children by four different mothers – though this number is thought to be higher. Conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, one such mother, reveals how after being impregnated by Musk, he offered her “$15 million and $100,000 a month in support,” while encouraging them a “legion-level” of children “before the apocalypse.

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It’s no mystery how Democrats plan to attack Republicans

From our US edition

It's no mystery how Democrats plan to attack Republicans over the coming year and a half: tie them to Elon Musk like a billionaire-sized string of dynamite. They're doing it already, and intend to ramp it up to 11. Yet Republicans don't seem to have an answer for how to deal with it – and saying "Musk isn't on the ballot, I am" isn't an answer.There was a significant portion of time where Republicans struggled to figure out how to defend Donald Trump, but they've solved that problem. Trump's poll numbers and popularity are now solid as a mountain – people love him or they hate him, and moving those numbers is very difficult, especially when there are dedicated well-funded ad campaigns promoting what he's doing on a daily basis.

Bernie Sanders at Coachella shows time is not on the Democrats’ side

From our US edition

As the Church of England faces an exodus of parishioners, some of its more inventive clerics have rushed to embrace EDM as a new medium to draw young people back to their faith. “Our 90s-themed silent disco will be appropriate to and respectful of the cathedral,” curiously insisted the Very Reverend David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, to much derision over that sacred space’s conversion into a party zone for 3,000 revelers in 2024.

Black Mirror season seven offers a welcome return to form

From our US edition

Charlie Brooker’s cautionary technological tales have now been running for well over a decade, and they are almost in danger of seeming old-fashioned. When Black Mirror began in 2011, Instagram was only a few months old, the iPhone was a new novelty just coming into the mainstream, and Elon Musk was best known for being CEO of Tesla. Now, virtually everything in the world has changed, and Big Tech plays roles in our lives that the ever-cynical Brooker could barely have imagined. There is, naturally, a residual irony that in order to afford the budgets – and starry casts – that the show continues to demand, it long since left its original home on Britain’s Channel 4 for the deeper-pocketed Netflix, which still funds it into its seventh series.

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The left gives up on saving the planet

From our US edition

In his 2015 State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama praised American innovation and name-checked Tesla. “There are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn't even exist 10 or 20 years ago. Jobs at companies like Google, and eBay and Tesla,” he said.  “So no one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. But we do know we want them here in America.”Well the future is here, ten years later, and those innovative electric vehicles are being vandalized, their drivers accosted, and there are even domestic terror attacks on dealerships, with several reports of mass arson, threats and damage at several dealerships across the country.