U.S. President Donald Trump, in an interview with NBC News on Saturday, said there would be "serious consequences" if billionaire Elon Musk funds Democratic Party candidates to run against Republicans who vote for Trump's sweeping tax-cut bill.
Trump declined to say what those consequences would be in the phone interview, and went on to add that he had not had discussions about whether to investigate Musk.
Asked if he thought his relationship with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was over, Trump said, "I would assume so, yeah."
I have young kids. They often say things like “if I were president, I would—“ and then say some borderline totalitarian nonsense like “make it illegal to put pickles on burgers” or some other thing that is self-focused and completely misunderstands the nature of the presidency.
Which is all to say that Trump holds the same view of the presidency that a five-year-old does. And he occupies the office. Awesome.
Musk is going to fund Republican candidates in the primaries, non-MAGA Republicans. The idea he would fund Dems is laughable. It will be interesting to see which way the Republicans go, money or MAGA.
I'm sure billionaires will be funding Democrats hard, which is why we need to treat the party like neo-feudalists from now on. No matter what they say, they cannot be trusted to do anything but further raid the working class. They're more of a long term enemy than Trump, and we cannot give them an easy time. They will never be saviors, only new masters.
The game is fundamentally different now in a worse way. We're looking at a future of neo feudal politicians once this fascist flame burns through the nation. The end of the US as a unified whole is a genuine possibility. Feudalists gaining control and creating a hellish dystopia with the power of the empire is the alternative. Post Trump America will be never be as successful a liberal democracy as 2024 America was, and 2024 America was absolutely bottom of the barrel.
America needs to burn and probably will, but that will more likely to be awful than not. It will be a monumental lift to bring about a positive future.
Trump doesn't want to get blamed when Democrats start winning elections. If it happens Musk will gloat for credit and the finger pointers will say Trump should not have pissed off Musk.
And, since the Supreme Court has ruled money = speech with the Citizens United ruling, Trump has just set Elon up for a First Amendment case if anything happens. One that the taxpayer will likely foot the bill to defend.
Threatening action as a government official is taking an action. Under the rules of CU, he has standing. Then again, the Roberts court doesn't care about stare decisis or the letter of the law or the spirit of the law, just what can keep the grift flowing.