Elon Musk Is Still Not Your Friend | EUROtoday

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After months of political bliss, it appears as if the president and the world’s richest man are able to name it quits. Donald Trump and Elon Musk traded barbs on their respective social media web sites on Thursday and into Friday, as social media customers fortunately appeared on.

It was solely a matter of time earlier than Trump and Musk, who aren’t recognized for making and conserving allies, had a spectacular falling out. The inciting incident turned out to be Musk’s criticisms of the Trump-backed “Big Beautiful Bill,” the House’s spending invoice that slashes the protection internet to be able to present $4.5 trillion value of tax cuts to the wealthy.

At first, Musk’s feedback had been delicate, saying the invoice doesn’t cut back the deficit and “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.” But he went totally nuclear on Thursday. Musk, who already claimed he gained the election for Trump, posted to X to accuse the president of being within the “Epstein files,” or a listing of individuals with suspicious associations with the financier, who died in jail whereas awaiting trial on intercourse trafficking expenses. (Trump and Epstein socialized within the Eighties and Nineties, however Trump has denied ever being on his non-public aircraft or island, the place a few of the alleged intercourse crimes happened.) Trump, in flip, recommended on Truth Social he would minimize Musk’s authorities contracts, whereas the president’s allies even began speaking about deporting Musk.

At this level, it appears clear that the once-budding bromance is toast.

Many individuals reacted with schadenfreude to the world’s weirdest superstar breakup. But it additionally had a couple of Democrats seeming prepared to slip into Musk’s DMs.

“We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) advised Politico on Thursday. “A commitment to science funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to seeing international students like him.”

Other Democrats additionally signaled that the rift may benefit their social gathering. “I’m a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) mentionedwhereas nonetheless cautioning that Musk’s slashing of the federal authorities continues to be an open wound. “There are Democrats who see his decimation of the federal workforce and the federal government as an unforgivable sin.”

Making the enemy of your enemy your buddy isn’t all the time an outlandish thought. There have been a number of stories that even some within the Trump administration had been preventing with Musk behind the scenesmaking it seemingly possible to construct a brand new alliance between him and Democrats. And Musk is understood for dumping truckloads of cash into politics when he’s in your facet. He was, by far, the most important Republican donor within the 2024 cycle, contributing greater than $290 million to Trump’s marketing campaign. Then in April, Musk made a Wisconsin Supreme Court race the costliest judicial race in U.S. historical past by spending $25 million to spice up Brad Schimel, the GOP candidate. (Schimel misplaced by 10 factors.)

But there are unusual bedfellows, after which there’s extending an olive department to somebody as poisonous as Elon Musk.

For one factor, Musk is deeply unpopular with principally everybody. An April ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos ballot discovered that Musk solely had a 35% approval score nationwide. It was even worse among the many individuals who the Democratic Party represents — simply 4% of these voters approve of Musk’s works. In truth, he’s so disliked that it appears doubtless Trump can spin their very public cut up into a very good factor for him politically.

And if you boil it down additional, almost every part Musk has completed as part of the Trump marketing campaign, and later, the Trump administration, is anathema to what Democratic voters imagine.

Musk’s buy of Twitter, which he renamed to X, in 2022 started the South African billionaire’s journey to changing into Trump’s closest ally and largest donor. When a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man tried to assassinate Trump in July 2024, Musk solidified his help by formally endorsing him. Musk appeared at Trump rallies and spent the ultimate weeks of the marketing campaign spreading conspiracy theories and throwing cash round to be able to ship Trump again to the White House.

Then at Trump’s second inauguration, Musk was extensively condemned for doing a Nazi-like salute whereas chatting with supporters. This didn’t cease Trump from giving him a semi-official function in authorities, with the ability to arrange the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and rent a cadre of inexperienced workers to ostensibly minimize waste from the federal government. DOGE staffers accessed non-public information, fired crucial workers and had been named in a number of lawsuits — lots of that are nonetheless ongoing as we speak.

Musk has repeatedly shared antisemitic posts on social media, together with claiming “Hitler didn’t murder millions of people.” He’s a proponent of a racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy principle, which claims that individuals of colour are executing an intentional plot to get rid of white individuals. While the Trump administration has ramped up deportations, blocked migrants from receiving asylum and used ugly rhetoric about immigrants typically, Musk was in a position to persuade the president to confess white South Africans as refugeesclaiming there’s a “white genocide” occurring in South Africa.

Then there’s the fallout from the cuts his crew at DOGE has made throughout the federal authorities. Musk spearheaded the hassle to chop funding for important companies, impacting every part from the IRS to HIV prevention to pure catastrophe response to Social Security. The whole U.S. Agency for International Development was successfully dismantled, which led to the deaths of youngsters overseas and put thousands and thousands of lives in danger. Across the federal authorities, on a regular basis individuals, together with Trump supporters, had been thrust into unemployment as DOGE officers determined their roles weren’t essential.

“I want a big tent party too, but Elon’s primary policy goals don’t fit within the tent,” Democratic pollster Evan Roth Smith of Slingshot Strategies advised HuffPost. “There’s nothing around Social Security or Medicare cuts that fits within the tent of the Democratic Party at all.”

Over the final 5 months, Musk has hardly signaled that he’s able to pivot to liberalism. In truth, up till this week, he remained by Trump’s facet, showing at Cabinet conferences (regardless of not being a Cabinet member), irritating these in Trump’s internal circle and parading across the White House with considered one of his youngsters. Musk’s time on the White House was scheduled to come back to an finish on the finish of May when his 130-day “special employee” standing expired.

The Democrats are in a little bit of a political wilderness, and it may be tempting to search for a robust new ally.

After shedding to Trump, the infighting has been steady, with many inserting the blame on former President Joe Biden for failing to step apart sooner, with others pointing at former Vice President Kamala Harris for working a marketing campaign that wasn’t able to defeating Trump.

But Democrats ought to keep in mind that their makes an attempt to achieve throughout the aisle and discover frequent floor aren’t what their base is asking for.

A March NBC News ballot discovered that 65% of Democrats didn’t need the social gathering to compromise with Trump — even when it means getting nothing completed in Congress.

“There’s no reason to take Elon back,” Roth Smith mentioned.

Kevin Robillard contributed reporting.