A Slap Fight @ The Cock Fight
In the single most predictable outcome in the history of outcomes, South African Elon Musk and German immigrant Donald Trump cross swords for the first of what we can only hope is many lovers' spats.
You can feel them going high-handed on you.
“The only people that think this is funny is liberals,” sniffs a MAGA man in a commentary on the last few days’ presidential imbroglio that sees President Donald Trump at loggerheads with his former buddy-in-chief Elon Musk.
The intonation, all armchair academic, implies that the massive amounts of I-Told-You-So delight that those prognosticators here in Silicon Valley are feeling at the inevitable flameout of the ego-a-thon that’s been Trump’s first 130 days of his second administration is somehow beneath serious consideration. But when you cast your administration like a reality show, that becomes the reality and we’d be fools to view it any other way.
“He’s really not that bad of a guy.”
The speaker was one of Tesla’s first hires. Way back when the company was run by the man that actually started the company, Martin Eberhard. His initial take on Musk, while not favorable at all gave way to a begrudging respect. Based on? Purely work ethic. Also this: “There’s no way Eberhard could have taken the company where Musk could.”
And where is that? Well, on June 5, 2025 that was a stock that was down 14 percent in one…single…day. That means it fell below its 21-day exponential moving average, the 200-day moving average and the 50-day line straight into Almost Totally Fucked territory.
One thing that had stuck with him though was the steady stream of C and D list actresses and quasi-celebs that Musk used to truck through the office. Sitting in on staff meetings presumably so they could watch the great man work his magic. This double edged sword designed, as it was, to impress both Musk’s lady friends, as well as his staff, failed to do either.
[T]hough I have passed out in front of a Beavis and Butthead televised moron-a-thon after having fallen in a K-hole, that was much less weird than anything Musk has done on significantly less ketamine.
“Yeah,” he had said. “It was just kind of weird.”
And there it is, the word that most notably marks his tenure in the public eye. Weird. And just in case you’re tempted to blame the drugs know this: though I have passed out in front of a Beavis and Butthead televised moron-a-thon after having fallen in a K-hole, that was much less weird than anything Musk has done on significantly less ketamine.
That is, his dog-headed attempts to foist himself into the hearts and minds of Americans. First with David Chappelle here in the San Francisco Bay Area, which failed miserably, and saw him boo’d off stage, to his latest chainsaw-wielding stand as the man who paid $240 mil to the Trump presidential campaign. An investment that, one black eye later, seems to not have at all delivered any kind of commensurate return.
Of course, as with anything Trumpian, it’s an upside down, topsy-turvy world where it’s hard to recognize weird with or without a weird score card. But that’s the thing, weird has been The Donald’s trademark since he started foisting himself on us in the 1970s. And he’s done it so long, he actually wears it well. Don’t believe me? Ok, try this: is there any headline you could think of that involves Trump that you would not believe?
That’s a question for both sides of the aisle because MAGA folks believe that there are no depths mainstream media wouldn’t sink to in an attempt to sink their messiah, and non-MAGA folks who have paid attention correctly understand that the nonstandard Trump is immune to standards.
So it is, in fact, with great glee that we’ve watched this unfold, tweet by tweet, post by post, the richest man in the world, unhappy with just that, in contretemps with the most powerful man in the world, who seems pretty happy with just that.
And in a surprise move to end all surprise moves, Musk’s opening gambit? Goes straight for the pedophile blast. The most shocking aspect of this being that Musk seems to assume that any of that tea he was spilling was actually news to any of us. Trump responds with the fact that no one likes Musk OR his cars. Again…not news. Nor the drug use.
Both of these cats, despite their aggressive and unrelenting narcissism have left very much to the imagination and that’s what we’re seeing now: the creme sinking to the bottom and what’s left? Fumes, and the fumes of fumes.
Which, while it would be ok if it actually was like television because as Grace Jones/Chrissie Hynde once sang, at least on tv, “‘you can turn it off”, it is not television and we’re not an audience that can leave.
Leaving the biggest and most important question for the end: how the fuck do these guys keep tricking people into believing them?
No, we’re more like one of my favorite Three Stooges scenes where while sitting in the back seat of a car careening down a hillside all three Stooges are congratulating each other and smoking stogies before Curly intones, when he notices that no one is actually driving the car they’re in, “I hate to spoil the fun fellas…but I think we’re all going to die!”
But as Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says, “well, we all are going to die.” And so it is, the great leveler and then the real measure is and remains…legacy. That is, what we’ve left behind.
And here’s where things get squirrelly because Trump hired Musk and literally gave him the keys to the government but six months later Musk is a crazy piece of shit? And if you’re Musk, you spent $240 mil to get Trump elected president because, according to you, he was the best president ever, and now six months later he’s an incompetent clown and a sex offender?
Leaving the biggest and most important question for the end: how the fuck do these guys keep tricking people into believing them?
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Missed you on Sat because of my parent's 70th anniversary. Back on Monday 9:15- 2:00.