There’s a 1980s comedy film starring Tom Hanks called The Money Pit. The titular money pit is a “too good to be true” house that the main characters buy and attempt to renovate. It turns out to be a disaster at every turn.
So, why is this somewhat obscure 1980s comedy relevant? In the movie, every time the contractors are asked how long it will take to finish, the response is always the same: two weeks. Every time Elon Musk spits out some wildly unrealistic/impossible timeline for pretty much anything, all I can think of is those contractors repeating a completely fabricated timeline.
If you look at it from a Trump/Musk point of view, it was a massive success. Musk may be gone, but the impact he and his team had will persist for years if not decades. He has DOGE operatives in every agency and they aren’t going to be easy to remove. Agencies that are meant to regulate his companies are especially impacted by this.
His company’s AI tools are embedded in government systems being trained on Americans’ sensitive and personal data and weaponized for surveilance purposes. How much sensitive and personal data has Musk and his cronies exfiltrated to extragovernmental systems or to foreign actors? Nobody really knows, but I’m sure it’s significant.
For all the courts have done in an attempt to curtail DOGE’s illegal efforts, injunctions are temporary or policies are still in place. When/if anything substantive is every done to stop any of this, it will already have been way too late. Move fast and break things is a great mantra when you’re trying to stay 10 steps ahead of the comparatively slow and deliberative systems of justice.
All of the loud bluster from the early days were largely a smokescreen to obfuscate the more nefarious stuff going on. It was never about saving money, government efficiency, or “waste, fraud, and abuse”. It was always a way to insert poison pills into government to wreck things that benefit many to enrich the few.
As per usual, this is all straight out of the Project 2025 playbook.
If reporters are talking about “drill, baby, drill” it must be called Gulf of America. If reporters are talking about oil spills or Failon Musk rockets exploding, it must be called Gulf of Mexico.
How improbable! The guy said he was 80% sure the problem was fixed!
I just watched a video of Starship spinning out of control and reentering the atmosphere. Dramatic stuff! It had a pretty fast rate of spin and I was a little surprised that the centripetal forces didn’t rip it apart before it even made it back to atmosphere. Lots of pretty colors and then you could see big chunks of one of the fins melting off. Good times.
I have to hand it to whoever designed the telemetry transmitter system though - it was legitimately impressive that they were able to maintain the live video feed as long as they did, with the thing spinning out of control, surrounded by plasma, and parts melting off.
Yeah, it’s not believable. It’s pretty transparently an attempt to reduce the heat on his companies* (and the heat he’s brought on the Trump administration, because he’s become so personally unpopular). Even if he actually was stepping back, DOGE is full of people who are connected to him/his companies, and they have their marching orders.
Last time he made claims related to politics was when he said he wasn’t going to give any more political donations, and then gave massive political donations to Trump and his causes.
*Not that I think it’ll work. The myth around Musk has been broken, and now people know he’s not just a Nazi but an incompetent one.
Weird, given that breaking things was pretty much their whole intention…
Yeah, that’s weird, considering it reminds me of (yet is significantly worse than) the much mocked bust of that footballer…
I wonder if a hideous statue of Musk doesn’t much attention because it’s less embarrassing than the shit he says and does on the regular…?
Ah, so it’s a meme but also basically it’s self-mocking to try to distract from the obvious narcissism at play. Which doesn’t work and just ends up being extra weird (especially if you’re not into the meme). But I guess it does short-circuit mockery of the statue (which would have been there if Musk had gone with a straight, but inevitably fascist-aesthetic, bust).
The difference being that, if I remember correctly, they actually did finish the house in the end, whereas none of Musk’s promises are every going to come true.
Spoiler alert: yes, they did. And despite the sleaziness of the GCs and unseenliness of the workers, and other shenanigans, they did a pretty good job.
Can’t say the same for anything associated with Musk, where success is more of an accident than intentional.
He routinely promises things that are impossible, so they’re not even accidentally going to come true. (And I just assume that any successes from his companies are the result of other people’s work and despite Musk and his input. I haven’t seen anything to disprove the idea yet.)
Aww so you fucked over countless Americans and raped our scientific and economic future for a man who just ran the debt up more and didn’t even say thank you?
Not that I’m advocating burning Teslas or Tesla dealerships (please note, American Gestapo agents!), but he’s wrong. Burning Teslas is, in fact, cool. Sorry Elon!*
The comment appeared to be inspired by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whom Trump tagged in the tweet. On his show Wednesday evening, Carlson had criticized the State Department for not weighing in on South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s proposed land reforms.
