Elon Musk took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) today. It was… an interesting show, by all accounts.
Sarah Jeong at The Verge has a transcript of Musk’s time on stage. Highlights include “I am become meme”, waving a chainsaw around after it was gifted to him by Argentine President Javier Milei, loads of bullshit claims such as “In Europe, they put people in jail for memes!” and a 306 year old Social Security recipient (see previous posts – he doesn’t understand the data he’s looking at).
He also never removed his sunglasses, slurred words, couldn’t form a lot of coherent sentences, lost trains of thought and devolved into giggles mid-statement. I’ve been around people on drugs a lot in my day, and this guy was likely high as a fucking kite on a cocktail of things.
RFK Jr. has been confirmed as the head of Health and Human Services. You know, Mr. Drinks Raw Milk, Mr. Vaccines Cause Autism, Mr. Exercise Will Cure Your COVID and probably some other diseases. While he says he’s got no plans to roll back vaccine authorizations or stifle their development, I trust that statement about as much as a rattlesnake on mescaline. One thing that’s been proven time and again with the people in this administration is that they’ll say whatever it takes to get confirmed, and then just do… whatever they intended to do before.
That’s just the truth of what has been proven, time and again, with the people Trump surrounds himself with. It’s not some clairvoyant skill on my part, just past evidence informing me. Also, as one quip put it, RFK Jr. is just as crazy as the rest of them, and is “Alex Jones in a nice suit” when it comes to health and medical decisions. Hope y’all enjoyed not having preventable diseases, because I’m expecting a big spike in them in coming months and years.
President Musk’s Press Conference
I don’t think I’ve seen many federal spectacles as pathetic and telling as the press conference in the Oval Office the other day, run by Elon Musk, talking about DOGE. Musk, standing, giving a press conference while Trump sat at the Resolute Desk, occasionally throwing in a comment here and there. All the while, Musk’s 4 year old son picked his nose (wiping it on the desk), climbed Musk, and told Trump “You’re not the President, you need to go away.” I’m not 100% sold that he said that, because I hear “Mr. President, you need to go away.” Either way the message is “Daddy is talking and you’re not important enough to be here.” He also told Trump “I want you to shush your mouth” at another point in the briefing.
Talk about a goddamn embarrassment.
Let’s be clear about a few things:
The Oval Office is for the office of the President, not somebody he hired, to give briefings in. At worst, it’s for the VP if the President is incapacitated.
Four year old children should not be in national briefings, even if the President is giving them.
The President was not giving this briefing. Musk was.
The contents of the briefing isn’t really important – it was Musk touting DOGE’s successes and how much fraud they’ve uncovered, with absolutely no proof other than “trust me, bro”, and repeating absolute bullshit about shit he doesn’t understand. Mike Masnick of TechDirt had some pretty good thoughts on it. But the presence of Musk’s son, as well as Musk’s level of formality in his clothing, suggests two things. One is that Musk is devoted to trying to humanize his image and make himself seem like a relatable family man. This seems to have worked somewhat, as today there are headlines from CNN and other outlets suggesting exactly that.
The second message is: “I can do whatever I want, and nobody can stop me.”
Armored Cybertrucks
The State Department is set to spend $400 million dollars on “armored Tesla Cybertrucks”, in a move that should surprise no one that understands the adage one hand washes the other. Or, more commonly, tit-for-tat. They walked this back to $400 million for ‘armored electric vehicles’, but we all know they’ll be Teslas. Nobody has pushed back on why there’s a need for this, or why Cybertrucks (in the initial procurement order) rather than just about any, more practical electric vehicle.
It’s worth noting that time and again, it’s been proven that despite Tesla’s claims to the contrary, they do store and collate all of the camera and audio data from Tesla vehicles. Meaning Musk will have a direct line to review footage and audio from all of these State Department vehicles, without oversight. So essentially all of them are bugged, and answerable to a non-governmental individual.
Edit: The State Department put out a press release today noting that they have not, in fact, awarded Tesla a contract for $400 million for armored vehicles. In this context, awarded is doing some very heavy lifting. Yes, of course they haven’t awarded it. It doesn’t change the fact that their own released budgetary info was soliciting a desire for these vehicles yesterday.
President Trump has today decided that the biggest enemy we have is trans kids.
I knew it was coming. I knew it. But I’m still fucking livid over it. These kids hurt NO ONE.
This is the othering that happens when you need to make an enemy out of somebody who’s done nothing and is largely defenseless against your aggression.
Donald Trump has just released a national under 18 trans care ban executive order. I am working through specifically how it tries to do this, and will live tweet here section by section as I read through it.It is not yet on the website, but has been released via press release.
One of the most pernicious tactics the current far-right likes to employ is to convince us we did not see the things we have seen, or that what we have seen mean something other than what we have observed. This is rooted in the behavior of places like 4chan’s /pol/, alt-right reddit forums, and now Twitter/X after Elon Musk’s takeover. For years, they’ve loved to play a game where “they were just joking”. Or that we’re overreacting to their coded words and hand symbols, and what we saw was really innocuous and innocent.
Do not believe them.
I remember one user online that I had the misfortune of interacting with whose handle was Alex1488. When it was pointed out that the 14 words was a white supremacist thing, and that 88 was Nazi shorthand for “Heil Hitler”, he naturally claimed innocence with some bullshit about how he liked the number 14 and he was born in 1988. He was, of course, lying, and I blocked him immediately after. I merely wanted to illustrate for others how Nazis, white supremacists, and other fascist types infiltrate while claiming innocence. But their dog whistles are now fog horns, and we need to remember that we do not need to tolerate these people in any public space.
The evening of Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk went on stage and threw a Nazi salute not once but twice. Immediately the excuses came: it wasn’t a Nazi salute, it was a Roman one. It was him throwing his heart out to the crowd. You’re overreacting. How come you liberals always have to lie.
I leave it to you, dear reader, to tell the difference.
The answer, of course, is that there isn’t one.
Do not let anyone tell you that what you’re seeing is not what you have seen. This is the bullshit they will try to pull on you. They’ll post still images with Elon saluting and compare it to Taylor Swift, Kamala Harris, Obama, in similar positions and say “See, you can do anything with a still image.
This is their method of making you disbelieve your own eyes. The truth is in the motion, and in the context. Remember, Musk did this not once, but twice in the same 10 second period. Never mind he went on to make Nazi jokes last night about this event.
It doesn’t matter if Elon Musk is throwing out his heart or making a roman salute or making a nazi salute. Any sensible person can see who he is aligning himself with. He’s dumb, but he’s not THAT dumb. He’s trying to align himself with Trump’s followers who are white supremacists. You have eyes. You can see it.
If you doubt me, go into your office. Have a meeting. Make this salute to your boss or the board of directors or whoever. Film yourself. Defend the gesture. I fucking dare you. You can’t, because it’s absolutely indefensible. People have said that this is hypocrisy of the highest order on their side. That they have to talk about it. They don’t. Don’t talk about it.
But what if he meant something other than a Nazi salute?
It does not matter.
He is not a baby. He knows what he did. Maybe it was a joke, or maybe not, but he knows the message he sent. He made jokes about it on twitter the day after. Hypocrisy is not a value they care about. There are rules for them, and rules for their enemies. You are their enemy. They do not care they have double standards. In fact, they revel in it, because it makes sane people doubt what they have seen.
