"So far, Trump has picked 13 billionaires for his administration. It’s the wealthiest in history, including the richest person in the world. They and Trump are part of the American oligarchy, even though Trump campaigned on being the 'voice' of the working class. …

In 2022, Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter and turn it into his own personal political megaphone."

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/2

"Then, in 2024, he spent $277 million to get Trump elected, also using Twitter (now X) to amplify pro-Trump, anti-Harris messages.

These were good investments for Musk. Since Election Day, Musk’s fortune has increased by $170 billion. That’s because investors in Tesla and SpaceX have pushed their value into the stratosphere."

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/3

"Trump has put Musk (and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy) in charge of gutting government services in the name of 'efficiency.' Musk’s investors assume that Musk will eliminate the health, safety, labor, and environmental regulations that have limited the profits of Musk-owned corporations, and that Trump will put more government money into SpaceX and xAI (Musk’s artificial intelligence company)."

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/4

"The oligarchs want lower taxes, which is what Trump, Musk, and other oligarchs are planning — an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cut, with an estimated price tag of at least $5 trillion.

They want no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of their giant corporations. Instead, their corporations will grow larger, able to charge consumers even more."

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/5

"To the extent that Musk has more power than Trump, it is because he can fund primary challengers against Republicans who do not surrender to Musk’s demands. Trump cannot make that threat credibly.

And the only reason that Musk has that power is because of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen’s United."

~ Robert B. Hubbell

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 
#SupremeCourt #CitizensUnited
/6

roberthubbell.substack.com/p/c…

Clear as mud.

December 20, 2024

^{Robert B. Hubbell (Today's Edition Newsletter)}

"Who exactly is calling the shots? It doesn’t sound like it’s the president-elect. It does sound like it is the richest man in the world, who paid an enormous amount of money to ride in Donald Trump’s sidecar. …

Several months ago, The Washington Post reported that Musk, who is originally from South Africa, was actually in the U.S. illegally for a time after dropping out of Stanford to start a business."

~ Dan Rather

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/7

steady.substack.com/p/is-trump…

Is Trump Really Calling the Shots?

Just when you think it can’t get weirder or more dysfunctional …

^{Dan Rather (Steady)}

"He later became a citizen. Who would have thought that someone who has railed against undocumented immigrants was perhaps one himself, and now could be speaker of the House … the world’s richest person, and answerable to absolutely no one?"

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/8

"Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has thrown her weight behind Senator Rand Paul’s ridiculous proposal that Elon Musk be elected the speaker of the House of Representatives. …

There’s scarcely a better illustration of Greene’s phony brand of populism than her support for installing the world’s richest man to, as she put it, reign in the people’s elected body."

~ Robert McCoy

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/9

newrepublic.com/post/189568/mt…

MTG Suddenly Calls for Elon Musk to Take Over as House Speaker

Republicans’ deranged calls for Elon Musk as House speaker are growing.

^{The New Republic}

"After doubling down and calling the funding bill 'unacceptable' and 'a Democrat trap,' Trump called the richest man in the world, the one who paid $250 million to get him elected, and this is what he says he said to him: 'I told him that if he agrees with me, that he could put out a statement,' Trump said.

This seems like an unnecessary point to make, but I’m going to say it anyway:"

~ Lucian K. Truscott

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/10

luciantruscott.substack.com/p/…

Elon Musk and Donald Trump have just given us a dark glimpse of our future

In short order, it seems, we will learn what kind of country we’re going to have for the next four years.

^{Lucian K. Truscott IV (Lucian Truscott Newsletter)}

"This is two men, two billionaires, one real and one self-professed, one of them an immigrant from South Africa, telling the United States Congress what to do about how it funds the government."

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/11

"This has never before happened in this country. We have never, since our founding nearly 250 years ago, had a situation whereby two men who do not hold elective office are telling those who have been elected what to do, and threatening to oust them from their elected positions in the Congress in two years if they do not follow orders."

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/12

"If this is the way Donald Trump and Elon Musk plan on running the government of the United States starting on January 20, then we won’t have a democracy. What we will have is some hybrid of a dictatorship and plutocracy, whereby the elected representatives of the people forfeit their powers and duties to the whims of two people: one who gives the orders, and the other who pays the money that will ensure his orders are carried out."

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/13

"The entire ordeal serves as a preview of what Americans should expect from their government for at least the next two years: A pathetic and ineffective legislature will limp along, waiting every moment for its next command from the president and his rich friends."

~ Joe Perticone

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/14

thebulwark.com/p/they-like-the…

They Like The Chaos. They Want The Chaos.

This week gave us a preview of the coming Trump presidency. It felt like a horrible rerun of the first.

^{Joe Perticone (The Bulwark)}

"The real story here is that Trump has lost control of the process at what should be his moment of maximum power. As far as I can tell Musk himself didn’t even express an opinion on the vote for the clean up. He’s off to something else. Or he was only there for blowing things up. Putting them back together is someone else’s problem."

~ Josh Marshall

#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy 

/15

talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/m…

Musk Shows Trump That He’s the New Chaos in Town

If you haven’t seen the details, the meltdown on Capitol Hill went from bad to worse this evening. Or awesome to awesomer, depending on your perspective.

^{Josh Marshall (TPM - Talking Points Memo)}

"The sheer immorality of any one person possessing so much wealth is obvious to most people with basic amounts of empathy. But when it comes to Musk and the other 14 people worth more than $100bn, the morality of it is almost a secondary concern. Their individual wealth is a society-distorting threat to democracy in the same way that economics has always recognised monopolies to be dangerous to a functional market."

~ Alexander Hurst

#ElonMusk #EconomicElites
/16

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Elon Musk is becoming a one-man rogue state – it’s time we reined him in

He has bankrolled elections, stoked riots and ignored laws. We mustn’t make the mistake of playing nice with the world’s richest bully, says Guardian Europe columnist Alexander Hurst

^{Alexander Hurst (The Guardian)}