There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm bridget Tad and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. We all knew this day was going to come eventually when most of us saw that Elon Musk was working with Donald Trump. I think we were all thinking, it's only a matter of time until these two split, and when it happens, it is going to be messy. We waited, and we waited, and it seems the day has come. So today's Thursday,
June fifth, twenty twenty five. It's about ten o'clock PM Eastern time, and Donald Trump and Elon Musk have spent most of today tearing each other apart on their respective social media platforms, Elon posting on X of course and Trump on True Social So setting aside that these two billionaires are ridiculously posting at each other sniping on platforms that they both prive we own, it has truly been like one of those days. To be perfectly transparent. We
had started working on our typical news roundup. We had, you know, written out all the stories, all of that. Then my producer Mike and I were talking and we're both like are you seeing this? This is wild. We decided to scrap our regular news round up and just talk about this, So I'm joined by producer Mike. We sort of watched this go down in conversation, you and I.
Yeah, h bridge it it was. It has been quite a day and it was like one thing after another with these guys. Like I kind of spent the first part of the day working on some other stuff, so it was pretty heads down and not really paying attention to social media. And then somebody messaged me and was like, Hey, are you seeing this? And I was like, oh my god, Oh my god. Wow he said that.
Yeah. I will say, I mean I most folks know I kind of gave up on Twitter, even though I do still have a platform, and I actually dust it off mild Twitter account just to see what was happening on that side of the digital woods. And I will say, I don't think that we have had a day like
that on social media in a long time. But those days where everybody's getting in on the jokes, everybody is talking about it, that was that in the older iteration of Twitter, there was no better time to be plugged into black Twitter than these days where something was happening, and nobody was getting any work done. Everybody was on Twitter, refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, making jokes. The only the two days that come to mind were, I think most recently, when the Queen died.
That was a day that I remember, a lot of people had a lot to say. And then this one, this one is like if you really are an og the N word navy. That's a pretty good That's a pretty good day on social media for me. But we haven't had a day like this in a while. And it's very funny to me that when we do get a day like this for the first time on on X because it's a terrible platform, it is about Elon Musk. I find that to be so interesting.
Yeah, that's a good observation because I also signed into X for the first time in what has to have been months. I don't know, I don't go there at all. I wonder how many other people signed in, And also, somewhat ironically what I signed in. The first thing I did was search for Elon Musk because I wanted to see what he had been tweeting. And it's funny because the last time I was there, the platform was aggressively
trying to get me to follow him. It was like recommending accounts that you might want to follow, its like Elon Musk, Steve Badden, and I was like, no, I obviously I have no interest in following these. But the thing that brought me back was wanting to see what Elon had to say about his erstwhile buddy Trump.
So let's get into it. I have to give a really big caveapp before we do, though it goes without saying that we're talking about the report behavior of two liars. I almost didn't want to make this episode because everybody knows that you cannot take the behavior of two messy stunt queens at face value, especially during a bad breakup like that is just understanding the world one oh one, right, especially when they're doing these big dramatic things that I think,
especially Elon, are meant to get people talking. You know, I almost get kind of paranoid where I'm thinking, oh my god, they want us to be talking about this drama. Trump is a classic reality television show guy. That's where he got his start. So this is classic Real Housewives
on Bravo villain behavior. I would say Trump is really giving us Kenya Moore, right now, if you know, you know where It's like I'm going to do something very big and over the top, and everybody is going to be talking about it is Trump.
The Kenya hearers elon.
Don't even get me started, because I will go all day. Okay, but I I'll just add this and we can move on. This is going to be like that interview where the filmmaker David Lynch is being interviewed saying that Eraserhead is his most spiritual film, and the interviewer says, oh, elaborate on that, and David Lynch just goes, no, Donald Trump is the White House's Kenny Ohmore. I will not be elaborating, no questions.
Okay, there we have it.
So I almost, like I said, I almost didn't want to get into this, however, and this is gonna sound like it sounds, but I truly have so little in my life right now that I deserve it. I just I deserve to have a little key key about this breakup.
Honestly, I felt the same way. It's it's been rough, and uh yeah, these guys are liars. I share your concern that this is all some sort of elaborate con that they're pulling on us. Uh.
But because they're con men, because they are gone men.
That's what they do. They've both become enormously wealthy through conning. So uh but I don't know. I'm with you. It's just it's too good. It was really fun putting this together, working on this script with you. You know, like, isn't it It's just nice to hate on two people who are pretty contemptible at the end of the day.
Yeah, you were telling me about that Russian expression.
Yes, a friend told me about this Russian saying that describes the situation where you have two equally unsympathetic forces who are engaged in some kind of rivalry or you know, contest that you hope damages both of them because they're both so unsympathetic and contemptible. You can say, and my Russian is awful yebela jaba god yuku, which means the toad fucked the viper.
Wait, so if Trump is the ken Yo moore of the situation, who which one is the toad and which one is the viper? Actually, don't answer that. I can see your gears turning. You would be like, actually, I I've thought about this and here's why. Here's my very analytical breakdown as to why Elon Musk is the toad in this situation and not the viper.
I think they both think they're the toad. Oh good, call just two toads fucking each other.
So let's take a little bit of a flashback back to rosier times between these two. If this was a Lifetime movie, there would be like a flowery song playing right now while we reminisce on better days. So in July twenty twenty two, Trump claimed that Elon Musk was quote desperate to meet with him and said that Musk had come to the White House during Trump's first term
asking for assistance with subsidized projects. And Trump was really gloating about how much Elon Musk essentially humiliated himself at the feet of Donald Trump. He even bragged that if Musk had been asked to beg on his hands and knees, he would have done it. So on July thirteenth, twenty twenty, you might remember, during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump was allegedly shot at. That is what pushed Muk to formally endorse him. He said, I fully endorse President
Trump and hope for his rapid recovery. In the weeks that followed, Musk became a top Trump donor. The Post reported that he spent two hundred and eighty eight million on Trump and other Republicans ahead of the November election. Musk also went on the campaign trail for him, rallying for him and being the very public base of the campaign in battleground states like Pennsylvania that Trump would go
on to win. There is a very memorable image of this event where Elon is on the stage next to Trump and he's doing this leap in the air and his shirt's coming up and you can see his stomach and his legs are kind of bent behind him, and he he. I guess I just feel like, when a man has you leaping into the air with glee, you got it. You are down bad, but you got it bad.
I would believe it. I am trying to think back to the last time I leapt with glee. It's been a while.
I don't think that a man has, nor ever could have me out here being photographed navel out leaping with glee. I just don't see it. I just don't see it. So I will say I mean, like, I think Elon was experiencing a passion that I have yet to experience, right, Like, I like that image of him. He is a jubilation, I.
Think, so. I mean, I do wonder if he was experiencing like true joy for the first time, or if he was just like doing a Nathan Fielder style performance of what he thought joy is supposed to look like, or if he was.
Just hi out of his mind, out of his car. I mean, I've been there, okay, So I want you to have that image in your head. And you know, on each true Hollywood story where the happy picture suddenly turns black and white because the good times are over, and then the music gets into a minor key, do you know what I'm talking about?
Yeah? Totally.
They were friends, dude, until they weren't. So that is why I want you to be thinking when we pivot to this next part, like Elon frozen in midair midleap, as the scene fades to black and there is like a minor key piano note, very gloomy playing because May thirtieth, twenty twenty five rolls around and Musk resigns from his role at DOGE after one hundred and fourteen days, signing
a need to focus on his failing businesses. His position was in the White House was sort of always meant to come to an end after a while because special government employees are a class of temporary workers that Musk was, and they can only typically work one hundred and thirty days in a calendar year, though that time could be split up, so it is possible that Musk could have
worked another couple of weeks if Trump had wanted him to. Also, like, who knows, because neither of them really care much about following the law, but that's what the law says, one hundred and thirty days. So the White House first publicly acknowledged Musk's role on February third, so he's probably winding down the clock on that one hundred and thirty days. So him leaving around this time in and of itself
is not particularly juicy. At this point, Musk also starts saying that he is done with politics, saying that I think I've done enough. Just last week, on May twenty eighth, he said that he was stepping back from politics, saying, I think in terms of political spending, I'm going to do a lot less in the future. I think I've done enough. The White House held this very weird farewell event.
I watched part of it. It was sort of just weird, and somber Trump said that Musk is not really leaving because he's always going to be my advisor and we're always going to be friends.
Oh my god.
So the event itself was pretty tame, but there was tons of drama behind the scenes, like, for instance, Elon Musk showed up to this farewell event a black eye. By the way, I I initially was referring to this as a shiner, but I was on a call with a bunch of gen Z folks and I was like, oh, yeah, just he had a shiner, and everybody was like, what's a shiner? And I was surprised to learn that shiner is sort of old timey slang for a black eye.
Yeah. You you brought this up to me, and I've been thinking about it. You grew up in a household where boxing was like a pretty important sport, right, Like, your dad was a boxer, your brother box You boxed, so you were probably getting black eyes all the time.
Yeah, giving a shiner and getting a shiner were not unusual things on my household. And they were. It was like a common topic of conversation that was not unusual. So, yeah, a black eye is so cumbersome and happened, you got to just like shorten it to shiner.
You know.
Yeah, I guess for most of us that wasn't a real issue. You know, I don't want to like prompt any critical reevaluations of your childhood, but uh, yeah, for most of us didn't come up that often.
Well, So Musk said that his shiner was given to him by his four year old son. Some people watching had some questions like, how does a four year old toddler give a grown man a shiner? Or is this liar perhaps lying about how he got this black eye? So one explanation comes from Steve Bannon, who I should note is a longtime enemy of Elon Musk's and again himself is a liar and a criminal. So Steve Bannon was a chief strategist during Trump's first term in office.
He told The Daily Mail that Musk's turbulent time in the White House took a dramatic turn when he allegedly shoved sixty two year old Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant during a heated exchange. Now, according to Bannon, again known liar. So I don't know. That's going to be a theme, is that everybody who comes up in this is a liar. So you just don't know what's going on. He's like, well, they lie, he lied, They're all liars. I don't know
what's going on. So Bannon said that bessn't confronted Musk over his sweeping but yet unfulfilled promises to deliver one trillion dollars in budget cuts. Scott Bessont called him out and said, you promised us a trillion dollars in cuts and now you're at like one hundred billion. Nobody can find any savings. What are you doing? Bannon recounted, and that's when Elon got physical. It's a source subject with him. Bannon said, it wasn't an argument, it was a physical confrontation.
Elon basically shoved him.
So one thing I do want to interject here to this story is that according to Steve Bannon, here Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary is mad at Elon Musk because Elon Musk like didn't find enough fraud and waste and cuts. But like Scott Bessett is the Treasury secretary, right, Like, shouldn't that be his deal, like his job, shouldn't he know more about the budget and like the Treasury then
Elon Musk. Not that I'm trying to defend Musk here or anything, but like, I don't even want to say this story doesn't make sense because in Trump world maybe this is how it works, but like, it sounds stupid.
It sounds stupid, and something about it doesn't sound right to me. And also the fact that it's Steve Bannon, longtime Elon Musk enemy, running to the Daily Mail to be like, oh, she shoved him. I agree with you. Something doesn't sound something in the butter milk's not clean on this one. I don't know exactly what happened, but I agree it doesn't sound quite right to me. Also, if you want to get really messy, like what the realty is according to rumors, This is not me saying this.
This has been reported in places like The Gray Lady, The New York Times. Stephen Miller and his wife Katie are allegedly Again, I am not saying this. This is what I have read from reporting in some kind of a throuple with Elon Musk. Question Mark obviously I'm not there. I could not say whether this is true or not. I've not seen any evidence myself. However, Katie Miller is leaving the White House to go work from USK personally.
Apparently her job has something to do with communications from USK Percy and she might be helping to arrange interviews for him. I know if I were married to Stephen Miller, I'd also be looking to hitch my wag into somebody who could get me off the planet and sidebar. I hate to give Elon Musk any credit here, like me and him have be forever. However, I have to give him credit on this one. Stephen Miller to Elon Musk, I hate to say it is an upgrade, right.
It's amazing how every character in this story just gets worse and worse, like Stephen Miller is. I do believe he is of the undead. I don't think he is of the living. I think he feeds on the misery of the living. That is what sustains him.
I once saw somebody on Twitter say he looks like he drinks the milk right from the utter. Do you know what a like piece of shit you have to be to have your wife leave you for Elon Musk and have everybody agree, like, well, kind of an upgrade, like you you like, really there is nothing lower.
Yeah. I look forward to some point in the future, assuming any of us are still alive, and like writing books to like the retrospective documentary about Steven Miller, just to understand, like what is going on with him, because he he just seems to like hate everyone.
You know, back in college, he was writing op eds about how the other students shouldn't be nice to the janitorial staff because that's what they're paid to clean up after us. Like that was his whole thing. Like he has been a hateful son of a bitch his whole life, even when he was youthful. Go back and look up pictures of him in college. In college, I feel like
most people in college, even a horrible people. You're like, oh, I can see he's like bright, eye, full of life, like he has a lot going for hi, YadA, YadA YadA. Stephen Miller somehow looks worse back then. He somehow looks more hate filled than he does now, just in a different way, like a permanent sneer, as like a college student an undergrad. I'm not kidding, Like, look up a picture of him. If you've not seen it.
I would say that we would post it in the show notes. But we're not going to do that to our listeners.
Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Okay, So back to Musk. So over the weekend, after Musk officially left his position within the administration late last week, things already started to unravel. Trump announced that he was pulling the nomination of Musk ally Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, a nomination that Trump had been glowingly talking about back in December and was already approved by the said at subcommittee sidebar. It's totally fine to have Elon Musk hiring and promoting people to run NASA, you know, the government
organization that he has so many contracts with. That's totally fine. Nothing to see there. Let's just move on. So Trump pulling this nomination at the eleventh hour was a shock to all parties, and it seems like it was a pretty transparent retaliatory move against Elon Musk. Trump confirmed today that this was a point of contention with Musk as part of today's big Tea spilling. Now, of course, because
it's Trump, he could be lying. It's hard to know what these two because they both constantly lie and grandstand about everything. But this is some good drama. I don't care. I'm talking about it. Okay, So fast forward to June. First, Elon starts his first public attacks against Trump's big, beautiful budget bill. But don't get too excited. He is against this bill because even though this bill deeply guts the public safety Net, it does not gut the public safety
net enough for Elon Musk's liking. And also, Elon Musk does not personally benefit enough from this bill, so he doesn't like it. Musk calls the bill, which is horrible for all the reasons that we've talked about on the podcast. He calls it a disgusting abomination due to its massive spending and cuts to electric vehicle initiatives. He tweeted, I'm sorry, but I can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on
those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it. Also, these tweets are like a little much. I mean, he's tweeting like somebody out of a Shakespeare play. One of the wildest things to see from this was a lot of Democrats were low key praising Elon Musk for this take, which was interesting. Representative Rocana from California,
who represents Silicon Valley and it's known Musk. They're they're really friendly, they've been friends for a decade, said that Democrats should be in a dialogue with Musk given their shared opposition to this bill. He said, we should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values he agrees with, a commitment to science funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to
seeing international students like him. I will say, like not to give him a pass, but he represents Silicon Valley, he's friendly with Musk. I feel like he would like he would say this. This is not surprising to me.
Yeah, I definitely do not give him a pass for this. I can't believe these efforts to like immediately try to woo Musk as like a democratic ally or something like all those things that Rokana listed their there were like areas of policy agreement, not values agreement. You know, democratic values are things like Nazis are bad which is something that Musk clearly disagrees with. He supports science funding when it's going directly into his own pocket. He's committed to
clean technology when it means massive subsidies for Tesla. Meanwhile, he's installed dozens of small and efficient gas generators in a Tennessee neighborhood to power his data center there. And his commitment to international students is making sure they keep working eighty hours a week at his companies on the cheap, because they'll lose their visas and have to go home if they don't. So maybe there are some policy areas where Representative Kana might be able to work with Musk,
And if so, that's fine, That's how politics works. But I really resent the effort to sell the public and Democratic Party members democratic voters on the idea that mister Nazi salute himself is suddenly aligned with the values of the Democratic Party. Have some self respect.
Yeah, dog shit take from Representative Khanna here, I have to say, like, you really sum it up well, Okay, So what is your take on Representative Richie Torres from New York. He says, I'm a believer in redemption and Musk is telling the truth about the legislation, but he added, Musk has done an enormous amount of damage and that there are Democrats who would see his decimation of the federal workforce of the federal government as an unforgivable sin.
Richie torres Elon Musk is not telling the truth about this bill. What he is saying is the bills draconian cuts to social spending do not go far enough. He wants to cut more. So, No, Mitchie torrez Elon Musk is not telling the truth about like have some nuance.
It's like a debasement of the idea of truth. You know, like him saying this bill is bad. That's not enough to count as truth, right, Like, the truth is that this bill aims to kick millions of people off Medicaid and other forms of assistance. It aims to decimate research and a ton of areas that matter to all of us. It's trying to decimate climate funding. Also that they can cut taxes for the rich keep subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. So no, he's not telling the truth about this legislation.
He's opposing it for reasons that are entirely self serving.
Yeah, someone saying that something that you don't like is bad for the worst reasons. Doesn't does not mean that they're right. Like, just because he doesn't like it and you don't like it for completely different reasons, does not mean that you are in agreement, like they're just I cannot sometimes I can't. I mean, I will talk all day sometimes I cannot believe that these are the people
that have been elected to represent us. So up until this point, Trump had been publicly but vaguely praising Musk's time at the White House, even as all this drama swirled behind the scenes.
Vaguely is the only way Trump talks about anything.
Oh have you seen any of how he would talk about Elon Musk before this afternoon. He would say things like, oh, you know, he's been great. He's just we just think so he's so good, and you know it's I mean, it's it's up there with beautiful gowns, beautiful gowns, like so vague, dude, I don't know if you get that reference. When the late Aretha Franklin God Rest her Soul was asked about all these different female artists if they were good singers, it would be like, oh, what do you
think of lady Gagash. She be a beautiful sick, great range, great vocals. What do you think of Riah Carey, beautiful singer, real song stress, well songstressed, Taylor Swift, great downs, beautiful gowns. Really, her gowns are great. Like the way that he would just be like, oh, Elon Musk has done a great job. We like him. He is great, never mentioning a single
specific thing. That's how you kind of knew even before this afternoon that something was up, because Donald Trump is like a verbose person often, and so when he really has something to say about something, he like really says it. Do you remember back in the early days of COVID when the COVID test was awful and it was that
like really long swab that went deep into your brain. Clearly, Donald Trump hated that COVID test because whenever he was asked about COVID testing, he'd be like, the current iteration is not too nice, Like he would really talk about it in specifics. So when he has something to say, he really is quite like descript dip about it. And so when asked about Elon Musk, where he was like, oh, great guy, great guy, nothing to add you really knew
he was holding back and something was up. So that brings us to today when the s hits the f During a meeting on June fifth, twenty twenty five, the day that we're recording this, So, during a meeting in the Oval Office with newly elected German Chancellor Frederick Mahers,
Trump started to express some some due disappointment in Musk's criticism. Now, according to various news articles, Trump was genuinely shocked that Musk would attack his big, beautiful bill, while the German chancer just sort of did the kind of Homer Simpson retreating into the green grass bush. She's like, Oh, I'm just gonna stay out of this and probably thinking, like what the heck is going on. I'm here in the White House and like Trump is crashing out over Elon Musk.
What's going on? So? Trump suggested that Musk's objections were self serving and that the only reason that he didn't like the bill was because it eliminated subsidies for electric cars, a move that would directly hurt Musk's company, Tesla. Trump said that Musk knew all along with these subsidies would be eliminated even before the text of the bill was public in like Dwight Shreut style, Musk hits back false.
This bill was never shown to me even once, and was passed in the dead of night, so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it. I will say this about that, which is that One of the stories I was going to talk about in the News Roundup this week was how Marjorie Taylor Green was saying that she voted for this bill not knowing about the provision in the bill where states could not enforce laws around AI for ten years. And she was saying,
you know, I didn't read the bill. I missed that part. I'm a big states rights person, so I would never have have voted for this if I had known that was in there. And I remember thinking, like a girl, you had to read the bill, like what what? Like what? That's a kind of your like the main part of your job. Then I watched a longer interview that she did on News Nation where she essentially says the same thing that Musk is saying.
Here.
Again both liars, so who the fuck knows? But she said that they gave her the full text of the bill so close to the vote and at night that she didn't have time to read it. Again, she is also a liar, so I'm not taking her at her word, but just some context there that I was sort of ready to drag her for not having read this bill, and that both Musk and Green are saying they gave it to us so close to the vote that we didn't have time to read it. So who knows.
Yeah, So, but we can break down a little bit of which of these lying liars is lying about this particular thing. So, like we do know that, like it's true that the final text of the bill wasn't available until like hours before they were forced to vote on it. So so Marjorie Taylor Green is not lying about that. How she should still be dragged because it's just inexcusable to vote to make something a law when you don't
even know what you're voting for. I mean, I guess that's the kind of bootlicking subservience to authority that the Republican House is like into these days. But like, yeah, I believe that she didn't know the text of the bill, and I guess I would believe that, you know, Elon didn't get a chance to read the bill before it was passed. Either. However, it also is not any surprise
to anyone that electric vehicle subsidies were eliminated. I mean Trump said that over and over again on the campaign trail, and it was also just like patently obvious to anyone who was even remotely paying attention that the Republican Congress was gonna cut anything in everything related to green energy or trying to deal with climate change. So of course that was going to be cut. So for Musk to act all shocked about it, I think he's lying.
Well. One quick thing about Marjorie Taylor Green is that in that News Nation interview, I do like that she says, don't I get some credit for admitting I didn't read it. I just thought that was really funny. Like, okay, So, but with the electric vehicle subsidies, Trump, when he was hitting back on truth Social he basically was like, you knew Elon knew that I was removing those the provisions that forced people to buy garbage electric vehicles that nobody wants.
So it's not just like Elon or removing this provision. It's your cars are garbage and nobody wants them. And you know this like it's so high school, like this, This just reminds me of a lot of the drama that I had when I was growing up of there's a way to say this where it's just here's the facts. You knew this, You were aware of this. Da da da da as you said, that's not what Trump said. Trump said your cars are garbage and don't nobody want them, and you know this, and that's why you're upset.
But also he has been saying that same shit for ten years. You know, maybe Elon was like dissociating to be like, oh, this is my buddy when he says that he hates electric cars and he's going to end the subsidies, what he means is some other thing.
Babe, have you ever been in a relationship before Elon can fix him? He's like, I can fix him. I mean, I've I've been this girl in a relationship of like, he doesn't mean this stuff that he says constantly and does. This is a surprise to me to find this out, and I am hurt, even though he's been saying the same thing for many years, very clearly in both his words and behavior.
You know, that just makes that just reminds me of a friend of mine who described this whole thing that went down today as the messiest breakup to happen in Pride month.
Yet it's still early, Okay. So this afternoon, Trump was asked about Elon, and you can kind of tell something's up. He says, Oh, well, he hasn't said anything bad about me personally yet, but I'm sure that will be next. I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped him a lot. Trump kind of suggested that maybe Elon was having a big reaction because he was missing all the glamour of working in the White House. Glamour is the direct the
actual word that he uses. He says, some people who leave my White House administration miss it so badly, the glamour of working with me, they actually become hostile. Must responds on social media accuse Trump of being ungrateful and says that the only reason why Trump was elected in the first place is because of him. He tweeted, without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be fifty one to forty nine
in the Senate. Such ingratitude. So my understanding is that this was really the thing that set Trump over the edge. We know that Trump cares a lot about being considered popular. He's obsessed with things like crowd size. Ever since its failed the election bit in twenty twenty, he's been screaming about this non existent fraud and how the election was rigged against him because he simply cannot accept the idea
that he lost fair and square. So I think in making this claim, Musk is basically saying that Trump would have been a loser without his help. And I'm sure it's stung like this is my understanding is that this is the kind of thing that hits Trump where it hurts, like we're gonna get into it. But later Musk essentially accuses him of being a sex offender, and he's like, I don't give a talk about that. Just don't say that I'm a loser who would not have won the
election without you. Also, this is how we know that we've all sort of been waiting for this moment, because the New York Times sent out multiple breaking news alerts about it. It was like breaking news, trouble in Paradise, couple on the skids, Like it was really like, this is how I know. It's like we've all been waiting for this moment The New York Times is like, we are gonna capitalize on this. Everybody. We've all been waiting for.
This trouble in Paradise, America's sweethearts calling it quit.
So Trump hit back, responding on truth Social threatening to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts. We will come back to this bit about canceling Musk's federal contracts later on the episode, but for now, let's just clock this and understand this as a big f you to Elon and keep going with this play by play because this is
too good to stuff, okay. So Musk then further escalates this feud by alleging without evidence, that Trump's name appears in the own released Jeffrey Epstein files, implying a cover up. As we remember, Jeffrey Epstein was a wealthy financier and donor who died by suicide after being exposed to being a ringleader of a sex trafficking and child sex abuse ring. So Musk tweeted, time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That's the real
reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT, so I will say we did sort of know some of this already, flight records have shown that Trump flew six or seven times on Epstein's plane between nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety seven. But what Musk is saying is that Trump is all over the not public logs
of what happened with Epstein, which reminded me. Do you remember back in February when the White House did this terrible stunt where they invited all of these conspiracy theorists and like influencers to the White House and they did this whole photo op where they gave each of them this massive binder that said Epstein files like stamped on the front of it, and it was this big photo op. But then later when they got home, they opened the binders and there was like no new information about Epstein
in these binders. It was just south that was already public.
I do remember that, and I think, you know, for for people like us, that was just like a weird thing that happened with some like shitty nutbags who got invited to the White House. But I think for a lot of people who voted for Trump, at least a large number of very vocal people who voted for him,
that was like a major thing of his appeal. During his campaign, he was talking about how he was going to release the Epstein files and like making all these QAnon winks and nods that those Epstein files were going to come out and all the Democrats were going to be in there, and he was gonna drain the swamp blah blah blah, and he just like ditched those people people so fast.
I would almost be like some of those influencers were angry about that stunt when they got home and poured over these these binders and was like, oh, this is nothing. So yeah, promises made promises I don't know, vaguely referenced to in a stunt and that never referenced again. I don't know.
Yeah, I bet they were angry, and they probably still are, but we don't know about it because once Trump stopped amplifying the voices of these QAnon people, they just kind of disappeared because they were no longer of use to him. But yeah, the connections between Trump and Epstein are there are like fact based evidence for for less connections. Later in the afternoon today, Musk retweeted a video of Trump dancing at a party in nineteen ninety two. There was
hosted by Jeffrey Epstein. The video is a clip from MSNBC, and it not only shows Trump dancing having a good time, but it also shows him huddling with Epstein whispering a joke into his ear or whispering something in his ear. I assume it was a joke because Epstein then doubles over in laughter, and like, so these two buddies are just having a good old time in nineteen ninety two.
Yuck.
Yeah. In the ongoing effort to figure out which of these lying liars is lying about what seems like there's a lot of evidence to think that Elon's claim here, maybe there's something to it that you know, we know that Trump and Epstein were they at least attended a party together and had a nice time together.
Yeah. I just don't think that Elon Musk saying I was willing to overlook what I knew about you potentially being a child sex criminal because a business arrangement that we had together was working out for me. I don't think that's the flex he thinks it is and not producting. Elon Musk has also been accused of sexual misconduct and sexual abuse. So they're all liars. They're all creeps. They all have allegations. Like when I saw this, truly, I was like, it's not this, but this is what I
was thinking. Like you were on Epstein's Island. I saw you there. I was like, Oh, what were you doing there? Like that? Like that's the vibe I kind of got.
Yeah, maybe they were there together. Who knows these guys.
More after a quick break, let's get right back into.
It working every day on the.
Son. Elon further escalates by posting Trump's own tweets from twenty thirteen in which Trump categorically rejects the idea of raising the debt ceiling and condemns any Republicans or voting for it. This is kind of ironic because today Trump is saying the exact opposite and demanding that Republicans do raise the debt ceiling, which is very convenient. So Musk is resurfacing these posts that Trump once made and said, where is the man who wrote these words? Was he
replaced by a body double? Again? I feel like, where is the man who wrote these words? That is a text that I have written during a breakup, Like you said you loved me.
It's so dramatic. It is like, yeah, it's like Shakespearean. Where is the man who wrote these words? When'sforth has he gone?
I know this is some light Mary J. Blige, Like if you ever listened to the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack, this is some like I was your lover and your secretary, working every day of the week, like just some jilted lover, just some good jilted lover words. So Musk then endorses the idea of Trump being impeached and replaced by Vice President JD. Dance, which to makes complete sense to me because the Dance was sort of always the tech billionaire in Guy Plant. Trump then hits back on truth social
writing Elon was wearing thin. I asked him to leave. I took away his EV mandate that forced everybody to buy electric cars that nobody wanted, that he knew for months I was going to do, and he just went crazy again. I'm taken back to being like she knew I was going to beach week with my friends and that I didn't have my phone charger with me. I don't know why she's acting crazy and telling all of her friends that she didn't know after the fact, but I know that she did because I texted her like
it it's really a lot. So I will say the idea that Elon was sort of wearing out his welcome in the White House. There has been a ton of reporting to support this. Did you read that kind of bombshell New York Times piece on Musk's drug use while in the administration?
I did, and it was like so perfectly timed with his exit from the White House. It was like the I think it was the day after he left the White House and both just like I don't know. It was just such a hit piece. I also believe a lot of it is probably true, and so again just so messy, like it's it seems like deliberate smear campaign but using true facts.
Yeah, and I will say the authors of that New York Times piece have been writing about Musk's drug use for a while, but I think that maybe people are giving more information about it from within the White House because it's like, oh God, we can't stand this guy. There was also lots of pieces about how cabinet members were reportedly getting really tired of Musk, especially his attempts to be funny and his deep seated belief that he
is smarter than everybody else. A senior official told a reporter, I have been in the same room with Elon and he always tries to be funny, and he's not funny like at all. He makes these jokes and little asides and smiles, and it almost looks hurt if you don't lap up his humor. I keep using the word annoying. A lot of people who have to deal with him do,
but the word doesn't do the situation justice. Evon just thinks he's smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it's clear he doesn't know what he's talking about. The official then described Musk as the most irritating person they have ever dealt with, saying talking to the guy is sometimes like listening to really rusty nails on a chalkboard. He is the most irritating person I've ever had to deal with, and that is saying something.
Yeah, Like the people giving these quotes are political operatives in the Trump White House. I bet they deal with some highly irritating people.
The piece ends with this line, Musk has not at the patience of an array of high ranking administration officials to the point that, according to this official and to others Trump lieutenants have walked out of meetings and earnestly asked one another if they thought Musk was high, said so. Steve Bannon actually told a New York Times reporter that he advised Trump to investigate Musk's drug use in the
White House and also maybe deport him. There has been no love lost between these two since the beginning of the administration. Bannon has been a frequent critic of Musk, accusing him of self dealing, failing to find all of this so called fraud he made big promises about, and also, according to Bannon, being an illegal immigrant. Bannon's really nativist ideology has always been this like noxious foundation of Trump's most hardcore supporters, while Musk appealed to a totally different
set of like racist shitheads. So you really kind of have these two coming to a head now. That thought line in the Maga universe between Musk and Bannon and their particular strains of like toxic racist ideology has cleaved all the way through and the grand prolition has been sundered. So let's talk about the big picture and what this all means, especially given Trump's threat to cancel all of
Elon's company's federal contracts. So Eric Berger of Ours Technica really shed some light onto what this would actually mean. He wrote on Twitter, this would both end the International Space Station and simultaneously provide no way to safely deorbit it. Musk then retweeted this saying, go ahead, make my day.
And this really gets at the heart of why I think this is an important thing for us to talk about, not just all the over the top emotional late night crash out tweets, But this, I think is really the heart of it, and that is the fact that Elon
Musk a private person who is messy, chaotic. When they're doing profiles of him, they like to use the word mercurial, which I think is maybe just like polite white guy way to say, like, oh, this person uses a lot of drugs and like does things when he's under the
influence of them. But we have allowed this one chaotic person to take over so much of our public infrastructure to the point that we find ourselves in this situation where in this crash out with Trump, he could personally end at the International Space Station and leave it with no way for us to get it back from space. So it is not just SpaceX. Starlink, for one, is widely used by the military and the militaries of our allies.
Remember that Ukraine was deeply reliant on Starlink run by Elon Musk during the first few months of Russian's invasion, and Musk even briefly turned off their access to starlink over a payment dispute, which caused deaths and tactical losses on the battlefield. He's also involved in things like energy research,
defense research, space, hello, communications AI, transportation, infrastructure. This is not really like my personal area of expertise, so I'm not going to exhaustively list all of the many deep ways in which Musk's companies are like deeply entangled with the federal government. But trust me when I say they
are deeply entangled with the federal government. So when we talk about Musk's role in government, the biggest issue is that the government, not just Trump like this was happening under Biden too, the government has allowed this one chaotic, messy private person to essentially, in my opinion, become more powerful than the government itself because Musk's companies provide too much essential infrastructure that really should be coming from the government,
not from him and not from any private individual or person. Governments are really at his mercy. There was this really really well done Rodan Pharaoh long read in The New Yorker a couple of years ago about this we'll link to in the show notes. But he really out the scope of this, the scale of this, and what is at stake from the moods of this one mercurial person
who has a documented history of unpredictable chaotic behavior. It describes the many ways that Musk has not only accumulated power, but done so in a way that makes them literally irreplaceable because no one, not even the United States government, is currently capable of providing the services that he provides. The government just becomes reliant on him, as this private
person to provide all of these services. But this phenomena is not unique to just Musk, Like look at how in some parts of the world at the Global South, Facebook and WhatsApp basically are the Internet, right, and so the entire population of a country should not be forced to rely on the whims of one private dipshit for
their entire Internet infrastructure. So Elon Musk is really the worst case scenario of what happens when countries rely so much on one person privately for infrastructure that really should be public. He is like one massively inflamed, throbbing symptom of a much larger and deeper problem.
This is the natural result. This is what they wanted, like one uber, wealthy, rich guy who is yeah, like you said, almost like a peer to the government itself in terms of power. This is these things that he does of providing internet to the military, providing critical infrastructure, these are things that the government should do. These shouldn't
be at the whims of one mercurial dipshit. You're absolutely right, he elon Musk is the result of the past forty years of government policy of just addocating its responsibilities to the private market. And and here we are, and so it's bad.
It's bad. And even though it is the girls are fighting, Trump and Musk are fighting, it is us for whom this will be bad for like it is us, the regular citizens who are caught in the crosshairs of this.
And it is us who will pay the price. And don't forget that all of this is happening against the backdrop of the setup potentially passing this bill, which would gut reproductive healthcare, would kick millions off of Medicaid, would prevent states from making laws that curtail AI for ten years, would extend deep tax cuts for the wealthy, and certainly do a bunch of other awful things they don't even know half of because the House passed it in the
middle of the night without even bothering to read it. So yeah, it's bad. I think that we should be talking about this feud, but not talking about it in a way that obscures the fact that there are very real stakes for all of us and we are in the crossairs. But whatever happens when the dust has all set up from Elon's tweets and Trump's rants, I hope we can all remember the wise words of Bravos Andy Cohen, who tweeted, let me host the reunion. Andy, your messyth
has got the job if it's up to me. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our merch store at tangodi dot com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can reach us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at Tengody dot com There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative, edited by Joey
pat Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
MHM