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It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country does

It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. Government contracts should not be based on whether or not the president likes the CEO, and the CEO says enough good things about the president. If you can cancel contacts not based on merit, then it should extend you're likely willing to grant contracts not based on merit and based on nepotism instead. This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. If anyone says anything you don't like, their funding is gone, even if it shoots the country in the foot. If people kiss your ass enough, they get contracts, even if it's clear they're just spending the money on hookers and coke and yachts and not delivering on promises, and it shoots the country in the head.

the_af 1y ago
Agreed. It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the election campaign and a major advisor to the president now declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes of his supporters, what does this say about Musk? (Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant; what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to know is a pedophile).
- aisenik 1y ago
  Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child rape is resolved this way).
  - drivingmenuts 1y ago
    It's kind of his pointless go-to A-bomb insult, yet, this time, it's within the realm of possibility. I mean, I don't not believe it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
  - majormajor 1y ago
    Trump/Epstein connections have been reported on for years with photos and videos so anyone who cares probably was already on the anti-Trump side. While Musk has a bigger megaphone than most media, he also has a credibility issue - and now especially for the Trump-true-believer crowd that is likely the only group whose bubble would be so shielded that they'd see it as news.
    - redeeman 1y ago
      trump was one of the people that originally provided all they knew about epstein to the prosecutors, and once he realized what epstein was, he was banned from all trump venues. What did other do?
  - jordanb 1y ago
    Not only that but Musk was able to successfully argue in court that he's such a well known liar that a reasonable person wouldn't take his accusations of pedophillia seriously
    - the_af 1y ago
      Wow, I didn't know this. I didn't even know this was a possible defense at all, "everything I say is bullshit, so if anyone takes it seriously, that's on them".
      - xnx 1y ago
        Fox news attempted this defense in court "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
        casefields 1y ago
        Maddow and MSNBC made the same argument in court. It’s a very useful defense for these entertainment news programs.
        wat10000 1y ago
        A pox on all of them.
      - fhdkweig 1y ago
        My memory is a bit fuzzy, but that was also Trump's family's response to the financial statements related to his businesses when it came up in court. But I don't remember which court case it was.
        FireBeyond 1y ago
        That was the one where he told the IRS the buildings he owned were worth $(x)M for tax purposes, but was simultaneously having them valued at $(10x)M for loan collateral purposes.
  - amiga386 1y ago
    > Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker Laughably so. Musk: I can save those boys trapped in the cave! We can use this stupid submarine thing of mine. Hero: No need, I and my Navy SEAL cave-diving pals have got this. Musk: How dare you! You're a pedo. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44779998 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44779998 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45418245 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45418245
    - lostlogin 1y ago
      Would you bet against accusation in this instance? The existing recordings and convictions against Trump don’t seem to have hurt him. Why would this?
    - thrance 1y ago
      He was sued for that by the guy and won his trial by convincing the judge that "pedo" is actually common Afrikaner lingo, and it was a casual insult. This country is a joke. Also doesn't remove the fact Trump was one of Epstein's closest friends, and everything points to him being involved in some way or the other in those affairs.
      - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
        Musk's brother was introduced to his girlfriend by Epstein. Epstein mentored a young model who went onto be a neurosurgeon and married Microsoft's Sinofsky. Bill Gates had a meeting with Epstein during which an ex-girlfriend of Epstein's who was once Miss Sweden just happened to turn up with her 15 year old daughter. I'd quite like someone to investigate if our billionaires are being honeypotted left, right and center because it appears you can control a big swathe of the world's wealth if you get old rich nerds laid. It's still not clear if Epstein made his money by blackmailing yet another Billionaire.
- Geee 1y ago
  He supposedly learned it after the fact. Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that. However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has actually been public information for a long time. It's known that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no evidence he went to the island or did something wrong. It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult, rather than a serious accusation.
  - krapp 1y ago
    To be fair Elon claimed that Trump is mentioned in the remainder of files which have yet to be released. Presumably what evidence there is of wrongdoing, if it exists, exists there. "Pedo guy" Musk being Musk, though, who knows? What is the likelihood Musk would even have access to those files if they were so damning to Trump and still sealed? Nothing about this is "quite obvious." It could go either way. To be honest I wouldn't put it past either one of them to be on Epstein's "list."
    - Geee 1y ago
      I think the tone of the message would be way more serious if it was a serious accusation based on actual evidence. Now it reads like a kindergarten level conspiracy theory, which almost seems like a joke. The silly claim was that Trump being in the files is the reason why they aren't released. And apparently he has now deleted the tweet.
      - krapp 1y ago
        Without seeing the unreleased files we can't know how silly the claim is.
  - the_af 1y ago
    > He supposedly learned it after the fact. When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons explicitly not about any pedophile rings. So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's because he just learned of it. I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act? What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile. The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the president of the US might. (Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think this is a fight between two nasty people).
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting influence of power. Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults could come in and run the country / companies. I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first sentence.
- randomcarbloke 1y ago
  theoretically he might have discovered this after he had paid for Trump's win. I despise the guy but it's entirely possible that he was blind to the publicly available evidence before seeing the secret evidence.
deleted 1y ago
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steveBK123 1y ago
July 4th we commemorate getting rid of one mad king overseas and replacing him with.. oh wait.
- mindslight 1y ago
  You should always self-host your foreign mad king. The latency to England is just too high.
  - ithkuil 1y ago
    KaaS (king as a service)
  - catlifeonmars 1y ago
    Canada has done it the right way. Self host but have a redundant backup across the pond.
  - tbrownaw 1y ago
    We actually had one back in the 1800's: https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-joshua-norton-emperor-of-the-united-states-4158141 https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-joshua-norton-emperor...
jmyeet 1y ago
6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are Supreme Court justices. All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity". Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of its way to say you can't even examine the communications between the president and the DoJ.
- peterfirefly 1y ago
  It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for government ministers.
  - cosmicgadget 1y ago
    We have legislative immunity called the speech and debate clause. It doesn't shield lawmakers from other crimes, nor should it, and it certainly doesn't imply some sort of expansive executive immunity. The founders were rebelling agaisnt an untouchable executive, remember?
    - voidfunc 1y ago
      If the founders thought it was so important the President not have immunity from all crimes they would have written it such rather than leaving it to interpretation.
      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        > If the founders thought it was so important the President not have immunity from all crimes they would have written it such They did; by writing in explicit immunities for some constitutional officers for certain activities, they implicitly rejected other immunities for those and other constitutional officers, by the legal principle “expressio unius est exclusio alterius”.
deleted 1y ago
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CalChris 1y ago
Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm unaware of. This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around. Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.
- deeg 1y ago
  I have absolutely no sympathy for Musk but the president--any president--shouldnt be able to do this.
  - consumer451 1y ago
    The biggest self-indictment in that post by POTUS was "I was always surprised Biden didn't do it!" I am not surprised that Biden didn't cancel all SpaceX contracts for political reasons, neither are most rational people.
    - jyounker 1y ago
      Trump doesn't believe that smart people with power can have ethics or morality because he doesn't have them himself.
      - majormajor 1y ago
        It's not ethics or morality, it's just "not being a child." A president not personally retaliating against a critic doesn't need to have anything to do with ethics, it's just requires a post-middle-school mentality of "I may not be happy with this person but I [my country] can still benefit from things they do."
        ithkuil 1y ago
        The property of "being a child" in an adult is effectively a matter of ethics and morality
belter 1y ago
1 Musk = 13 Scaramuccis . Please update your SI unit tables accordingly.
drivingmenuts 1y ago
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yongjik 1y ago
On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.) I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/
- Phenomenit 1y ago
  That’s the key right? It’s world as content. Nothing means anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of ”politics”. But that’s not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what happens next!
- blibble 1y ago
  > Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/ did people expect any different when they elected a reality TV star to be president? one that's such an incredible businessman he managed to bankrupt not one, but two casinos
  - martin-t 1y ago
    He's first and foremost a narcissist (strongly grandiose subtype, and all over the place on the communal/malignant axis). That condition should make him ineligible for any position of power. This is what a society gets when it elects someone mentally ill (in the harmful-to-others rather than the typical harmful-to-ill-person sense). I am continually astounded by how many people, even if you explain the symptoms to them, will be unable to see it - not just in this one case but in general. There is something in many people that makes them attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly above things.
    - thoroughburro 1y ago
      Narcissists are over-represented as CEOs and such, as well. I think a fair number of Americans like narcissists.
tempodox 1y ago
I've said before that by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins. I may have been too optimistic, it might happen earlier.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  I agree entirely. Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt. Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally. Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.
- FergusArgyll 1y ago
  > by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like? GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years? Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies? Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies? Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)? Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days? Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually? I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.
  - bix6 1y ago
    I’d argue we’re already there with all the social fragmentation but I reckon we’ll see a measurable decline in scientific output / discovery.
    - FergusArgyll 1y ago
      Patents? Journal articles published?
      - bix6 1y ago
        Funding is already falling ie NSF disbursements so I’d expect the h-index to fall off significantly. So sure patents will fall, journal pubs will fall, enrollment will fall, staff count will fall, total experiment count will fall, grant count will fall.
cameldrv 1y ago
Likewise that Elon can say Trump is “ungrateful” that be received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew the nomination for Elon’s NASA administrator. It’s just open bribery.
- sigmoid10 1y ago
  American democracy died on the day the supreme court overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US politics is a mere playground for billionaires and corporations.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    Harris outspent Trump 3:1. Hillary outspent Trump 2:1. It's not that easy to buy an election.
    - brookst 1y ago
      Elon spent more on behalf of Trump than the entire official Harris campaign spent. This is a terrible argument. We know the Supreme Court legalized unlimited campaign spending, and we’re not dumb enough to think Elon’s money wasn’t part of the Trump campaign.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        Elon spent well over a billion dollars on the campaign? You'll need a cite for that.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      This is misleading (it is approximately correct if you look only at candidate committee spending, but it excludes outside spending—where the advantage went the other way, and the outside spending in 2024 exceeded campaign committee spending.)
      - mindslight 1y ago
creato 1y ago
This is why the standard for something to be considered improper behavior is (or used to be) the appearance of a conflict of interest. People stopped giving a shit about anything. This is just one of dozens of things that would have been totally unacceptable a few years ago.
- andrepd 1y ago
  The world is no longer a serious place. Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _pretend to care_ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    I think they might have figured out that a lot of that honesty and character was a facade. Is the false appearance of morality better than just showing yourself as you really are?
    - dasil003 1y ago
      You mean that people lie and cheat? That's always been the case. The point of honesty and character is precisely that they reflect a person's ability to value a higher good than their immediate self-interest. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that reputation has been subjected to unprecedented arms race in the face of the internet and social media doesn't fundamentally change the game, it just makes it more exhausting and overwhelming to pay attention to.
    - cycomanic 1y ago
      That always brings to mind this comic: https://condenaststore.com/featured/he-tells-it-like-it-is-paul-noth.html https://condenaststore.com/featured/he-tells-it-like-it-is-p...
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    This kind of stuff would not fly in Australia. Not to say that there is no corruption, but that it isn’t absolutely blatant and ignored.
pessimist 1y ago
It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing. I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on. It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.
- tshaddox 1y ago
  In that case, it would be neat if corruption were illegal!
  - ty6853 1y ago
    Or just more accessible, so the average person can get a piece of the benefits that cartels and megacorp executives already get.
    - supriyo-biswas 1y ago
      Voila, we've ended up with a low trust society with "petty corruption", which is generally considered harmful as it establishes something about that society that cannot be easily corrected unlike "grand corruption."
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in the US, especially at the local and state level. The main difference is a significant portion of governance was temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root. The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive, leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing the power of checks and balances. There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku in Japan, and François Mitterrand in France tried to decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.
onetimeusename 1y ago
This whole article is speculation about a war of words on social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any citation. >One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the exchanges as “bluster” that neither Musk nor Trump would actually implement
bobthepanda 1y ago
Part of the problem is that * those who were concerned about it happening to others have seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms, etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts * there is a subset that is just super cult of personality around the current president and will bend over backwards to justify actions
scarface_74 1y ago
It’s not they don’t see it - they don’t care. This has always been the moral compass of the US.
vkou 1y ago
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it to a person he just decided that he didn't like? Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting him with accusations of pedophilia. So far, all of this is quite normal.
JCattheATM 1y ago
~40% of the country sees that as strength. Democracies only really work with an educated and altruistic population, and the US is only getting further away from that.
- dinkumthinkum 1y ago
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  - goatlover 1y ago
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    - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - edoceo 1y ago
        Ignoring the Constitution is authoritarian, right?
      - aorloff 1y ago
        I guess you haven't been paying attention: Trump's attacks on Judge Boasberg for example JD Vance saying judges cannot check the President's power This is basically exactly what they are saying : the president has ultimate unchecked power, and the judges cannot keep ruling on these pesky laws.
      - cmurf 1y ago
        The delusional conspiracy theory Trump won the 2020 election, in order to justify January 6 violence and then pardoning those criminals as his first act as POTUS redux. Trump sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the United States when he (Mike Pence) refused Trump’s order to overturn that election. Trump’s longest serving chief of staff said Trump is, A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. The bigotry of low expectations is thinking people are too stupid to know this, rather than understanding 1/3 are anti-American illiberal shitbirds. Just because they failed to get it once before doesn’t mean they didn’t try and keep on trying. A vote for a rapist, a felon, and vile insurrectionist is voting in support of abuse. And now we’re getting abused.
nickpsecurity 1y ago
It's been going on a long time. Democrats and Republicans, especially in the Pentagon, have bought influence of politicians to get billions of tax dollars. So you should change the comment to say "most Democrat and Republican voters in the primaries apparently wont vote out those who give or take bribes." That would be correct. Jethro's advice to Moses in God's Word is still good advice for voters today. If a politician ever meets this criteria, then we'll see amazing things happen. That's below with verse 21 highlighted: "19 Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, 20 and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. 21 Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. 22 And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:19-23) (ESV)
xnx 1y ago
Every accusation from Trump/Fox/Republicans is an admission. This is the "swamp" they were going to drain. It is now overflowing.
lostlogin 1y ago
It’s pretty incredible. NYT now: “President Trump said on Saturday that he believed his relationship with Elon Musk was over after the two sparred publicly on social media this week, and he warned there would be “serious consequences” if Mr. Musk financed candidates to run against Republicans who voted in favor of the president’s domestic policy bill.” So the president can decide who someone supports? Two truly awful humans fighting it out.
bhouston 1y ago
This is what Trump is doing to Harvard right now. He even is pushing legislation to tax their endowment and also has an executive order to deny them and on them foreign students.
- overfeed 1y ago
  ...and to law firms before then, US government contractors (worldwide[1]). If OP thinks thinks this is a nee Trump play, they haven't been paying attention. 2. The US embassy tried to get a Swedish city to agree to some anti-DEI clause in a vendor agreement. Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin.
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    > Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin. This is literally also what the dems were doing with USAID discrediting gamergate and funding bias news networks, neither party is above it.
    - overfeed 1y ago
      I remember when Obama threatened Fox Sports mergers due to how Fox News covered his first term in office, and trued to get the Saudis to sign a pro-choice vendor agreement with the embassy. Biden also threatened law firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them from government buildings and revoke security clearance. It was the standard thing for dems to do when dealing with political opponents. Both sides are totally the same thing, there's nothing to be done.
      - mschoch 1y ago
        [dead]
      - bhouston 1y ago
        > Biden also threatened law firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them from government buildings and revoke security clearance. I did a few quick searches for more information about this claim of yours. I also asked Claude and ChatGPT to research it. I can not find any sources to back up this claim of yours. Can you source it for me? For example: https://claude.ai/share/d36c7a89-adff-4625-9cd6-89e60b254ea1 https://claude.ai/share/d36c7a89-adff-4625-9cd6-89e60b254ea1 https://chatgpt.com/share/684972cb-0140-8006-9f0f-9075537bf259 https://chatgpt.com/share/684972cb-0140-8006-9f0f-9075537bf2...
nkrisc 1y ago
They see it; it's why they voted for him.
sandworm101 1y ago
The new reality. Every corporate decision made today now must involve an analysis of the local and national government authority, thier political leanings and thier tendancy towards vindictivness. Does anyone not think that every major corporation is not commissioning psychological reports on certain US leaders? They have public affairs and social media consultants to gauge public reactions. Now they need head shrinks to tell them if and how the guy in the big office might react, be that a state governor, the president, or any number of politically-minded media owners.
- brookst 1y ago
  Why pay shrinks when you can pay baksheesh to political underlings who claim to be connected? Sure, most of them aren’t, but corruption is a statistics game. You spend $100k on that one guy who really does sleep with the masseuse of the astrologist for dear leader, and it can be a 10,000% return in days.
_heimdall 1y ago
> If you can cancel contacts not based on merit That's a hard argument to hold in the context of recent history. Maybe for the better, maybe for worse, merit has taken a back seat in many cases as we prioritized other factors. What's interesting to me here is that the executive branch has authority to change these contracts. I do understand that's how it has worked for a while, and you could argue that these contracts are part of executing on congress's mandate, but I personally would prefer the executive branch not have this power. If it were up to me congressional committees would be responsible for this as part of budgeting responsibilities, and the executive branch would be much weaker than it is today.
- wrs 1y ago
  As with so many other things the executive branch is doing right now, it doesn’t have exclusive power to do this. Congress sets the rules for how procurement works.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    It’s not supposed to. It sure looks like it does. Power is more than what the written rules say you can do.
    - _heimdall 1y ago
      I think you're getting to the distinction between power and authority. Congress may have the authority to decide procurement (I'm not 100% sure on this, going with the discussion), but functionally the president may have the power to force their will through the system.
      - inglor_cz 1y ago
        Congress has been too deferential to executive power for decades.
        wat10000 1y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-warren-report-special-interests-over-the-public-interest-elon-musks-130-days-in-the-trump-administration https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-wa... https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/130_days_of_elon_musk_report.pdf https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/130_days_of_elon... https://cepr.net/publications/corrupt-control-of-the-trump-administration/ https://cepr.net/publications/corrupt-control-of-the-trump-a... If Musk is engaging in corruption with respect to the US government, then what could be done to stop it. Whatever the answer, almost certainly Musk's ties to the government would need to be broken, including contracts and funding.
sega_sai 1y ago
It is also interesting, that many people here somehow have no issues with trump cancelling federal contracts with Harvard, prohibiting student visas for harvard, firing entire sections of NSF, NIH, NOAA, but when it comes to contracts with spacex, they react.
- handoflixue 1y ago
  There's plenty of threads about all of those issues here on Hacker News - why do you think the people reacting to SpaceX didn't also react to the rest?
  - sega_sai 1y ago
    Some people do react to all, but the parent comment that I commented on just mentioned the spacex situation, like it's something new, while this is just the continuation of what's be going on for months. And I've certainly seen people on HN trying to defend grant cancellations, Harvard attacks, NSF firings etc. I obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions are on the spacex threats, but I conjecture, that many of them don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on universities, science agencies.
    - matwood 1y ago
      Cancelling contracts out of spite or for revenge without due process is wrong in all cases. Including SpaceX. Though I have to say it’s entertaining to see Musk’s own companies be effectively DOGE’d.
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      "I obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions are on the spacex threats, but I conjecture, that many of them don't like them" Your original comment didn't mention that you were conjecturing anything, you just stated your conjecture as an observation or a fact. Less charitably, this is called building a straw man.
    - jrflowers 1y ago
      > I conjecture, that many of them don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on universities, science agencies. This is a good point. If you imagine something in your head in a particular way, it is not the same as if you imagine it differently in your head. For example, if I imagine that all dogs are boys and all cats are girls, it paints a different picture of the world than if I imagine that there are both male and females of both animals. It is a curious phenomenon
sneak 1y ago
You are taking this at face value. It’s all farce. Elon helped Trump get elected. Now Trump has to help Elon get the Trump stink off so people stop calling it the swasticar.
ahf8Aithaex7Nai 1y ago
That is true. But the dubiousness of the whole thing starts a long way before that. Why is Musk there at all? Because we are sliding into neo-feudalistic conditions in which a court of the richest people steer the affairs of state and shape them in their own favor. And we've known what Trump is like all along. We didn't have to deduce that from the fact that he is now quarrelling with Musk.
chrischen 1y ago
Maybe what you think of as corruption is not what your opposing party thinks of as corruption?
jchook 1y ago
Exemplifying the meme.. "[Doing American things Americanly]: What are we, ASIAN???"
protocolture 1y ago
Everything you say is true. That said I think SpaceX is the only service even in the running for said contracts. Nasa doesnt have the capability, and Boeing is quite a way behind. There was already speculation that SpaceX would have to take on Boeings commitments for Artemis.
- slimebot80 1y ago
  It's murky. NASA outsources a lot of money to SpaceX because Musk could burn through risk and money at levels NASA would get cancelled for. At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and NASA technology become a reason to fold into a national asset. China didn't achieve its Great Leap Forward by pandering to wealthy celebrities who cosplay as geniuses.
  - inglor_cz 1y ago
    The Great Leap Forward (1958-62) was an absolute disaster that resulted in widespread famine.
    - antifa 1y ago
      It's a great example of Move Fast and Break Things applied to government.
  - hollerith 1y ago
    >Great Leap Forward Altough most readers will catch your meaning, that phrase does not mean what you think it means.
  - protocolture 1y ago
    >At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and NASA technology become a reason to fold into a national asset. Was speculating that this might be the outcome. If you wanted to punish musk this would be the way to do it. You would need to pay off Boeing at the same time but it could work.
Aeolun 1y ago
I think this was always true, it’s just that most presidents add a few extra clauses to the requirements instead of blatantly saying they’re going to cancel contracts.
anon291 1y ago
It's not like the previous party in charge didn't threaten the exact same thing. People still aren't seeing that both parties are descending into the sort of third world mindset while accusing the other of being the sole cause. This is a doom spiral in the making.
palmfacehn 1y ago
I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon. Graft has been a part of governance in every era. Typically, pandering to special interests is proportional to the government's slice of the economic pie. As the state interventions increase, so does the ability for bureaus to grant favors. What is somewhat unique here, is the brazen and flippant nature of the funding cut. I'm sure if we looked, we could find similar cases in US history. Author Patrick Newman has written on the topic of cronyism in US history. It is interesting to read the historical narrative framed from the perspective of who was lobbying and looting. Here's a recent lecture on the Marshall Plan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBGo2WbAoPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBGo2WbAoPI
popalchemist 1y ago
They see it as the guy on their side having more power, therefore they, by extension, have more power. Primate brain go brr.
- thrance 1y ago
  More like fascist brain, those who haven't bought into the decades of propaganda recognize this benefits no one. Fascism is not a natural state of mind.
  - popalchemist 1y ago
    On the contrary, I think it appeals to our baser instincts. Primates, from whom we evolved, settle their power disputes in EXACTLY the manner of "might makes right," and that isn't just about the individuals competing for power, but the dynamics of the crowd and how their allegiances and values shift according to who is in power.
delusional 1y ago
Not American. > ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. I'm definitely in agreement with the 60 percent. This should be unthinkable and political suicide. Openly speculating on if you can use the government as personal retaliation is absolutely undemocratic. So why is it so hard for me to care in this case? Because Elon Musk has used the government in the exact same way. He just got done cancelling random contracts he didn't like. He just circumvented democracy to play his little doge game. It is really hard to care about cheating when it happens to a cheater. Disgust at this move against SpaceX or Tesla has to start with consequences for Elon. If this is wrong, then Elon must be jailed.
martindbp 1y ago
I think there has always been this type of corruption. The interesting thing this time is how open it is, and how clearly visible it is in the stock market, where who is president results in swings of hundreds of billions of dollars. This includes both Trumps corruption for (and now against Tesla/SpaceX) and Bidens lawfare against his them.
panick21_ 1y ago
So far this is all talk, in effect non of the contracts got created because of that and so far non have been canceled because of that. This is all just media whoring around.
HocusLocus 1y ago
It's just wild that ~40% of the country wouldn't just wait and see what actually happens.
mcv 1y ago
Everything about the current US government is wild. Yes, cancelling government contracts because of this stupid fight is corruption, but so is everything else. There's not much that either Trump or Musk do that's not corrupt. I'd like to see both of them lose their power, because they only abuse it.
cedws 1y ago
Trump is good at revealing the cracks in US democratic process, or lack thereof.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  In 2016, that would have been the case due to popular vote and electoral college vote not matching. However, 2024’s popular and electoral college match show the cracks are in the racist and sexist and apathetic voter base.
  - acdha 1y ago
    It’s not just the democratic process itself, but the institutions around it. The main reason Trump isn’t in jail is because the Republican Supreme Court repeatedly protected him, even to the point of inventing new ahistorical doctrines. Once one of the major parties is no longer committed to of law we’re in uncharted territory.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      My point is Trump also won the popular vote, which means the people don’t want the traitor in jail either. Institutions are only as good as the people that compose them, in this case the institution is the country as a whole.
motorest 1y ago
> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. This is what a fascist dictatorship looks like. You have a leader who adheres to the persona of a strong man perpetually fighting against enemies who are both too weak and too strong, and at the drop of a hat their enemies change. Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law, so he is supported in arbitrarily abusing and corrupting the state for his own personal benefit because his personal victories are sold as a show of stength. The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are now living under a totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the world is already well aware.
- curt15 1y ago
  >Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law, Is it any accident that JD and Elon keep calling for "rule of the people" instead of "rule of law".
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
absurdo 1y ago
> This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. Or China to current-day prosperity. It’s hard to admit but it’s a double edged sword and there are winners and losers. Choose your poison wisely.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  Incorrect. It was liberalization (to some extent) of the otherwise heavily centralized economy that led China to its present day prosperity.
- intended 1y ago
  Saying this was not the path to China’s current-day prosperity is to place a VERY heavy weight, on a very thin branch.
LatteLazy 1y ago
What does a democracy do when people willingly and knowingly vote for fascism? “Vote for me and you’ll never have to vote again” won…
scotty79 1y ago
That's no more (or less) corruption than him saying I like Elon so I'm awarding him all this government contracts
exe34 1y ago
At this point I'm just happy these two are turning on each other - the more they hurt each other, the less time they have to focus on the rest of us. 6 months was a long time to wait, but I suppose dismantling the machinery of state that was trying to force his companies to follow the law wasn't going to be a quick job.
randomcarbloke 1y ago
he appointed him, and it saves the taxpayer money...

the_af 1y ago

Agreed. It's also wild that someone who was a major contributor to the election campaign and a major advisor to the president now declares "well, the president is a pedophile" and nobody bats an eye either. I mean, Musk supporters now have to believe Musk knowingly supported a pedophile but only turned against him after he had a falling out for unrelated reasons? In the eyes of his supporters, what does this say about Musk? (Note: whether the accusation is true or not is irrelevant; what matters is that Musk supported someone whom he claims to know is a pedophile).

aisenik 1y ago
Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker and affiliated with the Epstein child rape organization through his Kung-Fu lessons with Ghislaine Maxwell. Prior supporters will be less reactive for the first reason and more likely to perceive the situations as unfounded petty accusations for the latter (the dissonance of both Trump and Musk being connected to child rape is resolved this way).
- drivingmenuts 1y ago
  It's kind of his pointless go-to A-bomb insult, yet, this time, it's within the realm of possibility. I mean, I don't not believe it and I don't think I'm alone in that.
- majormajor 1y ago
  Trump/Epstein connections have been reported on for years with photos and videos so anyone who cares probably was already on the anti-Trump side. While Musk has a bigger megaphone than most media, he also has a credibility issue - and now especially for the Trump-true-believer crowd that is likely the only group whose bubble would be so shielded that they'd see it as news.
  - redeeman 1y ago
    trump was one of the people that originally provided all they knew about epstein to the prosecutors, and once he realized what epstein was, he was banned from all trump venues. What did other do?
- jordanb 1y ago
  Not only that but Musk was able to successfully argue in court that he's such a well known liar that a reasonable person wouldn't take his accusations of pedophillia seriously
  - the_af 1y ago
    Wow, I didn't know this. I didn't even know this was a possible defense at all, "everything I say is bullshit, so if anyone takes it seriously, that's on them".
    - xnx 1y ago
      Fox news attempted this defense in court "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
      - casefields 1y ago
        Maddow and MSNBC made the same argument in court. It’s a very useful defense for these entertainment news programs.
        wat10000 1y ago
        A pox on all of them.
    - fhdkweig 1y ago
      My memory is a bit fuzzy, but that was also Trump's family's response to the financial statements related to his businesses when it came up in court. But I don't remember which court case it was.
      - FireBeyond 1y ago
        That was the one where he told the IRS the buildings he owned were worth $(x)M for tax purposes, but was simultaneously having them valued at $(10x)M for loan collateral purposes.
- amiga386 1y ago
  > Musk is a known pedophile-accusation-maker Laughably so. Musk: I can save those boys trapped in the cave! We can use this stupid submarine thing of mine. Hero: No need, I and my Navy SEAL cave-diving pals have got this. Musk: How dare you! You're a pedo. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44779998 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-44779998 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45418245 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45418245
  - lostlogin 1y ago
    Would you bet against accusation in this instance? The existing recordings and convictions against Trump don’t seem to have hurt him. Why would this?
  - thrance 1y ago
    He was sued for that by the guy and won his trial by convincing the judge that "pedo" is actually common Afrikaner lingo, and it was a casual insult. This country is a joke. Also doesn't remove the fact Trump was one of Epstein's closest friends, and everything points to him being involved in some way or the other in those affairs.
    - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
      Musk's brother was introduced to his girlfriend by Epstein. Epstein mentored a young model who went onto be a neurosurgeon and married Microsoft's Sinofsky. Bill Gates had a meeting with Epstein during which an ex-girlfriend of Epstein's who was once Miss Sweden just happened to turn up with her 15 year old daughter. I'd quite like someone to investigate if our billionaires are being honeypotted left, right and center because it appears you can control a big swathe of the world's wealth if you get old rich nerds laid. It's still not clear if Epstein made his money by blackmailing yet another Billionaire.
Geee 1y ago
He supposedly learned it after the fact. Also, he didn't say that, although he surely implied that. However, he only said that Trump is in the "files", which has actually been public information for a long time. It's known that Trump had some relations with Epstein, but there's no evidence he went to the island or did something wrong. It's quite obvious that Elon knows that Trump is not on the actual "list", i.e. the list of Epstein's clients who went to the island. That's why the message reads like a silly insult, rather than a serious accusation.
- krapp 1y ago
  To be fair Elon claimed that Trump is mentioned in the remainder of files which have yet to be released. Presumably what evidence there is of wrongdoing, if it exists, exists there. "Pedo guy" Musk being Musk, though, who knows? What is the likelihood Musk would even have access to those files if they were so damning to Trump and still sealed? Nothing about this is "quite obvious." It could go either way. To be honest I wouldn't put it past either one of them to be on Epstein's "list."
  - Geee 1y ago
    I think the tone of the message would be way more serious if it was a serious accusation based on actual evidence. Now it reads like a kindergarten level conspiracy theory, which almost seems like a joke. The silly claim was that Trump being in the files is the reason why they aren't released. And apparently he has now deleted the tweet.
    - krapp 1y ago
      Without seeing the unreleased files we can't know how silly the claim is.
- the_af 1y ago
  > He supposedly learned it after the fact. When exactly? He was friends with Trump and working in his administration until a few weeks ago (they hugged in his going away ceremony), and he broke up for reasons explicitly not about any pedophile rings. So to lob this accusation now doesn't seem like it's because he just learned of it. I don't know what Musk really believes. The guy behaves like a mentally unstable person, but maybe it's an act? What is true is that accusing the president of the US of being linked to a pedophile ring is not the same as accusing some random scuba diver of being a pedophile. The scuba diver cannot really fight back, but I think the president of the US might. (Based on replies to my comments elsewhere, I feel compelled to clarify I'm in no way defending Trump. I think this is a fight between two nasty people).
BLKNSLVR 1y ago
That's a great point about both the pettiness and corrupting influence of power. Trump and Musk are trash human beings and the world would be better off if they were both 100% occupied with trying to destroy each other, with the hope being that then some adults could come in and run the country / companies. I think Trump was probably always trash. Musk may have had redeemable qualities at one point, but, well, as per my first sentence.
randomcarbloke 1y ago
theoretically he might have discovered this after he had paid for Trump's win. I despise the guy but it's entirely possible that he was blind to the publicly available evidence before seeing the secret evidence.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

steveBK123 1y ago

July 4th we commemorate getting rid of one mad king overseas and replacing him with.. oh wait.

mindslight 1y ago
You should always self-host your foreign mad king. The latency to England is just too high.
- ithkuil 1y ago
  KaaS (king as a service)
- catlifeonmars 1y ago
  Canada has done it the right way. Self host but have a redundant backup across the pond.
- tbrownaw 1y ago
  We actually had one back in the 1800's: https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-joshua-norton-emperor-of-the-united-states-4158141 https://www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-joshua-norton-emperor...

jmyeet 1y ago

6 of the people who think all this is completely fine are Supreme Court justices. All of this is enabled by the completely illegitimate Supreme Court decision that made the president a god-king by inventing out of thin air the concept of "presidential immunity". Not only is the scope of "official duties" so broad to make prosseuction next to impossible but the majority went out of its way to say you can't even examine the communications between the president and the DoJ.

peterfirefly 1y ago
It was not out of thin air. There's a reason why the impeachment process is in the Constitution -- and why it's perfectly normal for countries to have Parliamental Immunity and processes quite similar to the US impeachment for government ministers.
- cosmicgadget 1y ago
  We have legislative immunity called the speech and debate clause. It doesn't shield lawmakers from other crimes, nor should it, and it certainly doesn't imply some sort of expansive executive immunity. The founders were rebelling agaisnt an untouchable executive, remember?
  - voidfunc 1y ago
    If the founders thought it was so important the President not have immunity from all crimes they would have written it such rather than leaving it to interpretation.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > If the founders thought it was so important the President not have immunity from all crimes they would have written it such They did; by writing in explicit immunities for some constitutional officers for certain activities, they implicitly rejected other immunities for those and other constitutional officers, by the legal principle “expressio unius est exclusio alterius”.

deleted 1y ago

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CalChris 1y ago

Did this only become 'wild' when it applied to Elon? Also, this Elon that you speak of, isn't he the DOGE Elon? Isn't he the Nazi salute Elon? Or perhaps there's some other Elon that I'm unaware of. This is literally the Department of Goes Around Comes Around. Elon is Trump's Berezovsky.

deeg 1y ago
I have absolutely no sympathy for Musk but the president--any president--shouldnt be able to do this.
- consumer451 1y ago
  The biggest self-indictment in that post by POTUS was "I was always surprised Biden didn't do it!" I am not surprised that Biden didn't cancel all SpaceX contracts for political reasons, neither are most rational people.
  - jyounker 1y ago
    Trump doesn't believe that smart people with power can have ethics or morality because he doesn't have them himself.
    - majormajor 1y ago
      It's not ethics or morality, it's just "not being a child." A president not personally retaliating against a critic doesn't need to have anything to do with ethics, it's just requires a post-middle-school mentality of "I may not be happy with this person but I [my country] can still benefit from things they do."
      - ithkuil 1y ago
        The property of "being a child" in an adult is effectively a matter of ethics and morality

belter 1y ago

1 Musk = 13 Scaramuccis . Please update your SI unit tables accordingly.

drivingmenuts 1y ago

[flagged]

yongjik 1y ago

On the positive side, Trump is so unstable that he'll trash your business one day and then the next day he'll reverse course. So, "if people kiss your ass enough, they get contract" does not seem to be a long-term viable strategy. (Exhibit A: Musk.) I'm 90% sure it will lead to America's ruin, but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin. Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/

Phenomenit 1y ago
That’s the key right? It’s world as content. Nothing means anything anymore as long as it gets spread on media platforms. The easiest way for the US to get out this downward spiral is to just ignore the medias coverage of ”politics”. But that’s not gonna happen is it? Gotta se what happens next!
blibble 1y ago
> Hey, at least it looks more entertaining! :/ did people expect any different when they elected a reality TV star to be president? one that's such an incredible businessman he managed to bankrupt not one, but two casinos
- martin-t 1y ago
  He's first and foremost a narcissist (strongly grandiose subtype, and all over the place on the communal/malignant axis). That condition should make him ineligible for any position of power. This is what a society gets when it elects someone mentally ill (in the harmful-to-others rather than the typical harmful-to-ill-person sense). I am continually astounded by how many people, even if you explain the symptoms to them, will be unable to see it - not just in this one case but in general. There is something in many people that makes them attracted to those who treat them awfully and consider them only slightly above things.
  - thoroughburro 1y ago
    Narcissists are over-represented as CEOs and such, as well. I think a fair number of Americans like narcissists.

tempodox 1y ago

I've said before that by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins. I may have been too optimistic, it might happen earlier.

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
I agree entirely. Higher education and research are already being affected. Those reputations aren't quickly rebuilt. Same with trust on trade and reliability as a defence ally. Even when Trump is replaced, he had accelerated the exposure of the fragility of the base US system of government. The fact one bad actor can upset many long established apple carts is not something really forgotten.
FergusArgyll 1y ago
> by the time Trump is through America will lie in ruins If you had to make that concrete, what would that look like? GDP growth under 2% annually for >3 years? Dollar losing >50% of its value against a basket of major currencies? Credit rating downgrade below AA- by major agencies? Loss of reserve currency status (measured by <40% of global reserves in USD)? Interstate commerce disruption lasting >30 days? Mass emigration of >2 million Americans annually? I'd happily take the other side on any of those, name your price.
- bix6 1y ago
  I’d argue we’re already there with all the social fragmentation but I reckon we’ll see a measurable decline in scientific output / discovery.
  - FergusArgyll 1y ago
    Patents? Journal articles published?
    - bix6 1y ago
      Funding is already falling ie NSF disbursements so I’d expect the h-index to fall off significantly. So sure patents will fall, journal pubs will fall, enrollment will fall, staff count will fall, total experiment count will fall, grant count will fall.

cameldrv 1y ago

Likewise that Elon can say Trump is “ungrateful” that be received $150 million in campaign donations because he withdrew the nomination for Elon’s NASA administrator. It’s just open bribery.

sigmoid10 1y ago
American democracy died on the day the supreme court overturned campaign finance restrictions. Since then US politics is a mere playground for billionaires and corporations.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Harris outspent Trump 3:1. Hillary outspent Trump 2:1. It's not that easy to buy an election.
  - brookst 1y ago
    Elon spent more on behalf of Trump than the entire official Harris campaign spent. This is a terrible argument. We know the Supreme Court legalized unlimited campaign spending, and we’re not dumb enough to think Elon’s money wasn’t part of the Trump campaign.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      Elon spent well over a billion dollars on the campaign? You'll need a cite for that.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    This is misleading (it is approximately correct if you look only at candidate committee spending, but it excludes outside spending—where the advantage went the other way, and the outside spending in 2024 exceeded campaign committee spending.)
    - mindslight 1y ago

creato 1y ago

This is why the standard for something to be considered improper behavior is (or used to be) the appearance of a conflict of interest. People stopped giving a shit about anything. This is just one of dozens of things that would have been totally unacceptable a few years ago.

andrepd 1y ago
The world is no longer a serious place. Everybody is turbo-infantilised via social media. I don't know if that's indeed the root cause or if it's a combination of factors, but the fact remains that people don't even feel the need to _pretend to care_ about honesty, character, seriousness, etc.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  I think they might have figured out that a lot of that honesty and character was a facade. Is the false appearance of morality better than just showing yourself as you really are?
  - dasil003 1y ago
    You mean that people lie and cheat? That's always been the case. The point of honesty and character is precisely that they reflect a person's ability to value a higher good than their immediate self-interest. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that reputation has been subjected to unprecedented arms race in the face of the internet and social media doesn't fundamentally change the game, it just makes it more exhausting and overwhelming to pay attention to.
  - cycomanic 1y ago
    That always brings to mind this comic: https://condenaststore.com/featured/he-tells-it-like-it-is-paul-noth.html https://condenaststore.com/featured/he-tells-it-like-it-is-p...
- Gigachad 1y ago
  This kind of stuff would not fly in Australia. Not to say that there is no corruption, but that it isn’t absolutely blatant and ignored.

pessimist 1y ago

It turns out that when elections are fought on the basis of identity (race, religion) etc corruption is actually considered a benefit! This is because the loyalists interpret this as "we" are winning and "they" are losing. I witnessed this up close in India where parties openly exist to benefit certain constituencies based on caste, language, religion and so on. It is horrifying to see this attitude take root in my adopted land.

tshaddox 1y ago
In that case, it would be neat if corruption were illegal!
- ty6853 1y ago
  Or just more accessible, so the average person can get a piece of the benefits that cartels and megacorp executives already get.
  - supriyo-biswas 1y ago
    Voila, we've ended up with a low trust society with "petty corruption", which is generally considered harmful as it establishes something about that society that cannot be easily corrected unlike "grand corruption."
alephnerd 1y ago
Vote banks and patronage politics has always been a thing in the US, especially at the local and state level. The main difference is a significant portion of governance was temporarily de-politicized in the 1960s-90s period as leadership on both sides of the aisle had formative unifying experiences during the World Wars and the Korean War, but has been re-politicized now that activism on both sides of the aisle has resurged and social polarization has taken root. The expansion of executive powers also played a role in this erosion, as both the judicial and legislative branch increasingly devolved their prerogative to the executive, leaving it much more open to political tampering and reducing the power of checks and balances. There's a reason LKY in SG, Yoshida Shigeru and Sato Eisaku in Japan, and François Mitterrand in France tried to decentralize power to a semi-independent civil service.

onetimeusename 1y ago

This whole article is speculation about a war of words on social media from two days ago. You are further stretching the chain of inference and adding in some statistics without any citation. >One industry source, speaking on background, dismissed the exchanges as “bluster” that neither Musk nor Trump would actually implement

bobthepanda 1y ago

Part of the problem is that * those who were concerned about it happening to others have seen it happen so many times now that they are jaded and it's a bit schaudenfreude. Those earlier cases (Harvard, law firms, etc.) have yet to actually finish going through the courts * there is a subset that is just super cult of personality around the current president and will bend over backwards to justify actions

scarface_74 1y ago

It’s not they don’t see it - they don’t care. This has always been the moral compass of the US.

vkou 1y ago

> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. They didn't see it that way when he was doing it to people he didn't like, why would they see it that way when he is doing it to a person he just decided that he didn't like? Elon, of course, as usual, is responding to someone upsetting him with accusations of pedophilia. So far, all of this is quite normal.

JCattheATM 1y ago

~40% of the country sees that as strength. Democracies only really work with an educated and altruistic population, and the US is only getting further away from that.

dinkumthinkum 1y ago
[flagged]
- goatlover 1y ago
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  - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - edoceo 1y ago
      Ignoring the Constitution is authoritarian, right?
    - aorloff 1y ago
      I guess you haven't been paying attention: Trump's attacks on Judge Boasberg for example JD Vance saying judges cannot check the President's power This is basically exactly what they are saying : the president has ultimate unchecked power, and the judges cannot keep ruling on these pesky laws.
    - cmurf 1y ago
      The delusional conspiracy theory Trump won the 2020 election, in order to justify January 6 violence and then pardoning those criminals as his first act as POTUS redux. Trump sent a mob to assassinate the vice-president of the United States when he (Mike Pence) refused Trump’s order to overturn that election. Trump’s longest serving chief of staff said Trump is, A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. The bigotry of low expectations is thinking people are too stupid to know this, rather than understanding 1/3 are anti-American illiberal shitbirds. Just because they failed to get it once before doesn’t mean they didn’t try and keep on trying. A vote for a rapist, a felon, and vile insurrectionist is voting in support of abuse. And now we’re getting abused.

nickpsecurity 1y ago

It's been going on a long time. Democrats and Republicans, especially in the Pentagon, have bought influence of politicians to get billions of tax dollars. So you should change the comment to say "most Democrat and Republican voters in the primaries apparently wont vote out those who give or take bribes." That would be correct. Jethro's advice to Moses in God's Word is still good advice for voters today. If a politician ever meets this criteria, then we'll see amazing things happen. That's below with verse 21 highlighted: "19 Now obey my voice; I will give you advice, and God be with you! You shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God, 20 and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws, and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. 21 Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. 22 And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter they shall decide themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. 23 If you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all this people also will go to their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:19-23) (ESV)

xnx 1y ago

Every accusation from Trump/Fox/Republicans is an admission. This is the "swamp" they were going to drain. It is now overflowing.

lostlogin 1y ago

It’s pretty incredible. NYT now: “President Trump said on Saturday that he believed his relationship with Elon Musk was over after the two sparred publicly on social media this week, and he warned there would be “serious consequences” if Mr. Musk financed candidates to run against Republicans who voted in favor of the president’s domestic policy bill.” So the president can decide who someone supports? Two truly awful humans fighting it out.

bhouston 1y ago

This is what Trump is doing to Harvard right now. He even is pushing legislation to tax their endowment and also has an executive order to deny them and on them foreign students.

overfeed 1y ago
...and to law firms before then, US government contractors (worldwide[1]). If OP thinks thinks this is a nee Trump play, they haven't been paying attention. 2. The US embassy tried to get a Swedish city to agree to some anti-DEI clause in a vendor agreement. Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  > Using government money to win ideological arguments is S.O.P. for the Trump II admin. This is literally also what the dems were doing with USAID discrediting gamergate and funding bias news networks, neither party is above it.
  - overfeed 1y ago
    I remember when Obama threatened Fox Sports mergers due to how Fox News covered his first term in office, and trued to get the Saudis to sign a pro-choice vendor agreement with the embassy. Biden also threatened law firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them from government buildings and revoke security clearance. It was the standard thing for dems to do when dealing with political opponents. Both sides are totally the same thing, there's nothing to be done.
    - mschoch 1y ago
      [dead]
    - bhouston 1y ago
      > Biden also threatened law firms that represented Trump and threatened to ban them from government buildings and revoke security clearance. I did a few quick searches for more information about this claim of yours. I also asked Claude and ChatGPT to research it. I can not find any sources to back up this claim of yours. Can you source it for me? For example: https://claude.ai/share/d36c7a89-adff-4625-9cd6-89e60b254ea1 https://claude.ai/share/d36c7a89-adff-4625-9cd6-89e60b254ea1 https://chatgpt.com/share/684972cb-0140-8006-9f0f-9075537bf259 https://chatgpt.com/share/684972cb-0140-8006-9f0f-9075537bf2...

nkrisc 1y ago

They see it; it's why they voted for him.

sandworm101 1y ago

The new reality. Every corporate decision made today now must involve an analysis of the local and national government authority, thier political leanings and thier tendancy towards vindictivness. Does anyone not think that every major corporation is not commissioning psychological reports on certain US leaders? They have public affairs and social media consultants to gauge public reactions. Now they need head shrinks to tell them if and how the guy in the big office might react, be that a state governor, the president, or any number of politically-minded media owners.

brookst 1y ago
Why pay shrinks when you can pay baksheesh to political underlings who claim to be connected? Sure, most of them aren’t, but corruption is a statistics game. You spend $100k on that one guy who really does sleep with the masseuse of the astrologist for dear leader, and it can be a 10,000% return in days.

_heimdall 1y ago

> If you can cancel contacts not based on merit That's a hard argument to hold in the context of recent history. Maybe for the better, maybe for worse, merit has taken a back seat in many cases as we prioritized other factors. What's interesting to me here is that the executive branch has authority to change these contracts. I do understand that's how it has worked for a while, and you could argue that these contracts are part of executing on congress's mandate, but I personally would prefer the executive branch not have this power. If it were up to me congressional committees would be responsible for this as part of budgeting responsibilities, and the executive branch would be much weaker than it is today.

wrs 1y ago
As with so many other things the executive branch is doing right now, it doesn’t have exclusive power to do this. Congress sets the rules for how procurement works.
- wat10000 1y ago
  It’s not supposed to. It sure looks like it does. Power is more than what the written rules say you can do.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    I think you're getting to the distinction between power and authority. Congress may have the authority to decide procurement (I'm not 100% sure on this, going with the discussion), but functionally the president may have the power to force their will through the system.
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      Congress has been too deferential to executive power for decades.
      - wat10000 1y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-warren-report-special-interests-over-the-public-interest-elon-musks-130-days-in-the-trump-administration https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/new-wa... https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/130_days_of_elon_musk_report.pdf https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/130_days_of_elon... https://cepr.net/publications/corrupt-control-of-the-trump-administration/ https://cepr.net/publications/corrupt-control-of-the-trump-a... If Musk is engaging in corruption with respect to the US government, then what could be done to stop it. Whatever the answer, almost certainly Musk's ties to the government would need to be broken, including contracts and funding.

sega_sai 1y ago

It is also interesting, that many people here somehow have no issues with trump cancelling federal contracts with Harvard, prohibiting student visas for harvard, firing entire sections of NSF, NIH, NOAA, but when it comes to contracts with spacex, they react.

handoflixue 1y ago
There's plenty of threads about all of those issues here on Hacker News - why do you think the people reacting to SpaceX didn't also react to the rest?
- sega_sai 1y ago
  Some people do react to all, but the parent comment that I commented on just mentioned the spacex situation, like it's something new, while this is just the continuation of what's be going on for months. And I've certainly seen people on HN trying to defend grant cancellations, Harvard attacks, NSF firings etc. I obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions are on the spacex threats, but I conjecture, that many of them don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on universities, science agencies.
  - matwood 1y ago
    Cancelling contracts out of spite or for revenge without due process is wrong in all cases. Including SpaceX. Though I have to say it’s entertaining to see Musk’s own companies be effectively DOGE’d.
  - inglor_cz 1y ago
    "I obviously can't be sure what those people's opinions are on the spacex threats, but I conjecture, that many of them don't like them" Your original comment didn't mention that you were conjecturing anything, you just stated your conjecture as an observation or a fact. Less charitably, this is called building a straw man.
  - jrflowers 1y ago
    > I conjecture, that many of them don't like them, while they were ok with the attacks on universities, science agencies. This is a good point. If you imagine something in your head in a particular way, it is not the same as if you imagine it differently in your head. For example, if I imagine that all dogs are boys and all cats are girls, it paints a different picture of the world than if I imagine that there are both male and females of both animals. It is a curious phenomenon

sneak 1y ago

You are taking this at face value. It’s all farce. Elon helped Trump get elected. Now Trump has to help Elon get the Trump stink off so people stop calling it the swasticar.

ahf8Aithaex7Nai 1y ago

That is true. But the dubiousness of the whole thing starts a long way before that. Why is Musk there at all? Because we are sliding into neo-feudalistic conditions in which a court of the richest people steer the affairs of state and shape them in their own favor. And we've known what Trump is like all along. We didn't have to deduce that from the fact that he is now quarrelling with Musk.

chrischen 1y ago

Maybe what you think of as corruption is not what your opposing party thinks of as corruption?

jchook 1y ago

Exemplifying the meme.. "[Doing American things Americanly]: What are we, ASIAN???"

protocolture 1y ago

Everything you say is true. That said I think SpaceX is the only service even in the running for said contracts. Nasa doesnt have the capability, and Boeing is quite a way behind. There was already speculation that SpaceX would have to take on Boeings commitments for Artemis.

slimebot80 1y ago
It's murky. NASA outsources a lot of money to SpaceX because Musk could burn through risk and money at levels NASA would get cancelled for. At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and NASA technology become a reason to fold into a national asset. China didn't achieve its Great Leap Forward by pandering to wealthy celebrities who cosplay as geniuses.
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  The Great Leap Forward (1958-62) was an absolute disaster that resulted in widespread famine.
  - antifa 1y ago
    It's a great example of Move Fast and Break Things applied to government.
- hollerith 1y ago
  >Great Leap Forward Altough most readers will catch your meaning, that phrase does not mean what you think it means.
- protocolture 1y ago
  >At what point is SpaceX's benefiting from tax money and NASA technology become a reason to fold into a national asset. Was speculating that this might be the outcome. If you wanted to punish musk this would be the way to do it. You would need to pay off Boeing at the same time but it could work.

Aeolun 1y ago

I think this was always true, it’s just that most presidents add a few extra clauses to the requirements instead of blatantly saying they’re going to cancel contracts.

anon291 1y ago

It's not like the previous party in charge didn't threaten the exact same thing. People still aren't seeing that both parties are descending into the sort of third world mindset while accusing the other of being the sole cause. This is a doom spiral in the making.

palmfacehn 1y ago

I'm not sure this is a new phenomenon. Graft has been a part of governance in every era. Typically, pandering to special interests is proportional to the government's slice of the economic pie. As the state interventions increase, so does the ability for bureaus to grant favors. What is somewhat unique here, is the brazen and flippant nature of the funding cut. I'm sure if we looked, we could find similar cases in US history. Author Patrick Newman has written on the topic of cronyism in US history. It is interesting to read the historical narrative framed from the perspective of who was lobbying and looting. Here's a recent lecture on the Marshall Plan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBGo2WbAoPI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBGo2WbAoPI

popalchemist 1y ago

They see it as the guy on their side having more power, therefore they, by extension, have more power. Primate brain go brr.

thrance 1y ago
More like fascist brain, those who haven't bought into the decades of propaganda recognize this benefits no one. Fascism is not a natural state of mind.
- popalchemist 1y ago
  On the contrary, I think it appeals to our baser instincts. Primates, from whom we evolved, settle their power disputes in EXACTLY the manner of "might makes right," and that isn't just about the individuals competing for power, but the dynamics of the crowd and how their allegiances and values shift according to who is in power.

delusional 1y ago

Not American. > ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. I'm definitely in agreement with the 60 percent. This should be unthinkable and political suicide. Openly speculating on if you can use the government as personal retaliation is absolutely undemocratic. So why is it so hard for me to care in this case? Because Elon Musk has used the government in the exact same way. He just got done cancelling random contracts he didn't like. He just circumvented democracy to play his little doge game. It is really hard to care about cheating when it happens to a cheater. Disgust at this move against SpaceX or Tesla has to start with consequences for Elon. If this is wrong, then Elon must be jailed.

martindbp 1y ago

I think there has always been this type of corruption. The interesting thing this time is how open it is, and how clearly visible it is in the stock market, where who is president results in swings of hundreds of billions of dollars. This includes both Trumps corruption for (and now against Tesla/SpaceX) and Bidens lawfare against his them.

panick21_ 1y ago

So far this is all talk, in effect non of the contracts got created because of that and so far non have been canceled because of that. This is all just media whoring around.

HocusLocus 1y ago

It's just wild that ~40% of the country wouldn't just wait and see what actually happens.

mcv 1y ago

Everything about the current US government is wild. Yes, cancelling government contracts because of this stupid fight is corruption, but so is everything else. There's not much that either Trump or Musk do that's not corrupt. I'd like to see both of them lose their power, because they only abuse it.

cedws 1y ago

Trump is good at revealing the cracks in US democratic process, or lack thereof.

lotsofpulp 1y ago
In 2016, that would have been the case due to popular vote and electoral college vote not matching. However, 2024’s popular and electoral college match show the cracks are in the racist and sexist and apathetic voter base.
- acdha 1y ago
  It’s not just the democratic process itself, but the institutions around it. The main reason Trump isn’t in jail is because the Republican Supreme Court repeatedly protected him, even to the point of inventing new ahistorical doctrines. Once one of the major parties is no longer committed to of law we’re in uncharted territory.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    My point is Trump also won the popular vote, which means the people don’t want the traitor in jail either. Institutions are only as good as the people that compose them, in this case the institution is the country as a whole.

motorest 1y ago

> It's wild that a president can say, "I don't like Elon anymore, so out of retaliation, I'm canceling all his government contracts," and ~40% of the country doesn't see that as corruption in any way, shape, or form. This is what a fascist dictatorship looks like. You have a leader who adheres to the persona of a strong man perpetually fighting against enemies who are both too weak and too strong, and at the drop of a hat their enemies change. Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law, so he is supported in arbitrarily abusing and corrupting the state for his own personal benefit because his personal victories are sold as a show of stength. The US needs to wake up to the fact that they are now living under a totalitarian dictatorship. The rest of the world is already well aware.

curt15 1y ago
>Then of course rule of law doesn't apply anymore because the strong man in charge is the law, Is it any accident that JD and Elon keep calling for "rule of the people" instead of "rule of law".

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

absurdo 1y ago

> This is literally the path that led the USSR to ruin. Or China to current-day prosperity. It’s hard to admit but it’s a double edged sword and there are winners and losers. Choose your poison wisely.

insane_dreamer 1y ago
Incorrect. It was liberalization (to some extent) of the otherwise heavily centralized economy that led China to its present day prosperity.
intended 1y ago
Saying this was not the path to China’s current-day prosperity is to place a VERY heavy weight, on a very thin branch.

LatteLazy 1y ago

What does a democracy do when people willingly and knowingly vote for fascism? “Vote for me and you’ll never have to vote again” won…

scotty79 1y ago

That's no more (or less) corruption than him saying I like Elon so I'm awarding him all this government contracts

exe34 1y ago

At this point I'm just happy these two are turning on each other - the more they hurt each other, the less time they have to focus on the rest of us. 6 months was a long time to wait, but I suppose dismantling the machinery of state that was trying to force his companies to follow the law wasn't going to be a quick job.

randomcarbloke 1y ago

he appointed him, and it saves the taxpayer money...