Elon vs Trump Explained w/ Brace Belden
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Is the government buying Ethereum or whatever? I haven't even heard about that. And I follow this stuff. Last week, we witnessed one of the most striking ruptures in the alliance between Silicon Valley and the political world, the public blowout between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Once close allies, Musk had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump's campaign and served as special advisor on the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. But the two are

now locked in a standoff as Elon's future within the MAGA movement remains uncertain. Brace Belden is the co-host of the podcast Truanon, and he's been covering Elon and the right-wing internet universe for years. Today, he joins me to break down this big blowup, unpack what this fracturing means for the right going forward, and what's next for Elon Musk. Brace, welcome to Power User. A pleasure to be here.

I'm so excited to talk to you about Elon because I feel like you're one of the few people that follows like every single aspect of Elon lore. I love him. Today, I kind of want to dig into the drama. But before we get into the big blow up that happened, when did you start to notice Elon going towards Trump? Because I feel like he started as a DeSantis guy and then he kind of pivoted.

A lot of these sort of like tech right guys, I feel like were sort of forwarded Santus at first because the reality is like Trump is really, let's say mercurial and kind of nuts. And I think for a certain kind of person, they were like his star has fallen. Like we need somebody who's got the based policies and is doing like base Miami bit

Bitcoin, crazy, whatever, but without like the baggage of Trump. And Elon himself like said this kind of stuff, like I like Trump, but like he, I think needs to kind of get out of here. We need some fresh blood. And the thing is DeSantis is one of the least charismatic politicians I think I've ever seen. He's just a lump of shit. You know, he crashed and burned. I mean, especially compared to Trump, him and everybody else was kind of afraid to talk shit.

about Trump in a real way. And so in a way, it sort of mirrored the Democratic primary or not primary, but like Kamala's campaign. The Democrats didn't have a primary. There was no primary. But it mirrored the Kamala campaign in a certain way because nobody could actually go against the, in Kamala's case, sitting president and in the Republicans' case, the last Republican president. And so Elon hitched his kind of wagon to

DeSantis, that crashed and burned. He himself is sort of so difficult to kind of like parse what he's thinking because it's always something even dumber than you could ever imagine. But I kind of believe on face value that like he got really excited when Trump got shot and really did decide to like go all in after that.

Yeah, because that's when he endorsed him. I think it was literally right after the assassination. I think like the day of or the day after. Yeah. And then that's also when he started pouring money into the America PAC and like basically just funneling money to the campaign. Oh, and doing his amazing, amazing.

Amazing town halls where, you know, Elon would kind of go up there and stutter his way through a kind of broken series of like self-interrupted diatribes about whatever. And he did his little dance and he did his little jump. I think Elon was kind of reveling in the attention. And there was early predictions that Elon and Trump would have a falling out because they're both kind of...

alpha dogs i mean trump falls out with everybody so it's like elon or whoever it is it's gonna happen but you know it seemed like they were sort of running these sort of parallel campaigns like trump is running for president elon sort of joining him on the road which i saw him actually in new york at that last big rally i think it was but then elon's kind of doing his like pennsylvania talking to the people to her give you a million dollars if you register to vote kind of

And it just converged in the White House in a beautiful way. I mean, it was so corny on the campaign trail. He had the Occupy Mars shirt. And he's always wearing like kind of shitty quality shirts, though, that like you got from like Teespring or something. It's bizarre. God forbid that they all get a Mark Zuckerberg style stylist and start like wearing their own kind of like fits or whatever. It's very obvious that Elon picks out his own clothes and that he has this sort of image that he like

kind of is cribbing from, I think, just like chat GPT, like show me a cool guy kind of thing, which is like a leather jacket and like boots and like tightish jeans. Well, he didn't even change his style to like Trump gets elected. He immediately is like gleeful at the White House at the inauguration, obviously. And then I feel like with Doge is when we started to see him like really starting to exert power. Can you talk through like some of the stuff that he was doing with Doge and sort of like that beginning era?

I mean, Vivek Ramaswamy, who is, we love Vivek around here. I love Vivek. He is sort of shuffled off into the nether realms. You know, he's running for governor of Ohio. God bless him. You know, Vivek and Elon sort of came into Doggy. I call it Doggy because there's a picture of a dog

I mean, Vivek is, for his many, many, many, many faults, probably a good deal smarter in terms of government and how it works and how people work probably than Elon is. Whereas Elon sort of has this memefied version, I think, of everything. And there was sort of these divergent paths there. It was interesting because Vivek's star sort of was tarnished during some like H1B Twitter kerfluffle. Remember that? Yes. I mean, this was like early signs of the right sort of

at war. I can't even remember where Trump stood. I feel like he tried to stay neutral, but there was drama over H-1B visas, where basically these like anti-immigration people were like, kick out all the H-1B visas. We got to eliminate immigrants. And all the tech people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like we kind of rely on those people. Those are like the Indians doing our work. And then Vivek was like, that was like when it became clear that he was like a person of color, I think. He's like, I bet it smells lazy in here. You white people, you white people are fucked.

And lazy. And he tried to do this almost kind of 90s, maybe early 2000s conservatism stuff where it's like, you got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The white family is falling apart. You guys are lazy. That really put him out of favor with the online rights who are particularly, I think, because of whatever short form videos they watch, like hate Indians. And it sort of became like very important to them in the past, like a couple of years. And he's

I think that he just kind of couldn't handle the heat. Funnily enough, Elon is also an H-1B person, but he sort of evaded that. But Vivek departed sort of with his, you know, his tail tucked between his legs to go run for governor in Ohio. And Elon came in there, and I think it was pretty clear that he didn't know what the government is really. And, you know, he hired all these 20-year-olds. I mean, I think that was probably because...

Most normal people wouldn't really want to take that job. Or like people who are not normal people, but like people a little older would want like a real job. But he hired all these like 20-year-olds, 22-year-olds, just like Elon worship guys. He did a bunch of...

Kind of unclear what the results of those things were. And then just kept pumping the numbers and juicing the numbers and saying they were higher than they were. And like promising these things in the same way that he promised flying cars and robo taxis and all this stuff. Promising that $5,000 doggy dividend checks were going to come and we're going to reap the benefits of this and all the savings. It's going to go right back into your pocket. Sometimes they would talk about how USAID is funding Indivisible or what, I don't know,

And then sometimes it was like, there's just so much graft and we're canceling these Adobe Pro accounts or whatever. Yeah, it was like, we've canceled our Politico Pro subscriptions across the government. Like Sahil Lavinkia, I might be mispronouncing his last name, the former head of Gumroad, I guess, went to go work for Doge and I think talked to Kevin Roos this week and was saying like, they couldn't find areas to cut.

Like it's actually quite hard to find areas of the government to cut. And Elon was also cutting things that were already like approved, like that money had already been earmarked or spent essentially. So it wasn't really saving anyone anything. Yeah. And it's interesting because I think Elon maybe had some like fundamental misunderstandings of how government works that maybe he got through like cat

memes or whatever you know abridged versions of the fountainhead that he's read but he didn't seem to kind of understand like congress's relationship to funding things and what the president had aegis over and what doggy's mission could be in certain places but in the past few months or the past couple months he sort of honed in on the deficit and this is a big thing for elon somehow

If he was really put on the spot, I'm not sure he could explain in his own words why it's so important to him. You know, he becomes hyper fixated on certain things. We see this, he'll spend like a month really focused on one topic and then it'll kind of like be dropped or replaced by NPC next current thing chip in his brain. The thing is, Elon is a special government employer, was a special government employee.

which was a real thing. We did know that his official tenure was ending, but it was kind of implied that he'd still be there. And he really wasn't actually head of Doggy to begin with. I don't even know if he was actually attached to Doggy in an official capacity. He obviously ran it, but this woman, something Gleason, he was nominally in charge of it. And so I think a lot of people kind of figured he would stay in that role. In the background, his companies are not doing well. Tesla, sort of his flagship company, it was not doing well because Tesla sort of became adopted

by the right wing as a symbol. Trump held a press conference, used car or new car showroom thing on the White House lawn talking about his Teslas. And that didn't help. And it was really just like consumer backlash. I mean, because obviously, if you attach yourself to Trump in this way, a certain amount of people who might possibly buy your vehicle

would no longer... I think AOC is a Tesla or had a Tesla. There's certain kinds of progressive people or whatever who are invested in electric cars. Also, while their stock was kind of going down in price, they were kind of making up for that or they were still retaining a level of profitability because...

of the carbon tax EV credits. - Which is like how Elon makes so much of his money. I think people might not realize, but like most of the reason Elon's companies are profitable and successful is because of these massive government subsidies. - Yes, I mean, SpaceX obviously, but Tesla especially has really, really benefited from EV credits and they sell their credits to other car companies. And that is where a ton of their profitability comes in.

And Trump has talked about EV credits before. Obviously, he's talked about them much more recently. But it's funny because Elon is sort of this, again, he doesn't really know what he's talking about a lot of the time. I think he spends a lot of his day on X, the everything app. And he's so kind of like in his own world. But, you know, he has this idea of cutting entitlements or whatever. He has an idea of kind of cutting the pork. But there's some pork that is a little more privileged. And that would be the pork that Elon Musk himself relies upon.

Right. And I think he wasn't like Doge wasn't also going to cut military spending, which is like the majority of what we spend money on. Yeah. Then he pivots like the deficit. I think it's like he realized he couldn't really actually cut that much from the government currently. So he's like, oh, it's the deficit is the real problem, right? Like that's the real thing. And Trump has this flagship big, beautiful bill that is going to actually add to the deficit because everybody knows like the deficit is kind of like made up. It's like a little bit fake. You're going to kick the can down the road forever. And you're

Maybe he actually believes this. Maybe it's just, again, like a fixation he has. It's like the can't, the buck stops here. We are fixing all of this. And you sort of saw this kind of coming out from Elon Twitter people for a little bit before.

Elon himself even started talking about it. But like the big, beautiful bill would undo some of Doggy's wonderful savings. And there was a Doggy Savings website. Like a bunch of made up debunked numbers. Of course. Yeah. There's also I think this is a sort of funny thing. Every single government agency has like a silver check Doggy account, but almost none of them have ever posted like anything.

There's like 50 of them. And they've all been like, hi, we're like Health and Human Services or we're like, you know, FDA, Doggie. And then nothing else. Nothing else about it. It's unclear because Doggie, of course, is like the rebranded digital service. And so like I'm not really sure what Doggie would be doing or could do outside of a lot of that stuff. Like Doggie wasn't really the people that like cut out USAIDs.

Like that was like a concerted effort for many people in the Trump administration. Ultimately, the only thing that like Doge could really do was like go into the like take down the website and like delete like databases. Like you said, because it was the Department of Digital Services, it's not like they were the ones like allocating the money. And yeah, you needed actual lawmakers to affect a lot more of the things that he had promised.

And that's what Elon has sort of been, or some people from Elon's side of Twitter have been sort of freaking out about it. It's like, oh, looks like Doggy's mission is, you know, going to be tarnished or aborted by the big, beautiful bill, which is going to have all this pork in it. And Elon spends a lot of time reading what his sycophants have to say about him.

E. Miles Chong, Gunther Eagleman, like all these Elon reply guys, like they really do make up a lot of Elon's world. And he will sort of like, first of all, steal memes or whatever from them. But I think he actually really does listen to these people. And of course, these people are

stupid. They don't really understand what Elon's limits here would actually be and have this sort of like fantasy version of Elon in their head where he really can do everything. He really is sort of Superman. He kind of is the shadow president. He is this and this and this and this and this. While some of the shadow president stuff might have been at first maybe a little true. And I think that Elon was probably instrumental in like putting together that

bizarre Julius Malema EFF kill the boar display in the White House with the president of South Africa and probably got some of the white genocide people out of South Africa. Yeah, that was bizarre. Like you brought over a couple dozen white South Africans to do what?

to go to the mall. There's limits to what Elon can do. And like the reality is if you're dealing with somebody like Trump, Elon should have been smarter and realize that like Trump always has to be the big dog. And Elon would sometimes, you know, he would say this or that, like, I have no desire to run for president. I really, which he can't obviously do anyways, but like, I really support Trump. He's in charge here. But I think Elon was sort of feeling himself. And the reality is, I think Elon really was on a lot of drugs. Still is probably.

You know, I think that ironically, for somebody who seems to seek out or find himself in sort of a lot of high pressure situations, he actually doesn't really react well to pressure. Not at all. He goes crazy a little bit. And I think that he was under a lot of pressure. And he said he was under a lot of pressure. Remember when he kind of cried when he talked about people like, I think it was Tim Waltz, like bragging about Tesla stock going down. I mean, he's so fragile, right? Like he has the most fragile.

fragile, fragile ego. This is why he's replying to people with 23 followers on Twitter too, when you're the richest man in the world. I'm thinking there's some kind of crazy hormonal unbalance because I feel like he's been on TRT for a while, kind of big with tech people. That's the testosterone stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he's been on test. And I would say even yourself out with a little, maybe some estrogen in

there? I don't know. But he's very, he's not even killed. One of the reasons he started taking ketamine therapeutically in the first place is because he felt under this pressure in 2022, 2023. At least that's why he said he was really depressed. And I think we were sort of seeing a repeat of that, maybe even a relapse if he ever stopped taking it on the ketamine. And I think it was just all kind of like coming down for him in his head. And as that was happening in

his time in the official member of the government was coming to a close. And the reality is a lot of Tesla stockholders are unhappy with him. Maybe not politically. They might agree with him politically, but like Tesla is a very active shareholder community. And I, you know, some of them are, you know, kind of Elon people on Twitter that he, he, you know, he pays attention to. And, and,

you know, he sort of was like, okay, well now I'm redoubling my efforts and like rededicating myself to my companies. So he goes out, I think he's either at SpaceX or he's at Tesla and he gives this interview. And in that interview, he kind of says some not so nice things about the bill. He's like, well, the bill is, you know, it can be bigger, it can be beautiful, but it can't be both. That was not a good idea. And there was this sort of the bruised eye goodbye he had with Trump. And I'm wondering now, you know, he said that little X was the one that punched him in the eye, but now I'm wondering who was Scott Besant.

Oh, yeah, because he got in that fight, right? What happened there? He has been feuding with Besson basically the entire time and like sub tweeting Scott Besson and just directly tweeting about him. Who is Scott Besson? He's the Treasury Secretary, right? But he's a big dude. I mean, Musk is also big, but like Besson's like 6'5". He lives in a giant pink house. I think he's gay, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah. Trump has some gay shooters on his side.

It's always been true of the Trump movement. Like they've actually have a lot of women in power, a lot of gay, like, or I don't know, I would say a lot, but like they have a decent amount. It reminds me in a way that like, maybe like your aunt who lives in Florida, who's like kind of older, has like some gay friends or something like that.

Trump's a bit haggish in that regard where he has his gaze. But Scott is respected. Like, I think people trust Scott definitely in the finance world. He's seen as like more reasonable and smart. And Elon seems to not know what he's talking about. And I think Elon, especially financially, like is just so up his own ass.

You know, there's reports that he was feeding with Marco Rubio and then they both came out and denied it. Elon is acerbic, right? Like people don't like Elon Musk. Unless you're a sycophant, there's very few people I think who actually enjoy being around Elon because he has a hard time connecting with people. And he is also himself at the same time, just an annoying guy to begin with. And, you know, thinks he's very funny when he's actually very much the opposite. I mean, anybody who says Elon is funny is lying.

because they want something from Elon Musk. That's just the way it is. Even people who like Elon would have to admit that. Let's talk about like the breakup then. This is like, I think one of the best days on Twitter ever. What kicked it off? I think one of the first things that I saw at least was Elon making a couple replies to like some of the slop accounts that sort of orbit around him. I think one's called Autism Capital and then there's like a few others. I think he like maybe replied in the affirmative to like somebody talking shit on Trump. And then he,

mentioned that Trump was in the Epstein files. And that's the reason they haven't been released. I want to zoom in on that because a big thing on sort of like right wing slop Twitter has been like, why haven't they released the Epstein files yet? We've seen guys like Mike Cernovich, all these people being like, you know, day whatever of no Epstein files released because Kash Patel had said that these were going to be released. Kash Patel has sort of been doing the rounds on podcasts. I think he was on Rogan a couple of days ago.

Yeah, he's the FBI director who's just been out there. He looks perpetually scared all the time. And I realized that, you know, I hadn't seen a full body pic of him in a while. He's built exactly like Rogan in this sort of short and muscly thing. And this is advice for anyone who's short out there. You're a short guy. You might think that the move is to get muscly because that will make women or whatever or guys ignore your shortness. Wrong, my brother. The shorter you are and the more muscly you are, the more it looks fucked up.

crazy. Patel's been saying like, actually, you know, Epstein did kill himself and actually we're not, there's not that much out there and we're not going to release this stuff. But the thing is, this has become such a prevalent meme on the right that like, there's no way that they can kind of give this up because a lot of them have, I don't know, made this like part of their whatever. And you know, I say to somebody who's,

knows a lot about the Jeffrey Epstein stuff and would very much like them to release any of the stuff they got. It's sort of like a trope, right? And it's this obsession and they're so obsessed with it. And they, yeah, like you said, there was that sort of like fake release where they had all these influencers come to the White House and flash these binders and that ended up being nothing. Clearly the thing started to break down with Trump and Elon and Trump is posting on Truth Social and Twitter

going off. They both were posted on their respective social media sites that they own, which is so crazy. It's so funny. First of all, none of these people actually want a release of anything. And second of all, everyone knows that Trump and Epstein are connected. This is not a secret at all. And throughout the day, then there was sort of this like prodding of each other. And, you know, it didn't go as far as I think a lot of people, including myself, were hoping. But

But Elon seemed to be more burning bridges than Trump did. Trump was sort of like a little bit blasé about it. He didn't go nuclear on Elon. But Elon starts getting into like, do we need like a new political party that represents the 80% of people in the middle? I want to like read a couple of these posts because I think like they're so absurd. So Trump says that he asked Elon to leave the White House and that basically Musk went crazy and like he was getting cut out and all that.

Trump says, Elon was wearing thin. I asked him to leave. I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted that he knew for months I was going to do. And he just went all caps crazy. And then he says the easiest way to save money on our budget, billions and billions of dollars is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts. I was always surprised Biden didn't do it. I think what triggered Trump the most, maybe to us, I don't think he actually cared about the Epstein stuff too, either. I feel like

it was Elon saying, without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the House and the House Republicans would be 51 to 49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude. And I feel like this is, like you said, you have to sort of always defer to Trump. Yeah. And this was like him trying to sort of like big time. And then he says, time to drop the really big truth bomb. Real Donald Trump is in the,

Epstein files. That's the real reason they have not been released. Have a nice day, DJT. And yeah, this is, I mean, Dan Blazarian replies, speaking truth to power. I love Dan Blazarian's anti-Semitic turn. It's so funny because it's desperately trying to copy the Tate's, I think. He's like, Lord, I seen what you did for Andrew Tate and like, please let it happen for you. But it's not hitting and he doesn't know what to do. So he's just sort of like flailing. It's tough. Blazarian, my brother, we'll take you back.

I feel like this all just blows up. Like you said, at one point, Elon Musk basically implies that Trump should be impeached. It all sort of blows up very publicly before everyone gets quiet, which, yeah, I agree. I wish they went harder. I was like, keep posting, keep posting. Don't stop. The thing is, Trump like gets these people in his head that he'll like always talk about for like Elizabeth Warren, for instance. He'll like just mention her randomly forever. Obviously, he talks about Biden frequently, frequently, frequently. But even Obama, he'll talk about a lot like.

people he hasn't like actually had to deal with in many years. I feel like there's a hope that he does this with Elon, but Elon still has so much cachet with the Trump movement or the MAGA movement that unless he actually moves against Trump or like really starts talking shit,

Then I think we see a problem. You know, it's funny. Elon basically like dropping these sort of truth bombs and like agreeing that Trump should be impeached. It's tough because everyone's like Elon's stupid or Elon's a genius. Elon is really smart in some ways, I'm sure. But Elon is like dumber than a baby in other ways. And one of those is like how to deal with people. And I think...

One thing that he sort of does find out sometimes is that like maybe people around him are like, listen, you have to like, please stop tweeting for a second. Like, just let it rest. You know, let's let's talk it out like men or whatever. And I think he can kind of be appealed to online.

that account. And I'm wondering if that's maybe what happened here. I have a weird feeling there might be a reconciliation at some point. But the reality is, is Elon is like highly unpopular with a lot of people in the electorate. Well, yeah, I want to get into that. But first, I want to talk about like, what happened with the people taking sides, because I feel like this kind of like threw a bomb into the conservative movement where like, everyone has sort of come together, like everyone came together to support Trump. And I feel like you saw so many of these right wing influencers like struggling to navigate. Well, we had this

Goat Squad at first, right? I mean, Vivek was in there for a second, but it was like RFK Jr., Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk. Wow, what a trio. We have struck oil here. Like we have our dream team. And for so many like kind of slop merchants on the right who are like basically spend all their day making like grok edits of like Musk and Elon Musk.

as like Roman gladiators. It was tough because a lot of these people have come to maybe rely on a certain income from blue check engagement on Twitter. Now that, as many people know, is sort of subject to Elon's whims.

and he can give it and he can take it away. Basically, it's a way for him to pay people to be his friend. So if you go against him, it's not so good. And so at first you saw everybody being like, you know what? These are two alpha dogs. Like we need peace. We need these guys to talk it out. And then as the day wore on and sort of Elon sort of went a little bit more nuts, a lot of that, some of the tweets have been deleted now, but you know, there were certain people picking sides and you saw some of the like Johnny come lately, MAGA types pick,

Elon, because that's kind of maybe how they got into it from just like destroying their brains, looking at Twitter all day. But the true MAGA, Jack Posobiec, for instance, all of these guys, they're picking Trump. I mean, it's just no contest. This episode of Power User is brought to you by Delete Me.

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That's join delete me dot com slash Taylor 20. Use code Taylor 20 at checkout. Don't wait until it's too late to safeguard your privacy. Make sure that your data and your family's stays protected. Well, it was kind of desperate of you. Elon tweeted Trump's only going to be around for three and a half more years. I'll be around for the next 40, which I don't know about the math on that. But you're in ninety five.

I don't think so, Elon. I think maybe you will not make it that long. But you just look unhealthy. I feel like it was this desperate attempt to be like, pick me kind of energy of like, stay on my side. And like, I'm still powerful, even though his power has obviously been diminished as he's leaving the government. Obviously. I mean, and the thing is like, Elon,

bought Twitter so people would be nice to him on Twitter. That is why he bought it. And so he could mold it to like be like this almost like friendship orbit on Elon simulator kind of thing. It's crazy. I mean, it speaks to a personality so damaged that you put a thousand monkey psychiatrists in front of a thousand monkey psychiatric typewriters for a thousand years and you couldn't even begin to give them even half a diagnosis. But a lot of that is contingent on his closeness to Trump. I mean, there will always be Elon diehard fans. Always, always. And there'll be a lot of them. But

the reality is, is like the MAGA movie is bigger than Elon. It's bigger than Elon. You know, we got many goats on the cliff. He, I think made a gamble and I feel like he's going to reconsider because I think a lot of his, his feelings get so hurt and I think he'll have to walk it back. But so many people have kind of fallen into the Elon orbit where it's just like this sort of sycophantic, like tweeting. He's a genius tweeting pictures of him. He has this guy. I love,

love doggy designer doge designer oh yeah yeah he was sort of like a 30 something year old indian guy who elon i think once flew out to the bay area who 24 hours a day has scheduled tweets of like elon musk as cacius maximus he'll just tweet about the roman empire and elon retweets this so often it's hard for me to even get kind of in the mindset of somebody who frequently retweets ai generated images of themselves but with like a not

up body and like a nice face. I think in a way that Elon has like a, there's sort of an emotional connection he might feel to teenage girls in that aspect where there's all these eating disorders and body dysmorphia that develops from girl, like teenage, you know, 14 year old girls seeing themselves on Instagram filters and then their actual face, like not looking up to snuff or whatever. I think Elon maybe is developing some kind of fucked

up filter based dysmorphia because of that that might be driving him further into you know his depressive spiral but I can't even begin to understand the psychology of somebody who does that so it's tough for me to really get into Elon's head here but I think he sees the tide turning on him a little bit and I think that probably freaks him out a lot because as he said himself like he is

all in on Trump because after Trump or if like something doesn't work out here I don't think the Democrats have the nuts to jail him but it's not going to be as good for him yeah it's like 100% about political expedience he still is reliant on all these government contracts he can't

actually alienate the government. Like Trump is more powerful in this situation. And like you said, the MAGA movement is just so much bigger and Trump is the alpha in this situation. And he has to remember that. And like you said, so many people have sort of forgotten that I think with Trump and they have these falling outs. He's so beholden to the government. And I think a lot of these MAGA influencers also recognize that like they recognize that Elon is unpopular. Elon has like a pretty low popularity rating. And like if you, you know, these influencers rely on public support and most of the public like

outside of like the Twitter echo chamber just doesn't have like a deep affinity for Elon. Like you said, he's kind of just annoying. Yeah, I think Elon confuses himself because he has this website made up of, you know, 80% maybe like Cambodian bots or like 19% autism capital or Mike Cernovich or whoever, like, you know, kind of like fluffing him all day. But outside of that, like a lot of people, even Republicans, like his approvals are not high. And also even just within the government, they don't really like fluffing.

with him. I mean, David Sachs, I would be surprised if David Sachs sticks around, honestly. Sachs is doing nothing. There was the crypto conference or whatever, and then nothing since then. Is the government buying f***ing Ethereum or whatever? I haven't even heard about that. And I follow this stuff. There's been really nothing since then. Sachs is just, I mean, he's a humiliating creature to begin with, but boy, I mean, sub Elon just kind of like stuck in the middle and all he can do is kind of be like, ha ha,

crazy day on Twitter. Everything's happening here. Not true. Half of it's happening on true social, but yeah, we won't say that. Well, my favorite were the blue sky reactions. Are you on blue sky? I'm on blue sky, unfortunately. I never set foot on there. Well, did you see the discourse? And actually, you know, people were attributing it to blue sky, but it was all over threads. And I went on Instagram reels this morning and there was a woman issuing an apology. So there was a lot of backlash to people saying the girls are fighting.

Did you see that? I thought that was like okay to say because it's kind of like a, because from my understanding, and you know much more about this than I am, so maybe I'm wrong. From what I understanding is like sort of the way that the sort of people who make Instagram reels talk is kind of like this imagined 19 year old gay black guy from the Bronx. Girls are fighting is not so much that, but like there's this sort of like affect and cadence that is this kind of like neo, you know, kind of like, like gay black,

Well, yes, they're definitely doing the like digital blackface thing or whatever people want to say. The girls are fighting is a longtime meme. Like that's like a trope and a phrase. It's very popular. You could see two turtles on the street, you know, fighting with the NBA and quote tweet it. But of course, like this happens and everyone has to have the most sort of woke take or whatever. So you saw people, I guess, with audiences being like the misogyny and all of it. Like, why do they have to be compared to women? It's like, I could see that if you were saying like, oh,

cat fight or something. And even then it's like, like you said, Trump is so campy. Like these are both like very like campy, like ridiculous people. There is a drama to that. And then there was outrage. Somebody shared a screenshot of a blue sky post on Twitter. So then people were like outraged that, you know, it was like the outrage about the outrage. Oh, you can mine engagement for doing blue sky stuff on Twitter. Definitely. Oh, I'll

100% because you could be like, look at what the two woke people over there are doing. What a bunch of losers. Even though it was like mostly happening on threads, which is hilarious because it's like nothing happens on threads. But then it came out that like actually the girls are fighting. It's like it's from drag culture. I think it's from some drag. That's what I'm saying. A lot of it's like a lot of it's like sort of weird, like cheesecloth drag culture like comes down. So there's this like woman on Instagram reels this morning, this like white woman. So then like the white women had to apologize. It's like it took me billions.

Back to 2020. Like back when we had the classic phrase, women in POC. I loved that. 2016 and 2020. That was a big one. And she was apologizing. She did this apology that I was just like, who is this for? Like, no one cares, by the way. When someone's canceling on Twitter, this is why you should never apologize online. No one cares about. They don't actually want you to apologize. Everyone likes it.

That's the thing that people don't understand. Everyone likes when things happen on these websites and the things that happen on these websites is something crazy or someone does something bad or someone gets in trouble. Everybody likes it. Let me just play this for you, Brace. I would love to see it.

I have stepped in it, and this is an apology. I responded to a video of AOC saying the girls are fighting, talking about Elon Musk and Donald Trump. I did not understand the origins of that particular phrase, that it's rooted in drag culture, in queer culture, particularly in drag culture as shared by people of color. So I responded to her video not understanding the context, and I inserted my experience into something I don't belong in.

Thankfully and gratefully, I have people in my community who are willing to educate me and us. And so I took a seat, I did some research, I read all of their comments, and that's where this apology is coming from. So here's what I'm going to do. First, I'll share some resources in my story. Then I'm going to delete that video because the impact didn't match the intention and the impact is the only thing that matters. And third, I will not be so reactive to these social media moments.

I popped off and I should have thought critically and said, "AOC really knows her stuff. She would not use that phrase lightly. There's probably something I'm missing here." I did not do that.

I will do that going forward. This type of video is just like, it could have been made by AI to me because it's like, who is this for? I will share resources on my story. For who? Yeah, who's clicking that? But just to get back to this, like there was this like meta cancellations happening over the discourse and like, and also everyone wanting to insert

themselves and like cancel a drama. And like, I think like that's what made it such a good day on Twitter because it wasn't just like two of the most crazy people on the internet fighting. It was also just like the take, the chaos, the like Republicans not knowing what to do and just absurd. At the end of the day, the reality is, and it sucks to say this because what Elon Musk sounds at or whatever, like Twitter is still the main one.

you know even though it's changed so much and like is so sort of like 4chan-ish now or whatever like it's still kind of where everything sort of else expands from it's the only real-time platform the only one yeah exactly it's the only real-time platform that's why i'm like they're trying to pivot to video which thankfully does not seem to work out that well it sucks so bad because no we need people saying things immediately immediately because you need to say stupid

- Immediately, and I need to see everybody going crazy. And Elon is so addicted to Twitter. I can't remember who did it, but somebody like put together this like how often he was tweeting. And sometimes it was like all but like three hours in a day. - Well, they said actually, I think the day that this all happened, I think he posted around 80 times, which people were saying was actually quite down

from his usual like 150. - 200, 150, yeah. I mean, it's probably pretty easy 'cause a lot of it is just the crying laughing emoji, the swastika of today. In fact, I'm looking at his Twitter right now and there's just multiple crying laughing emojis to things. It sucks because I think he probably will in order to like appease people completely

completely give up on the deficit stuff and try to get his worm his way back into Trump's good graces. I think it'll be a second. I think some stuff will happen on the scene. And this is a prediction. This is advice for anybody out there. Never predict because you might get it right. If you get it right, you'll be remembered as like, oh, look, I got it right for like a second. But if you get something really wrong, which this doesn't really count as, you're wrong forever. But I think it's likely that they'll make up behind the scenes and then he will kind of come back in the midterms because he promised an absurd amount of money for, I think, specifically like Trump related PAC.

for the midterms. And I think this is going to happen, I'm sure. Trump's not going to be doing well in the midterms or like there's going to be bad predictions. And Elon's going to like see that as an opportunity to kind of like come back in and put his own guys in there. Ultimately, too, it's just a reality that the Republicans are better for billionaires and people like him.

And that's what I want to get into, too, because I don't know if you saw another thing that happened shortly after these Democrats just like frothing at the mouth, ready to work with him, the leader of the Abundance Conference immediately. Ro Khanna has been out there really vocal, Richie Torres. Can you talk a little bit about that? First of all, let me say this right now, Richie Torres, you need to unblock me because we could cook up something crazy together. And I am Jewish. I'll support whatever you support, which

seems to be mostly Israel. It's hard to find other things he supports, but he has come out in favor of abundance lately. And it was funny because I was just at Welcome Fest. Which is the like abundance festival, right? Well, I thought it was gonna be more abundant than it was. It was a little incoherent because there was abundance people there who like spoke about abundance, blah, blah, blah, blah. But a lot of people

Well, tell me about like the Democrats, like how successful do you think this is going to be? Because these Democrats like Ro Khanna and Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley. But like, yeah, like Ro Khanna is just saying that.

Like, it's like, that's the thing is, I think Ro Khanna likes to be interviewed. Like, I think Ro Khanna is maybe a first pickup on the ring when the press calls kind of guy. Richie Torres obviously definitely is. And I think the reality is it's completely unworkable. And if you actually ask anybody who's like with a modicum of like sense in that kind of coalition, in the abundance coalition, they would tell you like this probably isn't going to happen. You can probably win over like a few of them.

But Musk right now is so toxic, I think, to the Democrat base that if the Democrats embraced him, unless he went like full woke, which would be amazing to see. Oh, I would love it, but he won't. I saw people saying that like, oh, he's about to be the wokest you've ever seen. It's like, no, he's not, you guys. He's just not. I'm not so sure he's rocking with the brothers. I'll put it like that. I think one thing he may have read a lot about his race and IQ, maybe.

Or the LGBTQ. Oh, yeah. Well, he likes the LGB, but he does not like the trans at all. Although he hasn't said as much lately about it. Again, it's one of those things where he inserts current thing. I mean, obviously, I'm sure he hasn't changed his views, but there'll be months where he's talking about,

all about that and blah blah blah and then he'll just completely change it to something else but a lot of the abundance types i think would be also willing to sort of make that bargain as well but explicitly doing that is i think a little too gauche for them and so i can't see that happening and this is the problem with the democrats being so like pro-corporation pro-billionaire like the new head of the dnc that was like we just need a few good billionaires on our side like the reality exactly but like

But like, they're not. The Republicans are more friendly to billionaires. Like they actually do want like more inequality. So no matter, like the Democrats constantly trying to sort of like outright the right, it's just, it's never going to work. It's this triangulation they try to do. And, you know, I saw this a lot at Welcome Fest. We're like, we got to just drop a lot of the like social stuff and like kind of get back to brass tacks. And like, I think you can see for some Democrats, they think that like, okay, if we move

like highly moderate or even kind of go conservative on some social stuff, not fully conservative, but like roll it back a little bit and then also moderate some of the economic stuff. We can sort of get the disaffected Republicans and we'll keep our base. That's a gamble of somebody who hasn't talked to a real Republican outside of D.C. in a long time because I spent a lot of time at Republican events. I don't think you win a lot of them over. I just don't think it's going to happen. They don't care about policies.

He could go down in the kente cloth and raise the fist Nancy Pelosi style and they would be like, he's based. It kind of reminds me of like the, we need a liberal Joe Rogan or whatever. Like you're just missing the forest for the trees and a lot of this stuff. But I just think on like a full national scale, it can't be adopted. And like Elon is so toxic now.

And I'm not just like among like whatever lefty types, but like among like straight up liberals of every persuasion that it just would not work. And Elon himself is like, I think part of the reason he liked being around Trump so much is because he was elevated to this level of like this base twang.

fucking goat in the coalition. And that just would not happen with him in the Dems. And it's laughable. I think that kind of talk will diminish by like next week, at least if it hasn't already. Yeah, I mean, some of the only sort of like resistance or like movement against Trump that we've seen really meaningfully from liberals was the Tesla takedown stuff. I was out in Joshua Tree that weekend that was all happening. It was all just like old people.

But it reminds me also of like the stop oligarchy thing too, which got like, I mean, at least in LA, like it was Coachella weekend. So I don't know if that's where all the young people were, but like they had like Joan Baez performing. And didn't Neil Young come? Yes. And Neil Young, exactly. Who on site, I was like, who is this man, this old man that they're dragging out on stage? Like the audience is that older people. And so I think if you have that,

coalition. It's like the one thing that the Democrats are sort of against. Yeah, you can't embrace so. You can't embrace it. No, he's too toxic. Where do you think Elon goes from here? Is he going to lay low? What's his next sort of like thing going to be? I think he's throwing himself back into the companies in a sort of performative way. He really has been doing this already. But like he's got going to redouble himself with SpaceX. I know Tesla is like doing their little Waymos in Austin. You know, his robo taxis may finally come true. This optimist's

I think that's a long way off, thank God. But I think he's really gonna be sort of like performatively busy with his companies. - Yeah, I think he's gonna be like licking his wounds and being like, "Oh no, I just need to focus on business." - There is a Teflon quality to Elon that I don't think is quite as durable as Trump's, but so far he has bounced back from everything.

However, unlike Trump, he is really his own worst enemy. Elon is fundamentally sort of a malignant spirit in a way that like Trump. OK, yeah, he's a bad guy or whatever. But like Elon has a self-destructive quality to him that Trump definitely lacks. I'm not foreclosing the possibility of them really having a falling out. I could see him, you know, having a little crash out on Twitter after getting zooted and killed.

K'd out. Which, by the way, any of the New York Times reporters who said they saw that drug box he had, I can identify so many pills on site. You need to send me that f***ing box. And I think the good thing is, like, Elon is susceptible to public pressure. So I think if there's a concerted national effort to make Elon depressed and lose his mind, I think it could probably work.

I'm not saying I endorse that. Of course, I love Elon. I love Tesla. I love SpaceX. Colonize Mars. We're going to get there. Blah, blah, blah. It's going to be so amazing. But I think if like 500,000 people really put their heads to it, you could probably make Elon go like permanently insane. All right, Brace. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Well, thank you for having me. Thanks,

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