The billionaire’s acrimonious blow-up with Trump is a time to choose sides – and legislators are toeing the MAGA line

Elon Musk may believe his money bought the presidential election and the House of the Representatives for the Republicans. But he is discovering painfully and quickly that it has not bought him love, loyalty or even fear among many GOP members of Congress on Capitol Hill.

Faced with the choice of siding with Musk, the world’s richest man, or Donald Trump, after the two staged a public relationship breakdown for the ages on Thursday, most Republicans went with the man in the Oval Office, who has shown an unerring grasp of the tactics of political intimidation and who remains the world’s most powerful figure even without the boss of Tesla and SpaceX by his side.

The billionaire tech entrepreneur, who poured about $275m into Trump’s campaign last year, tried to remind Washington’s political classes of his financial muscle on Thursday during an outpouring of slights against a man for whom he had once professed platonic love and was still showering with praise up until a week before.

  • ArgentRaven@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    He did likely make off with all of our previously government-only information, though. He’ll feed it through grok to try to catch up, and be shocked when Russia or whoever steals it.

    So he’s got that going for him.

  • lemmylommy@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Well, Elon, you were just another useful idiot to the rise of fascism. Hope you had fun though skipping on that stage like a dipshit.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    I predicted this yesterday. Musk has a lot of money but no political influence outside of Trump. Even when Trump had his head crammed up Musk’s ass, most Republicans reluctantly tolerated him at best because they had no other choice.

  • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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    19 hours ago

    Trump has the social chops that Elon (ironically) doesn’t have, plus all the powers of the US President. He was always going to come out on top.