Elon Does His Heel Turn
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Happy Friday friends. This will be a quick Jackal about Elon and Trump going full fight scene from Mean Girls. Then, I give you a big Jackal next week and I’m off for Juneteenth. So let’s get moving.
Why are Mom and Dad fighting?
In case you preserved your sanity yesterday and ignored the big fight between Musk and Trump, here is generally how it went down:
Elon has been criticizing the Big, Beautiful Bill™ currently being considered by the Senate, which not only balloons the deficit but also adds $2.4 trillion to the debt over the next decade. Elon criticized it for spending too much.
Fun fact: Elon is full of it, because he joined the Administration of the President who literally added more the U.S. debt than anyone else. Trump added $7.8 trillion on his own during his first term, and if this bill passes and his spending run continues, then he will have contributed roughly half of all the U.S. debt over his two terms. HALF JUST ON HIS OWN.
Trump finally got fed up with Elon’s mean tweets, and attacked him on Truth Social.
Elon then attacked Trump on Twitter, saying he helped Trump get elected and he was not gracious enough.
Trump went after Elon again, and then Elon called Trump a pedophile on Twitter:
Honestly, it was a lot of fun. It might have been the most fun I’ve had on Twitter in years, which is saying something.
Trump then responded to the Elon/Epstein tweet with something about how the U.S. should get rid of Elon’s subsidies, which was honestly kind of meh. Trump could have really gone for the jugular in light of recent reports:
“We kicked Enormous Elon out of the White House because he is addicted to VERY HARMFUL DRUGS. Cannot have that around The Children. HE NEEDS HELP. He is also fat from human growth hormone and no exercise. DIABETES, THE SILENT KILLER.”
After a guy calls you an Epstein client, saying you’re going to cancel his government contracts feels “very low energy.” Trump will be 79 in a few weeks and it just feels like he’s losing his edge a little bit. Sad!
Two of the world’s most powerful men are fighting like children and you’re laughing?
Yeah, I’m laughing. This was actually the funniest part to me:
Here is your chaser:
He’s thinking about Elon so little that he’s calling around the networks and asking to talk about Elon.
This was the next funniest thing:
Trump. Elon. Kanye. Just as the prophecy foretold.
They are about to pass a bill that is going to kick 8 million people off Medicaid. This isn’t funny.
Listen, it’s still funny. I’m not backing down. But it is truly amazing that this giant, terrible bill is what kicked this whole thing off. I have wondered something over the past couple weeks: Who actually wants this bill to pass, besides Trump? Republicans in the House voted for it, but are actively criticizing it. It is seemingly getting nowhere in the Senate (we’ll see what happens after Trump leans in), and it is a dud in conservative and MAGA media.
Nobody likes it, but Trump wants to keep his only achievement from his first term intact (the giant tax cuts that ballooned the deficit) and he knows getting something passed in the Fall is going to be a huge challenge, when all eyes will be focused on the Virginia governor’s race.
The Party that wins the Virginia governor’s race usually predicts who is going to win the White House three years later. If the Democrats make a huge showing there, then you can expect a lot of Republicans to be more cautious about giving Trump audible support in Congress.
I doubt Trump is intelligent enough to understand all of that, but maybe his gut is telling him he needs to get something passed now. But the bill sucks, and it will only help drive us deeper into a recession.
Well, is a recession coming?
There was a jobs report today, and while it was generally pretty good (140K jobs created last month), the official signs of an economic slowdown are here. For one, we started to see some of the DOGE “cuts” in the Federal workforce: 22K government jobs lost last month alone. The thing is, lots of people who have been “terminated” by DOGE are technically still employed because their terminations are being challenged in court.
So, we are currently paying Federal employees their salaries, but they are not doing their jobs. #Efficiency. We’ll have to wait a few months to see if those layoffs start showing up in the jobs report.
Then, under the hood of the jobs report was more concern: Two previous jobs reports were revised downward, by a combined 125K jobs. The goods sector fell by 5K jobs, which is probably a direct result of tariffs. Then, the household survey: It showed a whopping plummet of 696K jobs.1
Overall, the general track of things looks OK, but underneath the hood you can start to see bad stuff bubbling up. During his rage yesterday, Elon tweeted that the tariffs are going to cause a recession later this year. I still think the jury is out on that, but let’s just picture this:
Trump’s tariffs and general economic policies cause a slowdown and a recession later this year or in early 2026.
The big, beautiful bill passes and kicks 8 million people off Medicaid, and another 10 million off of Obamacare.
It kicks a similar number of people off of SNAP benefits.
It raises taxes on those in the bottom quartiles of the tax brackets.
What you have there is a recipe for turning a minor economic recession into a major one: Doing austerity during an economic contraction. And it will make Trump’s second term (which is already a disaster) an objective failure.
So…go Elon?
Listen, if I have to choose between Trump and Elon, I will take Elon every time. Do I think Dems should embrace him with open arms, a la Michael Cohen? No, but I am hoping for a true, and genuine reverse heel turn and that he repents.
I don’t see that happening, but I think SpaceX is fascinating and Starlink is still doing amazing things (let’s not forget he provided Starlink to all of Ukraine after they were invaded, for free). Hope springs eternal.
But I do think the bad guy here is Trump, and that’s because he was friends with Epstein. Elon presented his accusation as a “bomb,” but it really isn’t. Trump is in Epstein’s “black book:”
He is also on Epstein’s flight logs:
Epstein’s pilot testified - under oath - that he saw Trump on Epstein’s plane. At the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, one of Epstein’s victims testified that Epstein brought her to Mar-A-Lago and introduced her to Trump…when she was 14.
Trump was fully aware of Epstein and his activities, because they were very close friends in the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s. Here is Trump in 2002, regarding Epstein:
“Many of them are on the younger side.” He knew. Didn’t we make wonderful choice last November?
See you next week.
I have explained this before but a refresher: The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses both payroll information and the household survey to figure out the jobs picture, which means (yes) they literally call peoples’ houses and ask them if they are working.