Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Musk Warns of Necessary Economic Collapse if Trump Elected

Elon Musk has offered a sobering preview of Donald Trump's economic plan for America if he is re-elected, revealing that a period of intentional "temporary hardship" is on the horizon for American households.

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FTA:

Rather than cautioning against it, Musk described this hardship as necessary and inevitable, supporting Trump's blueprint for restructuring the economy by slashing government programs. Musk's remarks, shared in a Telephone Town Hall organized by his America PAC, indicate that he and Trump see economic pain to average Americans as a necessary cost of their policy goals.

"We have to reduce spending to live within our means. And that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity," Musk stated in the call, fully endorsing the strain Trump's policies would place on Americans. Musk's words make it clear that the disruption is not an unintended side effect but an accepted"if not desired"outcome.

#1 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-10-29 07:51 PM

"... he and Trump see economic pain to average Americans as a necessary cost of their policy goals."

The 'economic collapse' that Leon is concerned about is his own; he's depending on Trump's tax cuts to go mostly to his class, not to the middle class.

#2 | Posted by Corky at 2024-10-29 07:55 PM

What could possibly go wrong?:

FTA: Trump has said he would appoint Musk to lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency," an agency that Musk would use to "trim the fat" from government operations and, presumably, enact sweeping cuts to public programs. The department, referred to by the acronym DOGE is a nod to Musk's favored meme cryptocurrency.

Also:

BREAKING: RFK Jr. says Donald Trump has promised him "control of the public health agencies."

RFK Jr. says "Trump has promised me ... control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others."

x.com

#3 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-10-29 07:56 PM

Ah, the Brainworm in Charge of Public Health.

Very Trump-like.

#4 | Posted by Corky at 2024-10-29 07:59 PM

KAMALA is killing this Capitol speech, btw.

#5 | Posted by Corky at 2024-10-29 08:00 PM

Elon Musk Makes Shocking Confession on His Plans After Trump Victory
www.yahoo.com

... Elon Musk admitted that he knows that Donald Trump's policies would crash the economy if he's elected president, but thinks that the price is worth it.

The tech CEO and social media mogul on Monday evening replied to a post on X from right-wing influencer FischerKing64, who posted about how Trump's plans for mass deportations of immigrants combined with Musk's plans as a White House adviser to cut federal spending would initially crash the economy, before creating a "sounder footing."

Musk replied, "Sounds about right." ...


OK, my first question is along the lines of ...

If Mr Musk seems to admit that mass deportations would crash the economy that seems to be so dependent upon immigrant labor, what is Mr Musk's plan forward?

Has he even thought that far ahead?


#6 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-29 08:01 PM

Here's what Elon's co-chair of the prospective Trump administration's "Department of Government Efficiency" had to say about America's future at Trump's MSG rally on Sunday:

Cantor Fitzgerald chairman and CEO Howard Lutnick came out and spoke of how his firm was decimated on September 11 when a plane struck just below their offices in the World Trade Center, how they'd given lots of money to the families, and then he finally provided a clear answer to that nine-year-old question: When, exactly, was America great?

The Gilded Age.

The crowd was a bit miffed when Lutnick extolled the virtues of the "turn-of-the-century" economy, and they didn't rouse much when he explained he was referring to 1900. They perked up a bit when he explained this meant "no income tax," though it was more of a smattering of cheers.

"All we had was tariffs!" he explained, probably expecting more of a roar, "and we had so much money that we had the greatest businessmen of America get together to try to figure out how to spend it!" Near-silence. "That's who we were then."

And there it was. We should return to the days when all the money flowed into a handful of pockets, when the Carnegies and Rockefellers got to make all the rules, and the way that billionaires like Lutnick will seek to do that is by getting Trump in there to abolish the income tax--as if any of them pay their fair share as it is. This was Reaganomics on anarcho-capitalist steroids, and the fairly frosty reception it got in the arena was a reminder of how much more effective Trump's economic populism has been for Republicans, even if he ended up signing the same old tax-cut-for-rich-people once elected.

www.publicnotice.co

Yep, can't wait until they MAGA like that again!

#7 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-10-29 09:37 PM

@#7 ... And there it was. We should return to the days when all the money flowed into a handful of pockets, when the Carnegies and Rockefellers got to make all the rules ...

Woof.

With supporters like that, does a candidate really need contrarians?


#8 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-29 09:46 PM

Gal has this story up with Comments....

drudge.com

#9 | Posted by Corky at 2024-10-29 10:13 PM

I did NAZI is coming that he'd actually saying that in public.

His security clearance needs to be reviewed after reports of regular calls with Putin since 2022.

BTW, Musk had his own MAGA hat made for the hatefest at MSG with the font preferred by Hitler's NAZI.

US Election 2024: Dark gothic,' Elon Musk wears hat with Fraktur' font? Know its Nazi connection

Donald Trump denied being a Nazi at a rally, addressing accusations of authoritarianism. Elon Musk attended the event wearing a controversial hat featuring a font linked to Nazi propaganda, which sparked reactions online.

#10 | Posted by AMERICANUNITY at 2024-10-29 11:02 PM

He needs to be arrested and charges under the Logan Act

"Logan Act, legislation enacted by the United States Congress (1799) that forbids private citizens from engaging in unauthorized correspondence with foreign governments. As amended, the act reads:"

www.bing.com
Former Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren suggested that even though the meeting could have been "possibly illegal," it is unlikely the Logan Act will be used against the former president.

"On foreign policy, it's critical that America speaks with one voice," Warren told Newsweek. "The Logan Act prohibits individuals taking diplomacy into their own hands or undermining the government's official policy. Only two people have ever been charged for Logan Act violations, and Trump won't be the third but Trump using his camaraderie with U.S. adversaries like Orbn to weaken our foreign policy is possibly illegal and certainly un-American."

It is unclear what precisely the pair discussed during their meeting at Mar-a-Lago.

#11 | Posted by danni at 2024-10-29 11:30 PM

If Trump wins next week and Republicans keep the House and take back the Senate, I expect the first hundred days of Trump's presidency to be a shock and awe take down of our current system of government. The groundwork has been laid down by the SC granting Trump immunity, and the plans via Project 2025 are in place. They are going to deconstruct the administrative state as Bannon once predicted they would. They know they will have to act quickly and without hesitation, and I believe they will. Chaos and confusion will ensue as they begin to undo the New Deal and strip away the social safety net. If there is any media bold enough to honestly report what is happening, they will be dealt with by buying out the owners and/or arresting the reporters. If average citizes take to the streets to protest, Trump will call out the National Guard/military to put those protests down. They have Orban's blueprint to follow, and they will follow it. See for yourself--creating Soros as the enemy, "Hungary is for Hungarians," building a fence, criminalizing migrants, consolidating the media under state control, creating a new constitution, instituting Christian nationism, eliminating LGBTQ rights, the list goes on:

Who is Viktor Orban, Hungarian PM with 14-year grip on power?
www.bbc.com

What has changed in Hungary during Orban's 12-year rule
www.reuters.com

The Secrets to Viktor Orban's Success
foreignpolicy.com

#12 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-10-29 11:42 PM

This is a good article on the Orban playbook Trump and Republicans plan to follow:


The Orbanisation of America: Hungary's lessons for Donald Trump

Viktor Orban has seized control of nearly all the levers of power in Hungary since he became prime minister in 2010, effectively turning the country into an electoral autocracy.

Republicans in the US have noticed Orban's success. Orban's Fidesz party and the Republicans have lately strengthened their links significantly; Republicans appear to have learned from the former's march through Hungarian institutions.

In the four years since President Donald Trump left office, veterans of his administration have thought hard about how to make a new administration more effective than the last. Many believe that a similar seizure of control of the instruments of US governance is necessary.

If Trump wins the presidency, Republicans will likely adapt many of Orban's techniques to the US context to end what they view as liberal control of the "administrative state" and civil society.

ecfr.eu

#13 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-10-29 11:52 PM

OK, don't get me started on PM Orban.

He is the leader of the Country that currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.

And there is some, I'll say, dismay among the other Countries of the EU. ...

Orban Courts EU Ire by Endorsing Disputed Georgia Election Vote
www.bnnbloomberg.ca

... Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban engineered another diplomatic divide with his European Union counterparts, pointedly siding with Georgia's ruling party as the winner of parliamentary elections.

Orban, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, told Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze during a visit to Georgia on Tuesday that he should ignore complaints about the election from the 27-nation bloc, and said the vote was free and democratic.

"European politics has its handbook, it is worth knowing: when liberal parties win, there is democracy, when conservatives win, there is not," Orban told a joint news conference in the capital, Tbilisi. "Because the conservatives won, there will be debates, and they are not to be taken seriously."

Prior to Orban's departure for Georgia, the EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell told Spanish public radio RNE that the rotating presidency conferred no authority in foreign policy on the Hungarian premier. A joint statement signed by ministers from 13 EU countries on Monday, including Germany, France, Poland and the Netherlands, said Orban doesn't speak for the bloc.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the TT news agency that Orban "possibly speaks for Russia, but he does not speak for the rest of us."

The Hungarian leader has a history of provoking fellow EU leaders with foreign visits since the start of his country's six-month presidency, even as he often insists he's not representing the bloc. He sparked outrage days into the term in July by meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing as part of a self-styled "peace mission." ...



#14 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-29 11:57 PM

OMG, Lamp, it just struck me tonight how meticulously over a period of years the Republican party has been planning their Orban style take over of the country. It's all in the article I linked to in #5. The Federalist Society and the Heritage Society play a big role in behind the scenes machinations. Trump is a necessary part of the plan, but he is only one part of it. That's where JD Vance comes in:

"I think Orban made smart decisions that we could learn from in the US." " Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance, CBS Face the Nation, June 2024.

And, of course, the SC had a central role to play in this plan, and they have played it:


One important distinction between the US and Hungary is that the American president faces an independent legislature and a strong judiciary. Even if the president's party controls Congress, he does not exercise anything approaching parliamentary control of the legislature, nor is he is likely to have a "constitutional majority", which in the US requires not only two-thirds control of Congress, but also control of three-quarters of the state legislatures.

The US route to electoral autocracy therefore means, in the first instance, creating a powerful executive that can overwhelm the other branches. Since at least the Reagan administration, various Republican thinkers have been promoting unitary executive theory. According to proponents of this idea, the power of the presidency has been unconstitutionally hobbled by limits placed by the courts, Congress, and the civil service rules on the president's ability to control the executive branch. As a result, the president no longer controls his own branch of government and cannot implement the mandate the voters have given him. The unitary executive project therefore is to restore control of the executive branch to the president.

The issue of whether unitary executive theory conforms with the US constitution is a very controversial one, but the likely effects of its implementation on governance in the US are fairly clear. Over recent decades, power in Washington has flowed increasingly to the executive branch. A divided and understaffed Congress struggles to exercise its oversight function effectively over the vast executive branch. The courts are similarly too slow and lacking in administrative capacity to constrain the president on most issues. The 2024 Supreme Court decision in Trump v the United States, which asserted that the president enjoys near-total immunity in his official acts, has given the president yet more power relative to Congress and the courts.

ecfr.eu

#15 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-10-30 12:36 AM

Now that I am getting a glimpse of the big picture, it's quite scary. It's not hyperbole to say that if Trump gets elected, and espeically if Republicans take the House and Senate, democracy as we know it is over. And it won't be just Donald Trump's doing. The whole Republican party apparatus will be equally responsible as they are the ones who laid the groundwork and drew up the 2025 playbook that Trump will follow:

Kevin Roberts, the president of The Heritage Foundation and the man behind Project 2025, had already in 2022 spoken of the country not only as a model of conservative statecraft, but as the model. In May 2024, Heritage even welcomed Orban for a closed-door lecture in Washington, DC.

The now infamous Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, directed by Paul Dans, the former head of Trump's White House Personnel Office, contains at its heart the idea that liberal control of the "administrative state" and civil society have long stymied conservative governance and must be overcome for Trump to govern effectively. It avows that the primary effort of a second Trump administration will be to "dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people."

To ensure more loyal political appointees, Heritage's Project 2025 has created a database of some 20,000 pre-vetted potential officials. The Trump campaign has strongly repudiated Project 2025, but it will likely value that database nonetheless if Trump wins the election. There is simply no place else to go for so many loyal officials.

#16 | Posted by Gal_Tuesday at 2024-10-30 12:38 AM

@#7 ... OMG, Lamp, it just struck me tonight how meticulously over a period of years the Republican party has been planning their Orban style take over of the country. ...

Yup.

To get an idea of what fmr Pres Trump would want to do, just look at those dictators he seems to admire.

Trump points to Hungary's Viktor Orbn as example of his support from foreign leaders
www.npr.org

... Former President Donald Trump cited his close ties to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to counter attacks by Vice President Harris in Tuesday night's presidential debate that world leaders are "laughing" at Trump.

"Let me just say about world leaders, Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men, they call him a strong man. He's a tough person. Smart prime minister of Hungary. They said, Why is the whole world blowing up?" Trump said. ...



#17 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-30 01:07 AM

@#7 ... "European politics has its handbook, it is worth knowing: when liberal parties win, there is democracy, when conservatives win, there is not," Orban told a joint news conference in the capital, Tbilisi.

"Because the conservatives won, there will be debates, and they are not to be taken seriously." ...


Wow.


#18 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-30 01:10 AM

Musk's economic plan will be Trump's. And after seeing the performance of Twiier after Musk bought it and the government money that saved Tesla I don't necessarily think he's any better at business than Trump is.

#19 | Posted by danni at 2024-10-30 01:35 AM

One of the wealthiest businessman in the world sucks at business?

Interesting take.

#20 | Posted by BellRinger at 2024-10-30 02:02 AM

Cutting government fat can start with all 5he welfare we shoveling into Elmo's pockets by canceling his very lucrative contracts and bring that all in house.

#21 | Posted by _Gunslinger_ at 2024-10-30 02:18 AM

How does the government go about bringing it all "in-house"?

#22 | Posted by BellRinger at 2024-10-30 02:29 AM

For example, the government doesn't build the F-22. It gave out specs it needed for the plane, contractors bid it out and the best design won th3 "lucrative contract."

#23 | Posted by BellRinger at 2024-10-30 02:31 AM

@#10 ... How does the government go about bringing it all "in-house"? ...

Yeah, that is a significant concern that Americans should now be worried about.

A person who seems to routinely talk with the dictator of an adversarial country gets significant from the US government. Some (much, most?) of that money comes from the US Defense Department.

So, how does your current alias propose that problem is solved?



#24 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-30 02:51 AM

@#12 ... Interesting take. ...

Yeah, that is an interesting take to get from this thread.

But is it correct?

What's yer current alias got to justify it?

#25 | Posted by LampLighter at 2024-10-30 03:44 AM

One of the wealthiest businessman in the world sucks at business?

Interesting take.

#12 | Posted by BellRinger at 2024-10-30 02:02 AM |

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in while.

#26 | Posted by Nixon at 2024-10-30 06:59 AM

Ballwasher the clown reminds us all of the dangers of eating lead paint.

#27 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-10-30 08:27 AM

Jeff has no solutions, just mindless MAGAT --------

#28 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-10-30 08:30 AM

Leon admits the bankruptcy-prone orange turd would crash the economy again. That's an interesting campaign promise to announce.

#29 | Posted by reinheitsgebot at 2024-10-30 09:11 AM

Elon Musk Makes Shocking Confession on His Plans After Trump Victory

Garbage Incinerators!

#30 | Posted by oneironaut at 2024-10-30 09:15 AM

"Elon Musk admitted that he knows that Donald Trump's policies if elected president would crash the economy, but thinks that the price is worth it."

What a nice man.

Worth it for him personally.

Fkkk the rest of you hoi polloi.

#31 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-10-30 11:18 AM

The ultra wealthy love recessions. Gives the chance to buy up assets from the struggling working and middle class at low prices and then sell/rent it back to them at a higher price.

#32 | Posted by johnny_hotsauce at 2024-10-30 03:11 PM

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