The deeper cause of the Trump-Musk blowup

Yes, it's about ego. But it's also about the failure of the century-long plutocratic project on the right. And meanwhile we realize that Musk is a pig, and Trump is indeed a chicken. I'll explain.

Ahh, it feels so good to be back! Apologies for the unplanned pause in this newsletter¹ — but let’s just say I’m re-entering the fray with a certain relish right now. This was, indeed, the breakup America was waiting for, and at least from my perspective, it was pretty much right on time: I had figured Trump and Musk were done by the summer if not sooner, and here we are.

Yet there is a deeper reason why we’re here, something beyond the sweaty sniping of two aging multi-billionaire megalomaniacs with their giant egos and their teeny, tiny, microscopic senses of self-awareness.

This is the inevitable culmination of almost a century of right-wing politics and the collapse of the plutocratic project for killing the American social welfare state — and America’s middle class with it — all for the benefit of the mega-rich.

The history is the key here. Virtually from the minute the New Deal began, a wealthy cabal conspired to reverse it, in the name of tax avoidance. Taxes were then raised more during and after World War II, especially on the highest income-earners, to pay for the high cost of America’s successful war efforts, plus the cost of taking care of our service members when they got home (through things like the GI Bill, paying for housing and college for millions of Americans, setting the stage for the roaring economy of the 1950s and 60s). Steadily, the cabal gained more adherents — and by the 1960s, the modern “conservative”² movement came into sharper focus.

The plutocrats’ strategy was to “starve the beast.” Cut taxes, and then spending would have to be cut, because the deficits and debt would be too overwhelming. That was the thinking. Why? Because cutting taxes was politically popular, whereas cutting spending was politically unpopular (because it turns out people really like roads and schools and not dying of preventable disease and not crumbling into poverty when they’re old).

Here’s the problem, though — “starve the beast” has been a complete failure.

The whole idea was that at some point in the future, a Republican government would come in and say, wow, we can’t afford all this stuff anymore, so we have to cut it all. But the record is now clear: for over 40 years, successive Republican administrations and congresses have gotten into office and said “well, let’s just keep spending a little longer.” In fact, they’ve said something more like “woooooooo, this party’s just getting started, let’s spend even more!”

Deficits get worse under Republican administrations. Much worse. This was true for Reagan, both Bushes, and then Trump, who tries to blame his gargantuan deficits on Covid but who was already running up historically high deficits before the pandemic, largely due to his massive set of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, passed in 2017 with a Republican-led Congress. Then it falls to Democratic administrations to reduce the deficits again, before the cycle repeats.

Fast-forward to today. Trump is at it again with his MAGAbill, with GOP accomplices on the Hill, ready to cut taxes — while increasing spending, adding another $2.4 trillion to the national debt.

“Starve the beast” has turned out to be “feed the beast with debt.”

The Great Reckoning that the plutocrats have hoped for has not come.

I still maintain that this was the beginning of the end. Trump cannot stand being upstaged. Meanwhile, Musk has come to feel that he did not get what he paid for.

And now there is a burgeoning civil war in the GOP along an interesting set of battle lines. On the one hand, Trump seems fully prepared to continue the terrible fiscal policies of his Republican predecessors — and fundamentally, he does not care. Why? It’s the old devil-may-care line that helped lead to the financial crisis: “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone,” or IBGYBG. Trump knows he probably won’t be the one facing the consequences of these actions. He’ll be out of office and/or in a very, very hot place.³

On the other hand, Elon Musk is in a very different position. He’s already the richest man in the world at 53. He likely will live to see a Great Reckoning — and historically, when nations face fiscal crises, they are just as likely, if not far more likely, to raise taxes (especially on the wealthiest) as they are to cut spending. This is what happened after both World Wars. And if a new Great Reckoning comes, he will likely have a higher tax bill than anyone.

So while the alliances between plutocrats and politicians have been sufficiently strong to win elections for Republicans for half a century, we are now seeing perhaps the greatest rift ever between the two.

Fundamentally, most Republican politicians don’t actually care that much about taxes or debt. They care about being popular and getting re-elected, and the easier way to do that is to cut taxes, raise spending, ignore the debt, and leave the problem for someone else to clean up. Whereas the plutocrats care deeply about taxes and debt — because they’ll eventually be the ones paying much higher taxes to pay off the debts.

It’s like the old joke about a pig and a chicken pondering a partnership in a breakfast restaurant. The chicken is keen on the idea, but the pig demurs: “No thanks, I’d be committed, but you’d only be involved.”

The plutocratic pigs are finally realizing that, true to form, their champion is a chicken. TACO, indeed.

1. I’ll get more into the particular reasons for this in a future post, but the good news is that I’m not going anywhere. Except maybe outside. Summer is the best season, and yes, I will fight everyone on that. This whole east-coast Cult of Autumn is just insane to me.

2. The term “conservative” has always seemed deeply dubious to me. This is especially true today, when “conservative” thought seems to be looking for a return to pre-modern and anti-republican politics — not just undoing the New Deal but undoing the Enlightenment. Truly, the only thing these far-right forces are trying to “conserve” is their own trust funds.

3. Florida. Or the 8th ring of Hell. Take your pick.