Musk vs Trump

Which one will the MAGA supporters try to assassinate first?

  • Trump

    Votes: 5 17.9%

  • Musk

    Votes: 23 82.1%
  • Total voters
    28
There are a lot of lawsuits and a lot of moving parts. But best I can tell, yesterday’s ruling from Judge Theodore Chuang of the federal district of Maryland was the first time any judge has directly addressed the illegality of Musk’s appointment as head of DOGE and then ordered his actions unwound.

Specifically, Judge Chuang, in a 68-page preliminary injunction, blasted the illegal appointment of Musk, ruled the ensuing shutdown of USAID by DOGE illegal, and barred Musk and DOGE from any further work at USAID.

A lot has happened since Musk first took the reins at DOGE, so to understand the impact of this order—specifically what it does and does not do within USAID and how it might have ripple effects in other cases—it’s useful to go back in time to the beginning of February, when Musk and DOGE first started taking a chainsaw to the federal government.

One of the most important parts of Judge Chuang’s ruling confirms that the administration tried to have it both ways with Musk.

On the one hand, there Musk was, with DOGE members already inside of an agency, bragging about how he had destroyed it in the course of a weekend. Musk made public statements and posts claiming he had firm control over DOGE, and Trump even praised Musk for this in his joint address to Congress.

In addition to the “wood chipper” post, Judge Chuang noted that Musk wrote in February that it was time for USAID to “die” and that his team was in the process of shutting the agency down.

On the other hand, the government tried to argue that Musk was only serving in some kind of advisory rather than official role. Government attorneys have argued in many cases that Musk does not have formal authority to make government decisions, and therefore he didn’t need to have been formally appointed by Trump and officially confirmed by the Senate.

When pressed as to who was actually in charge of DOGE then, the White House claimed last month that a woman named Amy Gleason, who worked for DOGE’s predecessor, was its acting administrator.

The fact is, the government has been DOGE-ing the truth for weeks about who was really in charge. Everyone knew and bragged that it was Elon Musk, but that actually created a legal problem because of the pesky Appointments Clause. So they apparently filed false affidavits with the courts to try and backfill the position with someone who was never in charge of it, and then they got caught.

If a president could escape Appointments Clause scrutiny by having advisors go beyond the traditional role of White House advisors who communicate the president’s priority to agency heads and instead exercise significant authority throughout the federal government so as to bypass duly appointed officers, the Appointments Clause would be reduced to nothing more than a technical formality.

Judge Chuang further noted that Musk appears to have been involved in the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters and that he and DOGE “have taken other unilateral actions without any apparent authorization from agency officials,” including firing staff at the Department of Agriculture and National Nuclear Security Administration.

Judge Chuang further noted that Musk appears to have been involved in the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters and that he and DOGE “have taken other unilateral actions without any apparent authorization from agency officials,” including firing staff at the Department of Agriculture and National Nuclear Security Administration.

If Elon Musk is, as Judge Chuang has ruled, the effective head of DOGE, and his position and consequential actions as an effective agency head requires him to have been formally appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate, then this will help other litigants in other cases put an immediate stop to what DOGE is doing currently. That could gum things up for Musk, who would suddenly lack the power to slash and burn the government using just his team of hackers.
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statuskuo.substack.com

Stand Down, Elon Musk

A court ruling rips the billionaire head of DOGE for his unauthorized actions, but can only go so far to rescue a doomed agency.
statuskuo.substack.com statuskuo.substack.com
 
There is definitely something wrong with Musk. I have not followed him much, but it seems he has no life outside his DOGE mission right now. It will be so sad when he has to go. Once Trump decides. Because he will have to go. Trump will stay.
 
i'm coming around to the idea that musk's companies were really underperforming relative to their investment, and the financials were so bad that he started cooking the books to keep the investments coming in. at this point, he's completely in over his head and out of his depth to solve. there is no fsd, there is no robotaxi, there is no cheap ev, and the cybertruck is a bust. the chinese are capturing your market share, you can't compete with them. then, the investigations started. he knows he's cooked unless he gets trump elected and gets them dropped. he can even get a government bailout, kneecaps his opposition by calling back the rebates, and tariffs the chinese to keep them out of the market. so he promises he can fix all these other things in exchange, and trump gives him the means to do it.

now, he's really in over his head.
 
Musk deploys squandered credibility in desperate bid to hold ailing Tesla together (MSNBC on YouTube, Mar 22, 2025 - 7:10 min.)
Rachel Maddow rounds up reports on the struggles Elon Musk's car company is suffering through while he spends his time enraging Americans by butchering the federal government for Donald Trump. Unfortunately for Musk, the internet has preserved so many of his past failed predictions that the reassurances he offers Tesla staff about the future ring hollow.
(...)
1:10--> He begged his employees to not sell their stock in Tesla, which many Tesla executives and board members have recently done. He told his employees that things were about to become immeasurably better, unimaginably better. Quote. What's the most exciting future that you could possibly imagine? Quote. A future of abundance for all, where you could literally just have anything you want?
Elon Musk explained to his employees that these unimaginably good times are right around the corner. He told Tesla employees literally. Quote. Hang on to your stock. He told them, there are times when there are rocky moments, a little bit of stormy weather, but I'm here to tell you the future is bright and exciting.
He also told them that they should feel good about this, these reassurances from him, and definitely not sell their stock the way his executives and board member have been. They should really feel good about his assurances about the future because he has such a good track record of his predictions coming true.
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Tesla springs last-minute public all hands on staffers, confusion ensues (BusinessInsider, Mar 21, 2025)

Doesn't this sound like the moment immediately before a Ponzi scheme blows up or the cult leader tells his disciples to drink the Kool-Aid?
 
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it’s checking another box enron checked. it’s a a business model of growth above actual company growth, that collapses eventually. normal people lose most.
 
I've been posting on one of our congressmen's FB pages. A scammer approached me until I blocked him, on Telegram. It was not the real congressman. The scammer tried to tell me that Musk gave Bacon 4 Teslas to give away in our state. I reported this to the congressman's staff that creates all the content.
 
I for one believe him, he said he would have full self drive, that a Tesla car could drive from Los Angeles to New York with no driver intervention and that would be in 2017, it's strange how quickly we've come to accept this, no one really mentions it any more as we sleep or read whilst our cars simply drive themselves, it's almost like a dream. Plus of course the million or so Robotaxies that have been on the road since the middle of 2020, picking up millions of passengers and making public transport a reality for everyone who can afford it. Again it's absolutely amazing how these revolutionary technologies have been so quickly normalised that we never think about them now, all very much like we were dreaming!

With such a track record why wouldn't I believe his latest announcements?
 
To be fair, Musk didn't say "that would be in 2017." He said, by the end of 2017, "essentially November or December." :ROFLMAO: (Big applause from the audience!)
And in 2018 he said, "maybe 18 months from now."
"By 2020," it was supposed to be robo taxis.
And the launching of people to Mars was supposed to begin in 2024 "with arrival in 2025."

Beginning at 1:50, Rachel Maddows presents clips in the MSNBC video of Musk making those predictions:
He also told them that they should feel good about this, these reassurances from him, and definitely not sell their stock the way his executives and board members have been doing. They should really feel good about his reassurances about the future because he has such a good track record of his predictions coming true. He explained this to his employees last night, which occasions, I feel like it's only fair, just a reminder of what his predictions have actually been like over time. This, for example, was Elon Musk speaking in 2017.
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www.latimes.com

Enron Chairman Urged Employees to Buy Stock

Probe: Comments came just weeks before the company filed the worst results in its history.
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com

“Talk up the stock and talk positively about Enron to your family and friends,” Lay told employees via an electronic forum Sept. 26 with Enron offices around the world. A transcript of the forum was obtained Friday by The Times. “The company is fundamentally sound. At current stock prices . . . this seems to be an incredibly cheap stock.”
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Now some business writers are saying that what happened with Jobs at Apple in the late 80's could happen with Musk....the founder of the compnay being forced out of position by a stockholders revolt.
Musk might not get that when he let Tesla go public, he gave up a lot of power. The stockholder are getting very tired of his mot paying attnetion to his company, and his putting their money into some very questinable products;
 
dudalb said:
Now some business writers are saying that what happened with Jobs at Apple in the late 80's could happen with Musk....the founder of the compnay being forced out of position by a stockholders revolt.
Musk might not get that when he let Tesla go public, he gave up a lot of power. The stockholder are getting very tired of his mot paying attnetion to his company, and his putting their money into some very questinable products;
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On a FB thread someone made the claim that Tesla was bound to become a 5 Trillion dollar company. I looked over their projects and plans and was scratching my head. An unimpressive robot project, cars that were now facing declining sales, a robotaxi project that is looking like vaporware, batteries and solar projects, and having their chargers around the nation. Of all those only the last seemed to have any future income creation. I noted this and they claimed that would be their bedrock. But a quick check showed it was worth about 12 billion annual income. Hardly something to claim a company is worth 5 Trillion.
 
yeah and a big chunk of that income is selling carbon credits to other auto makers and another chunk is funny accounting

quarterly earnings is in about a month, where they may not even show a profit
 
dudalb said:
Now some business writers are saying that what happened with Jobs at Apple in the late 80's could happen with Musk....the founder of the compnay being forced out of position by a stockholders revolt.Musk might not get that when he let Tesla go public, he gave up a lot of power. The stockholder are getting very tired of his mot paying attnetion to his company, and his putting their money into some very questinable products;
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Musk didn't found Tesla.
 
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