Bulwark Takes - Elon-Trump Split?! Cracks Form In DOGE-MAGA Coup, Musk Popularity Plummets

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Sam Stein and JVL talk about Elon Musk and his DOGE team losing favor with the electorate. Does MAGA like Elon or not? Is DOGE overstepping and will Elon become the scapegoat of the Trump administration?

Now at Verizon, we're locking in low prices for three years, guaranteed, on MyPlan. And you can get a single line for just $45 a month when you switch and bring your phone. That's our best price ever on Unlimited Welcome, with autopay plus taxes and fees, guaranteed for three years. Because at Verizon, we got you. Visit your local DC Verizon store today. $20 monthly promo credits apply over 36 months with a new line on Unlimited Welcome. In times of congestion, Unlimited 5G and 4G LTE may be temporarily slower than other traffic domestic data roaming at 2g speeds price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate additional terms and conditions apply

bettering your business takes working with the best with the james hardy alliance you gain access to leads training networking and support from the number one brand of siding in north america achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hello, everyone. It's the JVL here with my colleague, Sam Stein from The Bulwark. Sam. What's up, man? Elon, Elon having a bad last 12 hours? It seems improbable, but yeah, I think he is. Wait, before we get to it, read the New York Magazine piece on the bulwark. It's great. Elon, yeah, so last 12 hours have been interesting. Look, I don't want to overstate it because he's disruptive and he's going to move on to another

target. And look, we have a 5 p.m. deadline today for deferred resignations for government employees, so expect a lot of chaos around that. But it's pretty evident here and there that his stature is falling a little bit. So three stories that I want to get to. And I'm curious what you think about it. First is we have this Wired story that, and then Wired has been doing great work covering the administration, really fantastic. But they have people in Donald Trump's inner circle saying, look, his, his takeover of government is causing rifts. Uh, people are not always in the loop. Uh, and then they feel like he gets ahead of them and then causes

controversy, uh, makes a lot of sense because, um, Trump's always built his empire and fiefdoms that war with each other. And then if you get too big, they cut you down. The other thing happened last night, a little bit of an obscure one, but I think an important one. It's a story. NBC has a story, but it was off of court proceeding. Basically, backstory is Elon's Doge team got access to the Treasury Department payment systems. That's more or less the bank. Yeah.

Sure. Not fine, obviously. systems that's more like the bank yeah it's not fine obviously six trillion dollars that go out of the government uh you would probably want some guardrails uh the the question was what were they doing with it right it's like proprietary information but also like it's like telling your bank if the bank were to be like look we're not going to give you these you know this deposit because we don't like it, we'd be freaked out. And that's what essentially was the possibility here. Anyways, they brought it to court to make sure that Elon's Doge guys weren't getting administrative access. And the judge said, reach an agreement.

And if not, I'm going to issue some sort of injunction. And they reached an agreement in which the Doge team, only two members of it, can have only read-only access to this payment system. So that is finally, at least we think, a guardrail that's been imposed. And then lastly, there's a couple of polls out that I think are really interesting that show Elon's popularity is dipping. Morning Consult does a tracking poll. They have his approval at 39% and his disapproval rating at 49%. But there was another poll that the economist did and Bill Crystal noted it in his write-up on Morning Shots today. Basically, in November, people were broadly comfortable with Elon doing his thing. Now that poll says 13% want him to have a lot

of influence. 25% want him to have a little influence and 46% want him to have none at all. So, I mean, Trump might be actually fine with this because it's, you know, the guy over there who's taken all the arrows, but Elon's definitely taking arrows. Yeah. So I have so many thoughts on this. First of all, we are now in a world where the idea that a couple of 19-year-olds who couldn't possibly pass security clearances only have read-only access to the entire treasury payment system is a victory. That's it. Just read. They can read it. That's now a victory that's it just read they can read it that's now a victory okay yeah that's a big victory um second there is a i want to talk about elon because elon is not an attractive personality in a way that trump is like trump is like a cat skills stand-up comedian right he's doing borch belt stick and he's an entertainer at heart

and elon is just this weird asshole who likes to spend his time playing video games for 17 hours on end and or hire people to play video games or hire people to play video games and uh he i think he is an almost perfect person to make the face of trumpism and in fact the face of the billionaires so this is like the classic saul olinsky rules for radicals right you find a guy like elon and you you freeze him and you just focus everything on him and you make him the stand in for, for all of the bad people. Oh, I totally agree. I totally agree. And, and the idea that, um, look, I think obviously USAID and what they're doing to USAID is not put it this way. It's, it's, it's a little bit more of a tricky political target for Trump opponents because it's foreign aid. It doesn't affect, people don't think

it affects us here. But let's say in theory that his next target is the Department of Education, right? Which seems to be on the chopping block. I think people will recoil at the idea that, oh my God, this guy's going to endanger student loans or education standards, the richest man on the planet is going to hurt the poorest people's student loans. That seems if you can't make good politics out of that, you probably should not be in politics. Yeah, I mean, I would not engage on student loans. I think that's bad. I would, but that's fine. Fair enough. There are other places. No, I'm just saying that having watched the Biden thing, I think student loans is a sour spot where if you are pro doing something about student loans, nothing that the government does is enough for you. And so we saw that with Biden, right? A lot of people who got their student loan forgiveness, they were like, oh, this is, you know,

he only forgave X dollars and I wanted mine. And then you have other people who are just like, why are they, why are the people I hate getting money when I want to be getting money? Okay, fine. Put student loan aside. DOE does give a lot of aid to local schools. A lot of federal money comes down to local schools. And I think that's where you hit him. He's hurting your local public schools.

The richest man on the planet has decided he wants to get rid of aid for local schools and special education funding. And all because he wants to modernize the government. I mean, that's like... Which is, of course, crazy. It's not actually to modernize the government. I mean, that's like – Which is, of course, crazy. He's not actually – it's not actually about modernizing the government. So I think you can really go very hard at him. And also, I mean, Elon is the kind of guy who he if you if you start tagging him for like hurting special ed at the local levels, he's going to say something very, very bad about kids who are in special education. And I think that would be helpful.

It's like it's like the it's like the infamous one where what was the people who were rescued from the cave and he called them a pedophile. Right. Yeah. He called the guy. No, he can't help. What was the people who were rescued from the cave and he called them pedophiles? Pedophiles, right. He called the guy – He can't help himself. No, he can't help himself. Now, the other thing I noticed is – and I'm curious what your thoughts are. There are like little inklings that Trump was going to go down and man the sort of rescuing of the abandoned spacecraft or whatever it was. Right. He was going to go do it himself. He was going to go do it. And it felt like Trump was trying to push him off the stage.

And obviously, Elon has not gone and done that. Elon has stayed in DC and done everything else. And then the other day, we got a tweet from the Department of Transportation being like, you know, the FAA, Elon's people are plugging into the FAA and they're going to optimize our system and so on and so forth. And that also felt like

Trump being like, hey, give them a project. What Tesla has done for self-driving. I'm super excited to fly in a week and a half. Sounds great. But that's the other thing. It's like when something bad now happens and it does because bad things happen all the time. Yeah.

I mean, that's now it's on Elon. But my point is that they're trying to find these projects that are more in his wheelhouse and he's not taking it. At least that's my read of it. Well, here's I mean, here's the thing. So Elon is useful for Trump as a shit catcher, you know, like, you know, he's just out there and Trump wants to wreck things and cause chaos. So he just deputize. I mean, Elon is basically his vigilante.

He just told him, go, go break stuff. And because Elon is so high profile when stuff gets broke, like it isn't. I said this on TNL last night. It isn't like Russ vote breaking things. Like if Russ vote breaks things, no percent of American knows who he is. But when Elon, everyone's like, oh, Elon Musk did that. And that's useful for Trump because, you know, bad stuff, bad, bad outcomes. And so I think eventually, eventually he'll be willing to push Elon over once Elon is more trouble than he's worth right now.

He's, he's not more trouble than he's worth. But the other thing is inside MAGA, they hate Elon. And that's the other thing, right? So the band is, there's a sliver of MAGA who really hates Elon.

And then there's like this new age online MAGA who sort of worships at the altar of Elon, but like the OG MAGA ban and yeah, but there's like this new age online maga who sort of worships at the altar of elon but like the og maga ban and yeah but there's that guy right there's the difference right the difference is that the the og maga are actual like island of misfit toys uh right populists whereas the the tech maga are not populist at all. They're, they're monarchists. Like what they want is for Elon Musk to be King and they want to subjugate the, the serfs and all that.

They want feudalism. And it's interesting to watch because I've been fascinated by, this is going a little bit sideways, but a Breitbart, the, the outlet that is, you know, so closely associated with Bannon,

although I don't think he has any formal right now, you know, they, they, they're like kind of a, and they're, that is so closely associated with Bannon, although I don't think he has any formal role right now. They're playing an outsized role right now in Washington, D.C. media. Matt Boyle is at the White House. He's probably one of the more influential reporters in D.C. right now. They've been kind of treating Elon pretty well, even though Steve Bannon hates the guy. And I wonder what kind of internal tensions are happening there, where you know that the sort of intellectual movement from which you were birthed doesn't like Elon, views him skeptically and suspiciously, thinks he's way too tied to China. And at the same time, you're trying to prop up or at least support the Trump administration.

This guy's playing such an incredible role. So, yeah, no, it's a fascinating story. I do wonder when it ends. I think everyone sort of is in agreement that it will end and not in a particularly great way. But I do wonder how long this lasts for. I mean, how long it lasts for, how long it feels like it lasts for, because it feels like we've been doing six months of internecine warfare.

I mean, the answer is these things always end badly there is no revolutionary movement in all of history where it ends with all of the factions getting along and making peace with one another right right like somebody gets gets airbrushed off of the sofa and i i think that that is likely to be Elon. I think the only thing that would make it. If it's not Elon, then we're in real freaking trouble at that point. But yes. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, Elon is more dangerous. I don't know.

I think you and I have talked about this before. I suspect Elon will try to run for president at some point in that he will just he'll just assert that he's doing it. And people like, oh, it's crazy. Can't do it. Then some state party will put him on the ballot. And like, we'll challenge it to the Supreme Court. Right. Then what happens?

You know, I don't I don't know. It's a we are in the worst possible timeline maybe yeah no it's pretty bad it's pretty bad I think pretty bad Sam yeah all right well this is great this is great go ahead and

subscribe to the channel where we will bring you more bad news for as long as bad news keeps happening yeah no we're just gonna be straight with all of our lives we're not sugar cutting this okay thanks man good talking to you this morning