Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Elon vs Trump Explained w/ Brace Belden

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Visit https://joindeleteme.com/taylor20 and protect yourself today! Use my code TAYLOR20 at checkout.Last week we witnessed the public blowout between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. After pouring hundreds of millions into Trump’s campaign and serving as a special adviser on the “Department of Government Efficiency" Musk is now on the outs with Trump and his future within the MAGA movement is uncertain. Brace Belden is the co-host of the podcast TrueAnon and has been covering Elon and the right wing internet universe for years. He joined me to break down Musk's rise in the MAGA world, the big blowup, what this fracturing means for the right going forward, and what's next for Elon.***** Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co ***** Subscribe to my newsletter: ⁠⁠https://www.usermag.co⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenzhttps://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenzhttps://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social

Is the government buying Ethereum or whatever? Like, I haven't even heard about that. And I follow this stuff. Last week, we witnessed one of the most striking ruptures in the alliance between Silicon Valley and the political world. The public blowout between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Once close allies, Musk had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Trump's campaign and served as special advisor on the Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge. But the two are now locked in a standoff as Elon's future within the MAGA movement remains uncertain.

Brace Belden is the country. co-host of the podcast Truanon, and he's been covering Elon and the right-wing internet universe for years. Today, he joins me to break down this big blow-up, unpack what this fracturing means for the right going forward, and what's next for Elon Musk. Brace, welcome to Power User. A pleasure to be here. I'm so excited to talk to you about Elon, because I feel like you're one of the few people that follows, like, every single aspect of Elon lore.

I love him. Today, I kind of want to dig into the drama. But before we get into the big blowup that happened, when, didn't you start to notice Elon going towards Trump? Because I feel like he started as a DeSantis guy. And then he kind of pivoted. A lot of these sort of like tech right guys, I feel like we're sort of for DeSantis at first. Because the reality is like Trump is really, let's say, mercurial and kind of nuts. And I think for a certain kind of person, they were like, his stars fallen. Like we need somebody who's got the based policies and is doing like base Miami, Bitcoin, crazy, whatever. But without like the baggage of Trump. And Elon, I've been.

himself, like, said this kind of stuff. Like, I like Trump, but like he, I think needs to kind of get out of here. We need some fresh blood. And the thing is, DeSantis is one of the least charismatic politicians. I think I've ever seen. He's just a lump of shit. You know, he crashed and I mean, especially compared to Trump, him and everybody else was kind of afraid to talk about Trump in a real way. And so in a way, it sort of mirro the Democratic primary, or not primary, like Kamala's campaign. The Democrats didn't have a primary. There was no primary. But it mired the Kamala campaign in a certain way because nobody could actually go against the in Kamala's case sitting president and in the Republicans case, the last Republican president. And so Elon hitched his

hitched his kind of wagon to DeSantis that crashed and burned. He himself is sort of so difficult to kind of like parse what he's thinking because it's always something even dumber than you could ever imagine. But I kind of believe on face value that like he got really excited when Trump got shot and really did decide to like go all in after that. Yeah, because that's when he endorsed him. I think it was literally right after the assassination. I think like the day of or the day after, yeah. And then that's also when he started pouring money into the America pack and like basically just funneling money to the campaign. Oh, and doing his amazing, amazing town halls where, you know, Elon would kind of go up there and stutter his way through a kind of broken series of like self-interrupted,

diatribes about whatever and he did his little dance and he did his little jump. I think Elon was kind of reveling in the attention and there was early predictions that Elon and Trump would have a falling out because they're both kind of alpha dogs. I mean, Trump falls out with everybody so it's like Elon or whoever it is, it's going to happen. But, you know, it seemed like they were sort of running these sort of parallel campaigns like Trump is running for president. Elon sort of joining him on the road, which I saw him actually in New York at that last big rally, I think it was. But then Elon's of doing his like, Pennsylvania, talking to the people to her, give you a million dollars if you registered to vote kind of shit. And it just converged in the White House in a beautiful way.

I mean, it was so corny on the campaign trail. He had to Occupy Mars shirt. And he's always wearing like kind of shitty quality shirts, though, that like you got from like T-spring or something. It's bizarre. God forbid that they all get a Mark Zuckerberg style stylist and start like wearing their own kind of like fits or whatever. It's very obvious that Elon picks out his own clothes. and that he has this sort of image that he like kind of is cribbing from, I think, just like, chat GBT, like, show me a cool guy kind of thing, which is like a leather jacket and like boots and like tightish jeans. Well, he didn't even change his style to like Trump gets elected.

He immediately is like gleeful at the White House at the inauguration, obviously. And then I feel like with Doge is when we started to see him like really starting to exert power. Can you talk through like some of the stuff that he was doing with Doge and sort of like, that beginning era. I mean, Vivek Ramoswami, who is, we love Vivik around here. I love Vivik. He is sort of shuffled off into the nether realms. You know, he's running for governor of Ohio. God bless him. You know, Vivik and Elon sort of came into doggie. I call it doggy because there's a picture of a dog. I mean, Vivik is for his many, many, many, many, many faults, probably a good deal smarter in terms of government and how it works and how people work probably than Elon is. Whereas

Elon sort of has this memeified version, I think, of everything. And there was sort of these divergent paths there. It was interesting because Vivek Star sort of was tarnished during some like H-1B Twitter could fluffle. Remember that? Yes. I mean, this was like early signs of the right sort of at war. I can't even remember where Trump stood. I feel like he tried to stay neutral. But there was drama over H-1B visas where basically these like anti-immigration people were like kick out all the H-1B visas. We got to eliminate immigrants and all the tech people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. whoa, like we kind of rely on those people. Those are like the Indians doing our work.

And then Vivek was like, that was like when it became clear that he was like a person of color, I think. He's like, he's like, I bet it smells lazy in here. You white people, you white people are fucking lazy. And he tried to do this almost kind of 90s, maybe early 2000s, conservativeism stuff where it's like you got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. The white family is falling apart. You guys are lazy. That really put them out of favor with the online. Wright, who are particularly, I think, because of whatever short-form videos they watch, like, eight

Indians. And it sort of became, like, very important to them in the past, like, a couple of years. And I think that he just kind of couldn't handle the heat. Funnily enough, Elon is also an H-1B person, but he sort of evaded that. But Vivek departed sort of with his, you know, his tail-tucked between his legs to go run for governor in Ohio. And Elon came in there, and I think it was pretty clear that he didn't know what the government is really. And, you know, he hired all these 20-year-olds. I mean, I think that was probably because most normal people wouldn't really want to take that job, but or like people who are not normal people, but like people, like people a little older would want like a real job. But he hired all these like 20-year-olds, 22-year-olds, just like Elon

worship guys. He did a bunch of stuff, kind of unclear what the results of those things were. And then just kept pumping the numbers and juicing the numbers and saying they were higher than they were. and like promising these things in the same way that he promised flying cars and robotaxies and all this stuff, promising that $5,000 doggy dividend checks were going to come and we're going to reap the benefits of this and all the savings that's going to go right back in your pocket. Sometimes they would talk about how USAID is funding indivisible or what, I don't know what. And then sometimes it was like there's just so much graft and we're canceling these Adobe pro accounts or whatever. Yeah, it was like, we've canceled our Politico pro subscriptions. across the government. Like Sahel Lavinthia, and might be mispronancey, it's last same, the former

head of Gumroad, I guess, went to go work for Doge. And I think talked to Kevin Ruse this week and was saying, like, they couldn't find areas to cut. Like, it's actually quite hard to find areas of the government to cut. And Elon was also cutting things that were already, like, approved. Like, that money had already been earmarked or spent, essentially. So it wasn't really saving anyone anything. Yeah. And it's interesting because I think Elon maybe had some, like, fundamental misunderstandings of how government works that maybe he got through like cat turd memes or whatever, you know, abrid versions of the fountainhead that he's read. But he didn't seem to kind of understand like Congress's relationship to funding things and what the president had Aegis over and what

Doggy's mission could be in certain places. But in the past few months or the past couple months, he sort of honed in on the deficit. And this is a big thing for Elon somehow. If he was really put on the spot. I'm not sure he could explain his own words why it's so important to him. You know, he becomes hyper fixated on certain things. We see this. He'll spend like a month really focused on one topic and then it'll kind of like be dropped or replaced by NPC next current thing, Chip in his brain. The thing is, Elon is a special government employer, was a special government employee, which was a real thing. We did know that his like official tenure was ending, but it was kind of implied that like he'd still be there and he really wasn't actually head of doggy to begin with.

I don't even know if he was actually attached to doggy in an official capacity. He obviously ran it, but this woman, something Gleeson, he was nominally in charge of it. And so I think a lot of people kind of figured he would stay in that role. In the background, his companies are not doing well. Tesla is sort of his flagship company. It was not doing well because a Tesla sort of became adopted by the right wing as a symbol. Trump held a press conference. used car or new car showroom thing on the White House lawn talking about his Teslas and that didn't help. And it was really just like consumer backlash. I mean, because obviously if you attach yourself to Trump in this way, a certain amount of people who might possibly buy your vehicle would no longer.

I think AOC is a Tesla or had a Tesla. There's certain kinds of like progressive people or whatever who like are invested in electric cars. Also, while their stock was kind of going down in price, they were kind of making up for that or they were still, you know, still retaining a level of profitability because of the carbon tax EV credits. Which is like how Elon makes so much of his money. I think people might not realize, but like most of the reason Elon's companies are profitable and successful is because of these massive government subsidies. Yes. I mean, SpaceX obviously. But Tesla especially has really, really benefited from EV credits. And they sell their credits to other car companies. and that is where a ton of their profitability comes in. And Trump has talked about EV credits before. Obviously, he's talked about them much more recently.

But it's funny because Elon is sort of this, again, he doesn't really know what he's talking about a lot of the time. I think he spends a lot of his day on X, the Everything app. And he's so kind of like in his own world. But, you know, he has this idea of cutting entitlements or whatever. He is an idea of kind of cutting the pork. But there's some pork that is a little more privileged And that would be the pork that Elon Musk himself relies upon.

Right. And I think he wasn't like, Doge wasn't also going to cut military spending, which is like the majority of what we spend money on. Yeah. Then he pivots like the deficit. I think it's like he realized he couldn't really actually cut that much from the government currently. So he's like, oh, it's the deficit is the real problem. Right. Like that's the real thing.

And Trump has this flagship big, beautiful bill that is going to actually add to the deficit. Because everybody knows like the deficit is kind of like made up. It's like a little bit fake. You're going to kick the can down the road forever. And Elon, maybe he actually believes this. Maybe it's just, again, like a fixation he has. It's like the buck stops here. We are fixing all of this.

And you sort of saw this kind of coming out from Elon Twitter people for a little bit before Elon himself even started talking about it. But like the big, beautiful bill would undo some of Doggy's wonderful savings. And there was a doggy savings website. Like a bunch of made-up debunked numbers. Of course, yeah. There's also, I think this is a sort of funny thing. Every single government agency has like a silver check doggy account, but almost none of them have ever posted like anything. There's like 50 of them. And they've all been like, hi, we're like health and human services or we're like, you know, FDA, doggy. And then nothing else. Nothing else about it. It's unclear because doggy, of course, is like the rebranded digital service. And so like I'm not really sure what doggy would be doing or could do outside of a lot. lot of that stuff. Like, Doggy wasn't really the people that, like, cut out USAID. Like, that was, like, a concerted effort for many people in the Trump administration. Ultimately, the only thing that,

like, Doge could really do was, like, go into the, like, take down the website and, like, delete, like, databases. Like you said, because it was its Department of Digital Services, it's not like they were the ones, like, allocated the money. And, yeah, you needed actual lawmakers to affect a lot more of the things that he had promised. And that's what Elon has sort of been, or some people from Elon's out of Twitter have been sort of freaking out about it. It's like, oh, looks like, Doggy's mission is, you know, going to be a tarnished or aborted by the big beautiful bill, which is going to have all this pork in it. And Elon spends a lot of time reading what his sycophants have to say about him.

E. Miles Chong, Gunther Eagleman, like all these Elon reply guys, like, they really do make up a lot of Elon's world. And he will sort of like, first of all, steal memes or whatever from them. But I think he actually really does listen to these people. And of course, these people are stupid. They don't really understand what Elon's limits here would actually be and have this sort of like fantasy version of Elon in their head where he really can do everything. He really is sort of Superman. He kind of is the shadow president. He is this and this and this and this and this. While some of the shadow president stuff might have been at first, maybe a little true. And I think that Elon was probably instrumental in like putting together that bizarre Julius Malima, EFF, Kill the Boar display in the White House with the president of South Africa. and probably got some of the white genocide people out of South Africa. Yeah, that was bizarre.

Like, you brought over a couple dozen white South Africans to do what? To go to the mall. There's limits to what Elon can do. And, like, the reality is if you're dealing with somebody like Trump, Elon should have been smarter and realize that, like, Trump always has to be the big dog. And Elon would sometimes, you know, he would say this or that. Like, I have no desire to run for president. I really, which he can't obviously do anyways.

But, like, I really support Trump. He's in charge here. but I think Elon was sort of feeling himself. And the reality is, I think Elon really was on a lot of drugs. Still is probably. You know, I think that ironically for somebody who seems to seek out or find himself in sort of a lot of high pressure situations, he actually doesn't really react well to pressure. Not at all.

He goes crazy a little bit. And I think that he was under a lot of pressure and he said he was under a lot of pressure. Remember when he kind of cried when he talked about people like, I think it was Tim Walts like bragging about Tesla's stock going down? I mean, he's so fragile, right? Like, he has the most fragile, fragile ego. This is why he's replying to people with 23 followers on Twitter, too, when you're the richest man in the world. I'm thinking there's some kind of crazy hormonal imbalance because I feel like he's been on TRT for a while. Kind of big with tech people.

That's the testosterone stuff, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he's been on test. And, you know, I would say, even yourself out with a little, maybe some estrogen in there. I don't know. But he's very, he's not even keeled. One of the reasons he started taking ketamine therapeutically in the first place is because he felt under this pressure in 2022, 2022, 23. At least that's why he said he was really depressed.

And I think we were sort of seeing a repeat of that, maybe even a relapse if he ever stopped taking it on the ketamine. And I think it was just all kind of like coming down for him in his head. And as that was happening, his time in the official member of the government was coming to a close. And the reality is a lot of Tesla stockholders are unhappy with him. Maybe not politically. They might agree with him politically, but like Tesla is a very active shareholder community. And I, you know, some of them are, you know, kind of Elon people on Twitter that he, you know, he pays attention to. And, you know, he sort of was like, okay, well, now I'm redoubling my efforts and like, rededicating myself to my companies. So he goes out, I think he's either at SpaceX or he's at Tesla and he gives this interview. And in that interview, he kind of says some not so nice things about the bill. He's like, well, the bill is, you know, it can be bigger, it can be beautiful. But he can be beautiful. But he's, but he's, he's, can't be both. That was not a good idea. And there was this sort of the bruised eye goodbye he had with Trump. And I'm wondering now, you know, he said that Little X was the one that, uh, punched him in the eye. But now I'm wondering it was Scott Bessent. Oh, yeah, because he got in that fight, right?

What happened there? He has been feuding with Bessent basically the entire time and like sub-tweeting Scott Besson and just directly tweeting about him. Who is Scott Besson? He's the Treasury Secretary, right? But he's a, he's a big dude. I mean, Musk is also big. But like Besson's like 6'5. He lives in a giant pink house. I think he's gay, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. Trump has some gay shooters on his side.

It's always been true of the Trump movement. Like they've actually have a lot of women in power, a lot of gay, like, or I don't know, I would say a lot. But like they have a decent amount. It reminds me in the way that like maybe like your aunt who lives in Florida who's like kind of older has like some gay friends or something like that. Trump's a bit haggish in that regard where he has his gaze. But Scott is respected. Like I think people trust Scott definitely in the finance world. He's seen as like more reasonable and smart. And Elon seems to not know what he's talking about. And I think Elon especially financially, like it's just so up his own ass. You know, there's reports that he's feeding with Marco

Rubio and then they both came out and denied it. Elon is acerbic, right? Like people don't like Elon Musk. Unless you're a sycophant, there's very few people I think who actually enjoy being around Elon because he has a hard time connecting with people. And he is also himself at the same time just an annoying guy to begin with. And, you know, thinks he's very funny when he's actually very much the opposite. I mean, anybody who says Elon is funny is lying because they want something from Elon Musk. That's just the way it is. Even people who like Elon would have to admit that.

Let's talk about like the breakup then. This is like, I think one of the best days on Twitter ever. What kicked it off? I think one of the first things that I saw at least was Elon making a couple replies to like some of the slop accounts that he's. sort of orbit around him. I think one's called Autism Capital and then there's like a few others. I think he like maybe replied in the affirmative to like somebody talking shit on Trump. And then he mentioned that Trump was in the Epstein files. And that's the reason they haven't

been released. I want to zoom in on that. Because a big thing on sort of like right wing slop Twitter has been like, why haven't they released the Epstein files yet? We've seen guys like Mike Cernovich, all of these people being like, you know, day whatever of no Epstein files released because Cash Patel had said that these were going to be released. Cash Patel sort of been doing the rounds on podcast. I think he was on Rogan a couple days ago. Yeah, he's that FBI director who's just been out there. He looks perpetually scared all the time.

And I realized that, you know, I hadn't seen a full body pick of him in a while. He's built exactly like Rogan in this sort of short and musly thing. And this is an advice for anyone who's short out there. And you're a short guy. You might think that the move is to get musly because that will make women or whatever or guys ignore your shortness. Wrong, my brother. The shorter you are and the more muscle you are,

the more it looks fucking crazy. Patel's been saying like, actually, you know, Eustin did kill himself and actually we're not, there's not that much out there and we're not going to release this stuff. But the thing is, this has become such a prevalent meme on the right that like there's no way that they can kind of give this up because a lot of them have, I don't know,

made this like part of their whatever. And you know, and I say to somebody who knows a lot of the Jeffrey Epps. stuff who would very much like them to release any of the stuff they got. It's sort of like a trope, right? And it's this obsession and they're so obsessed with it. And they, yeah, like you said, there was that sort of like fake release where they had all these influencers come to the White House and flash these binders and that ended up being nothing. Clearly the things started to break down with Trump and Elon. And Trump is posting on truth social

and going off. They both were posted on the respective social media sites that they own, which is so crazy. It's so funny. First of all, none of these people actually want a release of anything. And say to all, everyone knows that Trump and Epstein are connected. This is not a secret at all. And throughout the day then, there was sort of this like prodding of each other. And it, you know, it didn't go as far as I think a lot of people, including myself, were hoping. But Elon seemed to be more burning bridges than Trump did. Trump was sort of like, a little bit blasé about it. He didn't go, he didn't go nuclear on Elon. But Elon starts getting into like, do we need like a new political party that represents the 80% of people in the middle? I want to like read a couple of these posts because I think like they're so absurd. So Trump says that he asked Elon to leave the

White House and that basically Musk went crazy and like he was getting cut out and and all that. Trump says Elon was wearing thin. I asked him to leave. I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted that he knew for months I was going to do and he just went all caps crazy. And then he says the easiest way to save money on our budget billions and billions of dollars is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts. I was always surprised Biden didn't do it. I think what triggered Trump the most maybe to us. I don't think he actually cared about the upstein stuff too either. I feel like it was Elon saying without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the house and the House Republicans would be 51 to 49 and

it's such ingratitude. And I feel like this is like you said, you have to sort of always defer to Trump. Yeah. And this was like him trying to sort of like big time. And then he says time to drop the really big truth bomb. Real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That's the real reason they have not been released. Have a nice day. DJT. And yeah, this is, I mean, Dan Blasarian replies speaking truth to power. I love Dan Blasarian's anti-Semitic turn. It's so funny because it's desperately trying to copy the Tate's, I think. He's like, Lord, I seen what you did for Andrew Tate and like, please let it happen for you, but it's not hitting and he doesn't know what to do. So he's just sort of like flailing. It's tough. Blasarian, my brother, we'll take you back. I feel like this all.

just blows up like you said at one point Elon Musk basically implies that Trump should be impeached. It all sort of blows up very publicly before everyone gets quiet, which yeah, I agree. I wish they went harder. I was like, keep posting. Keep posting. Don't stop. The thing is Trump like gets these people in his head that he'll like always talk about for like Elizabeth Warren for instance. He'll like just mention her randomly forever. Obviously he talks about Biden frequently frequently frequently, But even Obama, he'll talk about a lot. Like, people he hasn't, like, actually had to deal with in many years. I feel like there's a hope that he does this with Elon.

But Elon still has so much cachet with the Trump movement or the MAGA movement that unless he actually moves against Trump or, like, really starts talking shit, then I think we see a problem. You know, it's funny. Elon basically, like, dropping these sort of truth bombs and, like, agreeing that Trump should be impeached, it's tough because everyone's like, Elon's stupid or Elon's a genius. Elon is really smart in some ways, I'm sure, but Elon is like, dumber than a baby in other ways. And one of those is like how to deal with people. And I think one thing that he sort of does find out sometimes is that like maybe people around him are like, listen, you have to like, please stop tweeting for a second. Like just let it rest.

You know, let's talk it out like men or whatever. And I think he can kind of be appealed to on that account. And I'm wondering if that's maybe what happened here. I have a weird feeling there might be a reconciliation at some point. But the reality is, is Elon is like highly unpopular with a lot of people in the electorate. Well, yeah, I want to get into that. But first, I want to talk about like what happened with the people taking sides. Because I feel like this kind of like threw a bomb into the conservative movement where like everyone

has sort of come together. Like everyone came together to support Trump. And I feel like you saw so many of these right wing influencers like struggling to navigate. Well, we had this fucking goat squad at first, right? I mean, Vivik was in there for a second. But it was like, RFK. junior, Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk. Wow, what a trio. We have struck oil here. Like, we have our dream team. And for so many, like, kind of slop merchants on the right who are, like, basically

spend all their day making, like, grok edits of, like, Musk and Elon as like Roman gladiators, it was tough because a lot of these people have come to maybe rely on a certain income from Blue Check engagement on Twitter. Now that, as many people know, is sort of subject to Elon's whims and he can give it and he can take it away. Basically, it's a way for him to pay people to be his friend. So if you go against him, it's not so good. And so at first you saw everybody being like, you know what? These are two alpha dogs. Like, we need peace. We need these guys to talk it out. And then as the day wore on and sort of Elon sort of went a little bit more nuts. A lot of that some, you know, some of the tweets have been deleted now. But, you know, there were certain people picking sides.

And you saw some of the like Johnny Come Lately Maga types pick Elon. Because, that's kind of maybe how they got into it from just like destroying their brains looking at Twitter all day. But the true MAGA, Jack Posobiac, for instance, all these guys, they're picking Trump. I mean, it's just no contest. This episode of Power User is brought to you by Delete Me. As a high-profile journalist who's dealt with stalking, harassment, and death threats, I know how crucial it is to protect your personal information. Unfortunately, no matter how careful you are, data brokers will collect and sell your personal information to anyone willing to pay for it.

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Trump's only going to be around for three and a half more years. I'll be around for the next 40, which I don't know about the math on that. But you're going to be 95? I don't think so, Elon. I think maybe you would not make it that long, but you just look unhealthy. I feel like it was this desperate attempt to be like, pick me kind of energy of like stay on my side and like I'm still powerful, even though his power has obviously been diminished as he's leaving the government.

Obviously. I mean, and the thing is like, Elon bought Twitter so people would be nice to him on Twitter. That is why he bought it. And so he could mold it to like be like this almost like friendship orbit on Elon simulator kind of thing. It's crazy. I mean, it speaks to a personality so damaged that you put a thousand monkey psychiatrist in front of a thousand monkey psychiatric typewriters for a thousand years and you couldn't even begin to give him even half a diagnosis. But a lot of that is contingent on his closeness to Trump. I mean, there will always be Elon diehard fans. always always and there'll be a lot of them but the reality is like the maga movie it's bigger than Elon it's bigger than Elon you know we got many goats on the cliff he i think made a gamble and i feel like he's going to reconsider because i think a lot of his his feelings get so hurt and i think he'll have to walk it back but so many people have kind of fallen into the Elon orbit

where it's just like this sort of sycophantic like tweeting he's a genius tweeting pictures of him He has this guy, I love. Doggy designer, Doge designer. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was sort of like a 30-something-year-old Indian guy who Elon, I think, once flew out to the Bay Area, who 24 hours a day as scheduled tweets of like Elon Musk as Kekias Maximus. He'll just tweet about the Roman Empire.

And Elon retweets this so often. It's hard for me to even get kind of in the mindset of somebody who frequently retweets AI generated images of themselves, but with like a not fucked up body and like a nice face. I think in a way that Elon has like a, there's sort of an emotional connection he might feel to teenage girls in that aspect where there's all these eating disorders and body dysmorphia that develops from girl, like teenage 14 year old girl seeing themselves on Instagram filters and then their actual face like not looking up to snuff or whatever. I think Elon maybe is developing some kind of fucked up filter based dysmorphia because of that that might be driving

him further into, you know, his depressive spiral. But I can't even begin to understand the psychology of somebody who does that. So it's tough for me to really get into Elon's head here. But I think he sees the tide turning on him a little bit. And I think that probably freaks him out a lot. Because as he said himself, like, he is all in on Trump because after Trump or if like something doesn't work out here, I don't think the Democrats have the nuts to jail him. But it's not going to be as good for it.

Yeah. It's like 100% about political expedience. He still is reliant on all these government contracts. He can't actually alienate the government. Like Trump is more powerful in this situation. And like you said, the MAGA movement is just so much bigger. And Trump is the alpha in the situation. And he has to remember that.

And like you said, so many people have sort of forgotten that, I think, with Trump. And they have these falling outs. He's so beholden to the government. And I think a lot of these MAGA influencers also recognize that. Like, they recognize that Elon is unpopular. Elon has like a pretty low popularity rating. And like, if you, you know, these influencers rely on public support and most of the public, like, outside of like the Twitter echo chamber just doesn't have like a deep affinity for

Elon like you said he's kind of just annoying. Yeah, I think Elon confuses himself because he has this website made up of, you know, 80% maybe like Cambodian bots or like 19% autism capital or Mike Cernovich or whoever like, you know, kind of like fluffing him all day. But outside of that, like a lot of people, even Republicans, like his approvals are not high. And also even just within the government, they don't really like with him. I mean, David Sacks, I would be surprised if David Sacks sticks around, honestly. Sacks is doing nothing. There was the crypto conference or whatever, and then nothing since then.

Is the government buying fucking Ethereum or whatever? Like, I haven't even heard about that. And I follow this stuff. There's been really nothing since then. Sax is just, I mean, he's a humiliating creature to begin with. But boy, I mean, sub-Elon just kind of like stuck in the middle. And all he can do is kind of be like, ha-ha, crazy day on Twitter. Everything's happening here.

Not true. Half of it's happening on true social, but, you know, we won't say that. Well, my favorite were the blue sky reactions. Are you on blue sky? I'm on blue sky, unfortunately. I never set foot on there. Well, did you see the discourse? And actually, you know, people were attributing it to blue sky, but it was all over threads.

And I went on Instagram Reels this morning and there was a woman issuing an apology. So there was a lot of backlash to people saying the girls are fighting. Did you see that? I thought that was like okay to say because it's kind of like, because for my understanding, and you know much more about this than I am. So maybe I'm wrong. From what I understanding is like sort of. the way that the sort of people who make Instagram Reels talk is kind of like this imagined 19-year-old

gay black guy from the Bronx. Girls are fighting is not so much that. But like there's this sort of like affect and cadence that is this kind of like neo, you know, kind of like like gay black talk. Well, yes. They're definitely doing the like digital blackface thing or whatever people want to say. The girls are fighting is a longtime meme. Like that's like a trope and a phrase. It's very popular. You could see two turtles on the street, you know, fighting with the. be in quote tweet it but of course like this happens and everyone has to have the most sort of woke take or whatever so you saw people i guess with audiences being like the misogyny in all of it like why did they have to be compared to women it's like i could see that if you were saying like oh cat fight or

something and even then it's like like like you said trump is so campy like these are both like campy like ridiculous people there is a drama to that and then there was outrage somebody shared a screenshot of a blue sky post on twitter so then people were like outraged that you know it was like the outrage about the outrage. Oh, you can mine engagement for doing blue sky stuff on Twitter net, definitely. Oh, 100% because you could be like, look at what the two woke people over there are doing. What a bunch of losers. Even though it was like mostly happening on threads, which is hilarious because it's like nothing happens on threads. But then it came out that like actually the girls are fighting. It's like it's from drag culture. I think it's from some drag queen. That's what I'm saying.

A lot of it's like a lot of it's like sort of weird like cheesecloth drag culture like comes down. So there's this like woman on Instagram Reels and Sporting this. like white women. So then like the white women had to apologize. It like it took me back to 2020. Like back when we had the classic phrase women in POC. I love that. 2016 and 2020. That was a big one. And she was apologizing. She did this apology that I was just like, who is this for? Like no one cares by the way. When someone's canceling on Twitter, this is why you should never apologize online. No one cares about. They don't actually want you to apologize. Everyone likes it. That's the thing that people don't understand. Everyone likes when things happen

on these websites and the things that happen on these websites is something crazy or someone does something bad or someone gets in trouble. Everybody likes it. Wait, let me just play this for you, Brace. I would love to see it. I have stepped in it and this is an apology.

I responded to a video of AOC saying the girls are fighting talking about Elon Musk and Donald Trump. I did not understand the origins of that particular phrase that it's rooted in drag culture, in queer culture, particularly in drag culture as shared by people of color. So I responded to her video not understanding the context and I inserted my experience into something I don't belong in. Thankfully and gratefully, I have people in my community who are willing to educate me and us.

And so I took a seat. I did some research. I read all of their comments and that's where this apology is coming from. So here's what I'm going to do. First, I'll share some resources in my story. Then I'm going to delete that video because the impact didn't match the intention and the impact is the only thing that matters. And third, I will not be so reactive to these social media moments. I popped off and I should have thought critically and said, AOC really knows her stuff.

She would not use that phrase lightly. There's probably something I'm missing here. I did not do that. I will do that going forward. This type of video is just like it could have been made by AI to me because it's like, who is this for? I will share resources on my story. For who? Yeah. Who? Who's clicking that? But just to get back to this, like, there was this like meta cancellations happening over the discourse and like, and also everyone wanting to insert themselves and like cancel a drama. And like, I think like that's what made it such a good day on Twitter because it wasn't just like two of the most crazy people on the internet fighting.

It was also just like to take the chaos, the like Republicans not knowing what to do and just absurd. At the end of the day, the reality is it sucks to say this because what Elon Bostoehl or whatever, like Twitter is still the main one, you know? even though it's changed so much and like is so sort of like 4chanish now or whatever like it's still kind of where everything sort of else expands from it's the only real time platform the only one yeah exactly it's the only real time platform that's why i'm like they're trying to pivot to video which thankfully does not seem to work out that well it sucks so bad because no we need people saying

things immediately immediately because you need to say stupid shit immediately and i need to see everybody going crazy and elyle is so addicted to twitter i can't remember who did it but But somebody, like, put together this, like, how often he was tweeting. And sometimes it was, like, all but, like, three hours in a day. Well, they said actually, I think the day that this all happened, I think he posted around 80 times, which people were saying was actually quite down from his usual, like, 150. 200, 150, yeah. I mean, it's probably pretty easy because a lot of it is just the crying, laughing emoji,

the swastika of today. In fact, I'm looking at his Twitter right now and there's just multiple crying laughing emojis to things. It sucks because I think he probably will in order. to like appease people completely give up on the deficit stuff and try to get his worm his way back into Trump's good graces. I think it'll be a second. I think some stuff will happen on the scenes. And this is a prediction. This is advice for anybody out there. Never predict because you might get it right. If you get it right, you'll be remembered as like, oh, like I got it right for like a second. But if you get something really wrong, which this doesn't really count as, you're wrong forever. But I think it's likely

that they'll make up behind the scenes and then he will kind of come back in the midterms because he promised an absurd amount of money for, I think specifically like Trump, related packs for the midterms. And I think this is going to happen, I'm sure. Trump's not going to be doing well in the midterms or like there's going to be bad predictions. And Elon's going to like see that as an opportunity to kind of like come back in and put his own guys in there. Ultimately too, it's just a reality that the Republicans are better for billionaires and people like him. And that's what I want to get into too, because I don't know if you saw another thing that happened shortly after these Democrats just like frothing at the mouth, ready to work with him, the leader of the abundance conference,

Immediately, Roe Kana has been out there really vocal, Richie Torres. Can you talk a little bit about that? First of all, let me say this right now. Richie Torres, you need to unblock me because we could cook up something crazy together. And I am Jewish. I'll support whatever you support, which seems to be mostly Israel. It's hard to find other things he supports, but he has come out in favor of abundance lately. And it was funny because I was just at Welcome Fest.

Which is the like abundance festival, right? Well, I thought it was going to be more abundant than it was. It was a little incoherent because there was abundant. people there who like spoke about abundance blah blah blah blah but a lot of it was fairly incoherent sort of like centrism without a real base to it and I did actually think it was going to be more abundant than it really was well tell me about like the democrat like how successful do you think this is going to be because these Democrats like Rokana and Rokana represents Silicon Valley but like yeah like Rokana is just saying that like it's like that's the thing

is I think Rokana likes to be interviewed like I think Rokana is maybe a first pickup on ring when the press calls kind of guy. Richie Torres obviously definitely is. And I think the reality is it's completely unworkable. And if you actually ask anybody who's like with a modicum of like sense in that kind of coalition, in the abundance coalition, they would tell you like this probably is going to happen. You can probably win over like a few of them. But Musk right now is so toxic, I think to the Democrat base that if the Democrats embraced him, unless he went like full woke, which would be amazing to see. Oh, I would love it, but he won't. I saw people saying that like, oh, he's about to be the wokeest you've ever seen.

It's like, no, he's not, you guys. He's just not. I'm not so sure he's rocking with the brothers. I'll put it like that. I think one thing he may have read a lot about is race and IQ, maybe. Or the LGBTQ. Oh, yeah. He likes the LGBT, but he does not like the trans at all.

Although he, like, hasn't said as much lately about it. Again, like, it's one of those things where he inserts current thing. I mean, obviously he's, I'm sure he hasn't changed his views. But, like, there'll be months where, like, he's, like, talking about all. all about that and blah blah blah and then he'll just completely change it to something else. But a lot of the abundance types I think would be also willing to sort of make that bargain as well. But explicitly doing that is I think a little too gauche for them. And so I can't see that happening. And this is the problem with the Democrats being so like pro corporation, pro

billionaire, like the new head of the DNC that was like, we just need a few good billionaires on our side. Like the reality. Reid Hoffman. Yeah, exactly. But like they're not. The Republicans are more friendly to billionaires. Like they actually do want like more. inequality. So no matter, like, the Democrats constantly trying to sort of like outright the right. It's just, it's never going to work. It's this triangulation they try to do. And, you know, I saw this a lot at welcome fest. We're like, we got to just drop a lot of the like social stuff and like kind of get back to brass tax. And like, I think you can see for some Democrats, they think that like, okay, if we like highly moderate or even kind of go conservative on some social stuff, not fully conservative,

but like roll it back a little bit. And then also moderate some of the economic. stuff, we can sort of get the disaffected Republicans and we'll keep our base. That's a gamble of somebody who hasn't talked to a real Republican outside of D.C. in a long time because I spent a lot of time at Republican events. I don't think you can win a lot of them over. I just don't think it's going to happen. They don't care about policies. He could go down in the Kenton cloth and raise the fist, Nancy Pelosi style, and they would be like, he's based. It kind of reminds me of like the, we need a liberal Joe Rogan or whatever. Like, you're just missing the forest for the tree. and a lot of this stuff.

But I just think on like a full national scale, it can't be adopted. And like, Elon is so toxic now. And I'm not just like among like whatever lefty types, but like among like straight up liberals of every persuasion that it just would not work. And Elon himself is like, I think part of the reason he liked being around Trump so much is because he was elevated to this level of like this based fucking goat in the coalition. And that just would not happen with him in the Dems. And it's laughable.

I think that kind of talk will diminish by like next week at least if it hasn't already. Yeah. I mean, some of the only sort of like resistance or like movement against Trump that we've seen really meaningfully from liberals was the Tesla take down stuff. I was out in Joshua Tree that weekend that was all happening. It was all just like old people. But it reminds me also of like the stop oligarchy thing too, which got like, I mean, at least in L.A., like it was Coachella weekend.

So I don't know if that's where all the young people were. But like they had like Joan Baez performing. I did Neil Young come? Yes. And Neil Young, exactly who on site. I was like, who is this man, this old man that they're dragging out on stage? Like, the audience is that older people. And so I think if you have that coalition, it's like the one thing that the Democrats are

sort of against, yeah, you can't embrace. You can't embrace it. No. He's too toxic. Where do you think Elon goes from here? Is he going to lay low? What's his next sort of like thing going to be? I think he's throwing himself back into the companies in a sort of performative way.

He really has been doing this already. But like he's going to redouble himself. with SpaceX. I know Tesla is like doing their little Waymoes in Austin. You know, his robotaxies may finally come true. This optimist shit, I think that's a long way off. Thank God. But I think he's really going to be sort of like performatively busy with his companies. Yeah, I think he's going to be like licking his wounds and being like, oh no, I just need to focus on business. There is a Teflon quality to Elon that I don't think is quite as durable as Trump's, but so far he has bounced back from everything. However, unlike Trump, he is really his own worst enemy.

Elon is fundamentally sort of a malignant spirit in a way that like Trump, okay, yeah, he's a bad guy or whatever. But like Elon has a self-destructive quality to him that Trump definitely lacks. I'm not foreclosing the possibility of them really having a falling out. I could see him, you know, having a little crash out on Twitter after getting zooted and kied out. Which, by the way, any of the New York Times reporters who said they saw that drug box he had, I can identify so many pills on site. You need to send me that fucking box. And I think the good thing is, like, Elon is susceptible to public pressure.

So I think if there's a concerted national effort to make Elon depressed and lose his mind, I think it could probably work. I'm not saying I endorse that. Of course, I love Elon. I love Tesla. I love SpaceX. Gone as Mars. We're going to get there.

Blah, blah, blah. It's going to be so amazing. But I think if, like, 500,000 people really put their heads to it, you could probably make Elon go, like, permanently insane. All right, Brace. Well, thank you so much for 20. to me today. Well, thank you for having me. Thanks again to delete me for sponsoring this episode of Power User. To help get your data removed from the internet, check out Delete me via the link

in the description and use code Taylor 20 at checkout for 20% off consumer plans. All right, that's it for the show. You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel. Don't forget to subscribe to my tech and online culture newsletter, Usermag.com. That's Usermag.com, where I cover all of these issues and more. If you like the show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. We'll be back next week with a brand, new episode of Power User.