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Trump's mob boss mentality hit Musk where it hurt

Chris Brennan   Paste BN

Regrets? 

Elon Musk has a few. But then again, too few to mention (with specifics).

The world’s richest person, once first buddy to the world’s most powerful man, is now trying to tap the brakes on the very public feud that erupted shortly after Musk left Donald Trump’s presidential administration.

But, like the braking system on one of the cars that Musk manufactures at Tesla, who knows if this will work?

“I regret some of my posts about President Donald Trump last week. They went too far,” Musk said in a June 11 post on X, the social media platform he transformed into a fever swamp for exactly the kinds of posts he now regrets.

So many questions. Which posts does Musk now regret? His lack of specificity opened the door for critics of Musk and Trump to ponder all that while, of course, amplifying once again the various shots Musk took at Trump.

Was it the post – which Musk called the “really big bomb” – where he suggested Trump’s team is hiding documents about the president’s old pal, the late and notorious sex abuser Jeffery Epstein, because those records implicate Trump?

Or was it when Musk called Trump’s signature legislation, a budget bill now floundering on Capitol Hill, a “disgusting abomination?”

Or perhaps it was when Musk reposed a call for Trump to be impeached?

Maybe a couples counselor can help them sort that all out. 

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But the real lesson here is clear – Musk switched from pique to meek because Trump flat-out threatened to use the power of the federal government to stifle and punish a critic, even if Musk did spend more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump retake the presidency last year.

Musk’s fortune was constructed in large part through federal contracts. And Trump openly – flagrantly – held those enormous financial interests as hostages, touting how easy it would be to just kill Musk’s federal contracts.

Trump also said Musk “will have to pay very serious consequences” if he supports congressional candidates who oppose the pending budget legislation. 

It comes as no surprise by now that Trump talks like a mob boss and flexes federal authority in ways that are openly corrupt. Here’s another rule about working in the mob – once you’re in bed with the crooks, you can never really get out.

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