Trump 47 Is Not Trump 45, And The Left Hasn't Caught On

Michael LeBron, who posts as Lionel on his YouTube channel, makes a key point in the clip above. At 4:10:

This is not the same Donald Trump. . . . What Trump went through before in 2016 and elsewhere, what he went through was something he never, ever forgot, and he understands how things are done now. . . . He realized that he effed up when he did not do something, dare I say, a little more assiduously regarding the National Guard and others. January 6 was caused by Nancy Pelosi, who let this happen. Donald Trump told her flat out, "I want protection. . . . I want the National Guard." She's the one who said no. Why? Because that would destroy the plan. The was a LIHOP and a MIHOP, let it happen on purpose and make it happen on purpose, and Trump understands what's happening right now.

An interview at The Tablet with Kyle Shideler, a senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy, expands on this insight:

The key indicator that this was intended to become a major incident to capture national attention was the presence of the SEIU, the SEIU president getting arrested, and the degree to which this rapidly escalated. So clearly this was not a handful of antifa guys just tracking ICE and causing mischief; this was intended to provoke a larger event, an event that would nationalize, and we’re now seeing today that they’re trying to spur things up in Chicago, New York, Houston. My concern is that if you look back before the election, they were talking about how to confront a future Trump administration over immigration, so they have been preparing for this for some time. This is the conflict that they wanted, and it’s the topic that they wanted.

. . . Trump is responding to this in the way that he sort of talked about responding to the BLM riots in 2020. And what happened in 2020 probably confirms his prior assumptions that you have to nip these things in the bud. So he’s looking to draw a hard line early and try to break this thing in Los Angeles before it spreads. I think that’s probably the right move.

But then Shideler worries that the leftists may have gamed this out beforehand:

They ran war game scenarios about this sort of crisis before the election, and I would not be shocked if you see in there elements of what comes next.

The model in 2020 was to drive a wedge between the president and the military, the people actually responsible for the National Guard. And we saw that play out in the BLM riots in 2020 in Washington, D.C., where you had a split between Trump and his then secretary of defense over the use of the Insurrection Act. And you saw it again on Jan. 6, where you had DOD officials countermanding the president and not operating on his requests for a heavy National Guard presence to keep things calm. So I expect that that’s one of the places they’ll try to drive the wedge. I don’t think they can drive a wedge between Trump and the DOD or the FBI now, however, so where will they try to drive that wedge? The response to these things is always political, and success, victory, or loss is not measured in how many police cars get burned. It’s measured in achieving a political objective.

This is the key difference: Trump 47 is not Trump 45. His Defense Secretary in summer 2020 was Mark Esper. Esper detailed his resistance to Trump's ideas over the George Floyd riots in an interview with Judy Woodruff:

And it seemed to be that violence was breaking out, at least to him, all around the country as well.

And so his frustration really grew, to the point where he was talking about the invocation of the Insurrection Act and the deployment of 10,000 active-duty troops into the streets of the nation's capital. And it was at that point in time that I, Bill Barr, and with General Milley's assistance as well, began pushing back on that notion.

And my view was that this was a law enforcement problem that the — that the military, the National Guard, could support and should support as needed, but this was a law enforcement issue, not — certainly not a matter for the active-duty forces to be involved in.

Trump fired Esper after the election, replacing him with Chris Miller, who appears to have slow-walked or stopped the deployment of the National Guard to the Capitol in response to the January 6, 2021 riot. Miller testified to the House Oversight Committee in 2024:

“I was cognizant of the fears that the President would invoke the Insurrection Act to politicize the military in an anti-democratic manner. And, just before the Electoral College certification, 10 former Secretaries of Defense signed an op-ed piece published in The Washington Post warning of the dangers of politicizing and using inappropriately the military. No such thing was going to occur on my watch.”

. . . “There was absolutely -- there is absolutely no way I was putting U.S. military forces at the Capitol, period.”

. . . “The operational plan was this, let’s take the D.C. National Guard, keep them away from the Capitol.”

Exactly who prevented the National Guard from deploying to the Capitol on January 6 has never been completely clear, except that Trump and the Capitol Police both wanted it, but just about everyone else didn't:

In his testimony before the Senate in February, former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said that he approached both Sergeants at Arms on the House and Senate side on January 4 to request the National Guard through an Emergency Declaration from the Capitol Police Board.

His request, according to Sund, was not approved. Instead, the Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael C. Stenger “suggested I ask (the National Guard) how quickly we could get support if needed and to ‘lean forward’ in case we had to request assistance on January 6,” according to Sund’s testimony.

Certainly those resisting the idea of deploying the National Guard, which Trump supported, included Trump's Acting Defense Secretary and the Capitol Police Board. Whether then-Speaker Pelosi was in a position to veto the deployment on January 6 isn't clear, although her recent accusation that Trump refused to deploy the Guard is incorrect.

On the other hand, Lionel's surmise that Trump 47 learned a big lesson from both the George Floyd riots and January 6 must be completely correct, with the reservation that Trump must also have recognized the absolute need to have a chain of command that didn't work against him, as William Barr, Mike Esper, and Chris Miller certainly did.

But now we also get to the question Kyle Shideler posed a few days ago in his interview: Trump learned a lesson and modified his tactics this time around, apparently fully expecting some type of George Floyd-style summer-of-violence from the left. But has the left already anticipated this predictable revised Trump strategy with its own new response?

Apparently not. What we've seen in the days since the Shideler interview has been, first, redoubled rioting in Los Angeles with self-defeating visuals, including rioters waving Mexican flags. A flaccid LAPD response over this period failed to control the downtown destruction, forcing Mayor Bass to impose a curfew as of yesterday evening. This all undercut the left's position that deploying the National Guard was an overreaction.

The second response from the left was simply an extensiion of the post-election lawfare stretagy, attempt to get a temporary restraining order from a federal judge to stop deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles. Commentators generally gave this little chance, and they've been proved correct:

A federal judge on Tuesday night declined California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request for an immediate temporary restraining order to restrict President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines to quell ongoing anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) riots in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, declined to intervene by 1 p.m. PDT on Tuesday and instead set a hearing to consider California’s motion for a temporary restraining order on Thursday.

What this suggests to me is that although Shideler might have anticipated a change in the left's strategy, they're simply continuing the George Floyd 2020-January-6-post-2021-Trump-lawfare game plan, withut anticipating Trump would find the wherewithal to counter the original George Floyd strategy of 2020. In fact, with a Justice Department now willing to follow through, he's added the strategy of provoking far-left politicians like Rep Lamonica McIver into breaking the law and subjecting themselves to arrest and indictment.

This severely limits the discretion of other leftist opponents like Mayor Bass and Gov Newsom. I suspect that equivalent arrests of national riot organizers, as happened to the SEIU president, will also take the steam out of the movement. For the time being, I'm going to work under the assumption that the left has not in fact revised its strategy for George Floyd-style summer riots, Trump has, and Trump will prevail. The reasons there's been no innovation from the left on this front are worth a separate post.

President Sheinbaum's Bind

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has weighed in on what is basically an internal US issue:

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum criticized the ICE raids that catalyzed days-long protests in Los Angeles, saying the city "wouldn't be what it is" without migrants.

"They migrate out of need and send resources to their families from there," the president added. "Mexicans will always have our backing and demand that their human rights be respected. They must know that, should they wish to return to Mexico, we will welcome them with open arms."

Another report quoted more of her remarks:

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum defended migrants living in Los Angeles, and claimed that at least 35 Mexicans had been detained in the recent raids carried out by immigration officers of the Trump administration.

. . . "Mexicans living in the United States are good men and women, honest people who went to the United States to seek a better life for themselves and to support their families. They are not criminals! They are good men and women!" Sheinbaum was quoted as saying in a speech.

Sheinbaum is implicitly acknowledging that Mexicans must emigrate to survive; the Mexican economy is notoriously weak:

Mexico’s lackluster economic performance has been the subject of much study, including by economists Gordon H. Hanson and, more recently, Santiago Levy. Factors holding back productivity growth include poorly functioning credit markets that limit borrowing; extensive monopolies in certain industries that limit competition and drive up costs; and a large informal sector that reduces tax revenue and limits firm size.

An informal economy is made up of mostly small businesses that are not taxed or regulated, with workers who lack benefits such as health care and pensions. Because informal firms are off the books, they typically cannot borrow from banks. In Mexico, the informal sector accounts for a staggering 24 percent of GDP and 55 percent of employment.

This is a major factor that drives migration to the US, and as President Sheinbaum points out, many of the migrants send money back to their families in Mexico:

Approximately 12.3 million Mexicans live abroad, both legally and illegally, with 97% of them living and working in the United States, according to BBVA Research. Last year Mexicans living abroad sent $64.75 billion back home in remittances, largely from Texas and California to states in central and western Mexico.

According to data recently released, in April of this year remittances back to Mexico dropped 12.1%. The Mexico central bank said April saw 8.1% fewer transactions than a year earlier, that’s down to 12.4 million transactions. For Mexico this is a devastating outcome.

How dependent is the Mexican Govt on these remittances? Remittances sent home by Mexicans working outside the country surpassed petroleum revenues in 2015. Oil Revenue in 2015 was 23.4 billion; remittances were $24.8 billion. Last year in 2024 remittances were $64.75 billion…. and in April of this year the remittances dropped by 12.1%.

If you don’t think there is a critical financial motive in this, think again.

Trump's Big Beautiful Bill contains a proposed tax on remittances from illegal migrants:

In just under two weeks, the House of Representatives introduced, modified and passed the One Big, Beautiful Bill of 2025 (the “House Tax Bill”). This Memorandum addresses a new proposed tax on certain persons sending money outside the United States (the “Remittance Proposal”).

. . . The Remittance Proposal, if enacted, would generally require certain senders to pay an excise tax equal to 3.5% on electronic transfers of funds to recipients outside of the United States.

. . . Remittance transfer providers would be required to collect this amount and deposit it with the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) on a quarterly basis. Remittance transfer providers would have secondary liability for the failure to collect this amount.

Verified U.S. citizens and nationals who send remittances via qualified remittance transfer providers would not be subject to this tax. For this purpose, a “qualified remittance transfer provider” means a remittance transfer provider that enters into a written agreement with the IRS, under which the provider agrees to verify the status of senders as U.S. citizens or nationals.

This would provide additional discouragement to illegal migration, as well as providing a way to cover expenses illegal migration cause to the US. But in discouraging migration to the US generally, Trump's policies eliminate the safety valve migration gives the Mexican government: if it's harder for Mexicans to leave, that increases pressure for economic reform. The "informal economy", after all, includes employment with drug cartels. Controlling the cartels would put more pressure on the government to expand formal-sector job opportunities.

Mexico's problem in providing economic opportunity to its own citizens also complicates the issue of anti-ICE protesters waving Mexican flags. What's so good about Mexico if so many Mexicans have to emigrate to survive? In addition,

"These idiots waiving Mexican flags during the LA riots just gave Donald Trump the greatest political gift," Republican strategist Matt Wylie, who founded Freedom Project USA, told Newsweek. "It will be 'Exhibit A' as proof of an invasion. Those images have done more in the last few days to strengthen his ability to crackdown on illegal immigration than weeks of messaging ever could."

Like many politicians on the US side, President Sheinbaum is playing local Mexican politics in front of a national US audience, but she's also ignoring the issue that if Mexico had serious internal reform, the problems on both sides of the border would begin to disappear.

Bad Look

California Gov Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Bass are playing local politics in front of a national audience. And this is something Trump has planned and anticipated:

When racial justice protests roiled cities across America at the depths of the pandemic, President Trump, then in his first term, demonstrated restraint. Threats to invoke the Insurrection Act and to federalize the National Guard never materialized.

This time, it took less than 24 hours of isolated protests in Los Angeles County for Trump, more aggressive than ever in his use of executive power, to issue a historic order.

“The federal government will step in and solve the problem,” he said on social media Saturday night, issuing executive action not seen since civil unrest gripped the nation in the 1960s.

. . . Local officials were clear that they did not want, or need, federal assistance. And they are concerned that Trump’s heavy-handed response risks escalating what was a series of isolated, heated clashes consisting of a few hundred people into a larger law enforcement challenge that could roil the city.

"We tried to talk to the administration and tell them that there was absolutely no need to have troops on the ground here in Los Angeles — the protests that happened last night in L.A. were relatively minor, about 100 protesters," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said. "So this is unnecessary."

The local authorities were nevertheless reluctant to act when they might have managed the problem:

Leaked reports have surfaced, revealing that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ordered the LAPD to stand down during riots, overriding emergency protocols and blocking police from assisting federal officers. The allegations suggest that Bass ignored calls for reinforcements, preventing the LAPD’s Incident Commander from deploying aid to overwhelmed federal agents.

The reports detail a direct intervention by Bass, bypassing established emergency response procedures. Instead of allowing law enforcement to act, she allegedly called the Incident Commander for a briefing, then instructed the Chief of Police on how to proceed, effectively taking control of operations. This move violated the City’s Emergency Operations Plan and National Incident Management System protocols, disrupting the chain of command.

Federal officers were left without critical support. The Department of Homeland Security and FBI reportedly requested LAPD assistance as riots escalated, but the police force remained idle, waiting for direction. The delay put federal personnel at risk, forcing them to handle violent unrest without backup.

In a press conference yestrersday evening, LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell backtracked on the official line:

“It’s an interesting question because I would have said that … we could handle this. I believe that we would have gone through a number of steps before we’d have deployed the National Guard or requested deployment of the National Guard,” McDonnell said. “We would normally go to 50 percent deployment to handle radio calls and do the business of policing, and everybody else would be focused on the initial problem. Beyond that, then we would request, through the sheriff, mutual aid, and that would bring in members of the 44 other police departments in LA County, as well as the sheriff’s office.”

When asked again if the National Guard was needed, McDonnell said the riots have “gotten out of control” and noted that “looking at the violence tonight,” he thought his department may need to “make a reassessment.”

The problem seems to be that Mayor Bass appears to have ordered the LAPD not to undertake those preliminary steps, giving Trump no choice but to order the National Guard in himself. I've looked at Trump's negotiating strategy before, citing a business-school analysis of his strengths:

Trump’s orientation is distinctly more coercive: “Learn your adversary’s strengths and weaknesses: Find out who your adversaries are, what resources they have, who is backing them, how much they want, why they want it, how much they will settle for, and how much they will pay or insist on receiving”. Trump does not empathize with his opponents; he sizes them up.

As much as Trump watches others, he is aware of being watched: “life is a performance art,” he wrote Think Like a Champion. “Understand that as a performer, you have a responsibility to your audience to perform to the best of your ability”. Indeed, as he walked down the stairs of the U.S. Capitol on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, President‐elect Trump paused to look directly into the camera, prompting television commentator George Stephanopoulos to exclaim: “He smiles for the camera! He is always aware … [that] the cameras are every step of the way”.

Trump has thought this through. The Newark confrontation a couple of weeks ago with Mayor Baraka and Rep LaMonica McIver set the paradigm: get politicians playing to a local audience to push the limits protesting ICE enforcement actions, and play to the national audience in defending ICE and, if necessary, take a very public national role in defending the enforcement. He understood that, just like Mayor Baraka and Rep McIver, Gov Newsom and Mayor Bass would be at best passive-aggressive in resisting ICE enforcement in LA, setting the stage for his ordering the National Guard in. The California politicians acted predictably:

Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters on Sunday strongly rebuked the president's decision to deploy the National Guard, calling the situation "outrageous" and "horrible" and adding that she believes Mr. Trump is using L.A., a sanctuary city, as an example.

"He's using deportation as a way to enhance his position with all those right-wingers out there who do not want this country to be a country of people coming from other places," the Democrat told a reporter outside the Metropolitan Detention Center. "I think he's up to creating martial law."

CNN fully understands Trump's strategy:

The National Guard deployment clearly risks politicizing the military. But it’s a political no-brainer for the White House.

Images of troops in combat gear, and the administration’s vows to enforce order if local leaders won’t, boost Trump’s tough-guy image, which is an important factor in his appeal to his supporters. It bolsters Republican claims of fecklessness in liberal-run cities that have been plagued by homelessness and crime.

By sending troops in over Newsom’s head, Trump escalates his feud with the governor, who is one of the most prominent national Democrats at a time when Trump is threatening to pull federal funding to the state. This may also serve as a warning to other blue states that they could see the militarization of the deportation program if they don’t cooperate.

Rasmussen put up a post on X saying that overnight polling as of Sunday had Trump's approval at 54.49%. UPDATE: Chris Cilizza, formerly of the Washington Post and CNN but now claims to be "independent", agrees with this view 100%:

Oh, Boy! A Fight!

It looks like Elon Musk is singlehandedly dismantling his own public image, something the Rockefellers recognized over generations was a thing of great value to be cultivated and maintained. Specific versions differ, but the overall story is in the UK Daily Mail:

New details surrounding a White House brawl between Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have spilled out into the open - with one insider saying the Tesla CEO rammed his shoulder into Bessent's ribcage 'like a rugby player.'

The Daily Mail was the first to report on the heated confrontation between Bessent and Musk, who's since been iced out of Donald Trump's inner circle after their public blow-up this week.

Former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon revealed that there was more to the mid-April tussle, insisting that both men ended up landing blows.

They lost their patience with one another following a tense meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump snubbed Musk and instead took Bessent's advice on whom to name as acting IRS Commissioner, Bannon said.

When Bessent and Musk exited the Oval Office, they began hurling insults at one another in the hallway. But it was Bessent who struck Musk where it hurts.

According to Bannon, Bessent dared to say that the billionaire's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was a failure, since Musk didn't root out the $1 trillion in wasteful and fraudulent federal spending he promised he would.

'Scott said, "You’re a fraud. You’re a total fraud,"' Bannon said.

That's when Musk body-checked Bessent, who hit the world's richest man right back, according to Bannon.

In what must be a separate incident, Musk turned up at his White House farewell ceremony late last month with a black eye:

The Gateway Pundit reported that Musk was sporting a mysterious black eye last Friday during a press conference on his final day as Department of Government Efficiency leader. Asked by reporters about it, he said his five-year-old son, X, punched him in the face, which was a bizarre explanation.

The President and Musk delivered a press conference last week to commemorate Musk's send-off as his special government employee tenure expired and he parted ways with the government on good terms.

However, as later revealed by the President, Musk was "wearing thin," and Trump "asked him to leave."

Patrick Bet David alleged on his show that "somebody swung" at Elon during his final days in the White House. " I'm not speculating. Remember, the keyword is, allegedly," he said.

Other stories have surfaced, possibly from sources friendly to Musk:

A top White House aide is catching the blame for helping trigger President Trump’s fiery clash with Elon Musk — after speaking for months about giving the billionaire “payback” and even gloating to colleagues when Tesla’s stock price dropped, The Post has learned.

Sergio Gor, Trump’s director of presidential personnel, was instrumental in the president’s decision late Saturday [May 31] to yank the nomination of Musk’s personal friend Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator, turning a contained disagreement on legislation into a firestorm of insults, five sources inside or close to the White House tell The Post.

Isaacman’s donations to Democrats — including $100,000 in 2021 to a PAC linked to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — would disqualify most nominees under Gor’s standard vetting process. But Isaacman wasn’t pulled by Trump until hours after Musk left his unpaid White House role, at Gor’s urging.

But it looks like there was more to Isaacman's downfall than just donations:

President Donald Trump's nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, was arrested on fraud charges in 2010 and faced lawsuits in two states for writing $2 million in bad checks to casinos, according to government records and court filings.

. . . In a February 22, 2010 press release titled, "Nevada Fugitive Captured at Canadian Border," U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it arrested Isaacman on a warrant for alleged fraud at the Washington state line. He was taken to a county jail for extradition to Nevada, where Clark County, home to Las Vegas, had issued the felony warrant. No further detail on the alleged fraud was provided. According to jail records, he was released the next day.

In a questionnaire in connection with his nomination to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Isaacman said he was returning from the Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, in February 2010 when he was detained by CBP for "drawing and passing checks without sufficient funds."

I looked at the Isaacman controversy in yesterday's post, in which he was noted as a key Musk operative and Musk's choice for NASA administrator. However, his record of arrest and high-profile bad checks would make him a bad choice for any such nomination, Schumer donations or no. It seems to be significant that the nomination was withdrawn only after Musk officially left government service, and the speculation at the link that this may have set Musk off in last week's attacks on Trump is likely well-founded.

The UK Daily Mail at the first link above continues,

Details about the Bessent-Musk clash only build upon speculation that Trump has long been drifting away from his former 'first buddy,' who donated $288 million to his 2024 campaign.

They also reinforce the fact that leakers inside the White House are laser-focused on Musk.

Sources close to the billionaire blew the whistle on his poor relationship with Susie Wiles, Trump's no-nonsense chief of staff.

He treated Wiles like a 'secretary,' a source told the Daily Mail in April, despite her proven track record of success leading Trump's winning 2024 campaign.

. . . Most recently, Musk's alleged drug use was laid bare by insiders who spoke to The New York Times.

Musk was reportedly taking ketamine so frequently that it was affecting his bladder function.

The bombshell report also claimed he took ecstasy, psychedelic mushrooms and traveled with a daily pill box that contained about 20 different drugs, including Adderall.

The problem for the White House is that, with the FBI reopening the cocaine-in-a-baggie case from 2023, it simply can't tolerate a high-profile drug user coming and going at will. If Sergio Gor was recommending Trump discreetly distance himself from Musk, this seems like nothing more than very astute advice, and Trump seems to have taken it. Any of the recent allegations against Musk, after all, could have gone just a little bit differently and turned into a major scandal for Trump himself, something I suspect he's deftly sidestepped.

Dueling Headlines At Real Clear Politics

The Real Clesr Politics formula is to take polling results across the spectrum, wildly off to more or less accurate, average them together, and pretend it's a meaningful result. They take the same approach with the stories they link: one from, say, the far-left Guardian, one from center-right Fox News, and pretend you can average them out to get to the truth. They were a little cattywampus today, one from Batya Ungar-Sargon at The Free Press, The Elon-Trump Bromance Crashes and Burns, and one from Victor Davis Hanson on X, Musk, Trump Have Same Enemies; Makes No Sense To Fight

In this case, Batya Ungar-Sargon seems to be well-researched and thoughtful center-right, while Victor Davis Hanson tends to rely on farther-right truisms and cliches. Apoparently RCP's editors think we should average this stuff out. But my immediate reaction to Hanson's assertion was, "Elon Musk is his own worst enemy; that's not Trump's problem."

Batya Ungar-Sargon goes into Musk's business model, which suggests that Musk always had serious conflicts of interests going in, which Trump seems to have recognized and was prepared to deal with:

The New York Times reported that the Pentagon was scheduled to brief Musk on a military plan relating to a “potential war” with China. The president learned of the meeting via the Times report, which infuriated him.

“What the [redacted] is Elon doing there? Make sure he doesn’t go,” Trump said, according to an Axios report. “POTUS still very much loves Elon, but there are some red lines,” an official explained to Axios. “Elon has a lot of business in China and he has good relations there, and this briefing just wasn’t the right thing.”

As Trump himself explained to reporters, “Certainly you wouldn’t show [military plans] to a businessman,” adding, “Elon has businesses in China, and he would be susceptible, perhaps, to that.”

. . . Of course, the president was right: While Teslas made in the U.S. are by and large produced here, many of the Teslas Musk sells across the globe are produced in China, as is some 40 percent of its battery supply chain, meaning his fortune, to some degree, rests on being in the good graces of Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party. It would have been a monumental conflict of interest for Musk to have been in that meeting.

Ungar-Sargon moves on to federally mandated electric vehicle tax credits, which other sources point out have made the difference between profit and loss for Tesla in recent years. Politico recognized this in a story from this past January 15, before Trump's inauguraton:

Elon Musk has said America is being “strangled to death” by regulations. But the billionaire’s car company, Tesla, might not have survived without them.

The electric automaker earned $10.7 billion from selling credits created by government climate programs — a total that accounted for a third of Tesla’s profits over the last decade, according to an analysis of securities filings by POLITICO’s E&E News. In the first nine months of 2024, some 43 percent of its net income came from those credits, which Tesla sold to rival carmakers after exceeding climate mandates in California and elsewhere.

Now President-elect Donald Trump, whose campaign was bankrolled with the help of Musk, is threatening to pull the plug on some of the environmental programs that have powered Tesla’s rise. That is prompting questions about whether Musk will seek to protect rules that have helped make him the world’s wealthiest person, or if he’ll support Trump’s promise to put the brakes on federal initiatives for electric vehicles.

But let's back up a little. There are suggestions of other business conflicts in Musk's close involvement in the Trump administration:

“We don’t confirm Schumer donors in this administration,” said a source close to the Trump team — referencing the quiet but decisive move to pull billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman from consideration as the head of NASA under the second Trump Administration.

. . . Isaacman, who led SpaceX’s Inspiration4 and its Polaris Dawn missions, is widely seen as a top private-sector collaborator with Elon Musk in the space economy. The two men share a close working relationship, with Musk praising Isaacman publicly on multiple occasions and Isaacman being one of the highest-profile civilian astronauts in Musk’s SpaceX orbit.

. . . “This seems something that could have possibly set Elon off,” said one GOP strategist. “That is understandable- he is close to Isaacman. I am not saying this was the only thing, but I speculate it could be a factor."

According to NPR,

Musk's companies have long been fueled by taxpayer money, whether in the form of massive government contracts, low-interest loans, tax breaks and other support that helped make Musk one of the world's richest people.

Over the past two decades, companies run by Musk have received tens of billions of dollars in federal backing.

One tally, by The Washington Post, found that at least $38 billion in government support has been funneled to Musk's companies, an estimate that likely undercounts the breadth of support since some defense and intelligence contracts are not publicly available.

. . . Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, an associate dean at the Yale School of Management, said further pain for Tesla could eventually plunge Musk's riches.

"Tesla is hugely reliant on federal largesse for the build-out of EV charging infrastructure, not to mention federal regulatory approval for his continued autonomous driving and robotics experiments," Sonnenfeld said.

"His wealth is highly precarious," he said, noting that most of Musk's fortune is tied to his stake in Tesla. "The reality is that Musk's position is far weaker than many realize."

Ungar-Sargon's Free Press piece also brings up Musk's AI business and his attempts to circumvent Trump's policy moves:

The Wall Street Journal reported that during the president’s much ballyhooed trip to the Middle East, Musk worked hard to try to derail a deal between the United Arab Emirates and his competitor Sam Altman’s OpenAI, if the deal didn’t include his own AI start-up. Musk reportedly went so far as to warn a firm belonging to the brother of the president of the UAE that their plan to build the world’s largest AI data center in Abu Dhabi with OpenAI “had no chance of President Trump signing off on it unless Musk’s xAI was included in the deal,” reported the WSJ.

This, it turned out, was nonsense, and the OpenAI deal went through, angering Musk.

It's been less reported that Musk's AI company, xAI, effectively rescued his disastrous purchase of Twitter by using X's data:

Not only has X served as Musk's political megaphone — it has also been a lucrative source of training data for one of the billionaire's other ventures, xAI, a startup that has rocketed to a $50 billion valuation in 16 months.

That fresh valuation means xAI has surpassed Musk's purchase price for X. It came with a $5 billion funding round, which The Wall Street Journal reported was backed by the Qatar Investment Authority and Sequoia Capital.

. . . The startup has made up significant ground on its rivals by using X as a source of third-party data, one of the key avenues for training large language models.

However, it appears that in at least the United Arab Emirates deal, Musk's influence with Trump wasn't enough to swing things in his favor, adding to the impression that Musk's financial position is more precarious than people might surmise.

In all of Musk's current enterprises, from X/Twitter to AI, to SpaceX and the Mars colony objective, to Tesla, Musk has had to keep being lucky. Especially with Twitter, his lenders have had to keep supporting him on the basis that he's too big to fail. It sounds as though his lenders and his board members -- Larry Ellison is both -- have had to rein in his worst instincts in recent days, but Musk has a history, for instance in his impulsive purchase of Twitter, of making bad decisions from which his lenders have had to bail him out.

The other problem is that many of his enterprises are based on risky future contingencies that could easily collapse: AI, especially "general AI", is potentially a hoax. The idea of colonizing Mars is a chimera. The success of electric vehicles depends on continued government support. Musk's instability, now on clear display, isn't a good feature to factor in with these other circumstances.

"At Least He Gives Us Something To Talk About"

In the post above, former physicist and current contrarian YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder says of Elon Musk, "Whatever you think about the man, at least he gives us something to talk about." The topic of the post is why Musk is wrong about Mars, but that was several months ago, and the things he's given us to talk about keep on coming.

I'm still with the working theory that I posted yesterday, that in the end, Musk works for his corporate boards of directors, who give him his options, his bonuses, his perks, and his planes, and right now, they aren't happy. Consider Trump's remarks in the Oval Office yesterday:

Trump said Musk, the CEO of Tesla and a close adviser, was upset about the repeal of an electric vehicle tax credit. Trump argued Musk was aware of the policy “from the beginning.”

“He knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody. And he never had a problem until right after he left,” Trump said. “I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”

What might a Tesla board member be thinking when he hears this? Your CEO, whose job performance you have a fiduciary duty to evaluate, has just spent several months 24/7 at Mar-a-Lago and the White House putting together Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, knew it better than almost anybody, and he let Trump get away with taking out the EV subsidies, on which Tesla relies to sell it cars.

Why was Tesla even paying the guy? Shouldn't he maybe have regarded fixing the world as a post-retirement hobby? Maybe it's in fact time for Musk to retire. I think Trump's comments below are actually directed at the Tesla and SpaceX boards:

Musk's tweets since this exchange have been at best erratic, at worst suggesting a meltdown:

In a Thursday afternoon X post amid a historic falling out between the two former allies, Musk replied “yes” to a suggestion that Trump should be impeached.

“President vs. Elon. Who wins? My money’s on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him,” posted Ian Miles Cheong, a social media influencer who receives lucrative payments from Musk’s X.

Musk agreed.

. . . The fight’s Thursday escalation featured Trump threatening Musk’s government subsidies and contracts and Musk claiming – without evidence – Trump is implicated in the Epstein files.

Musk did not clarify which impeachable act may have been committed by the President, for whom he worked loyally until just days before their falling out.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse, as I do, senses the Tesla board and Musk's lenders have since gotten involved, with Bill Ackman calling for peace:

Phone calls from the Tesla Board, Peter Thiel and especially Larry Ellison, tend to change things.

Remember, Bill Ackman is the billionaire who constructed the SPARC (special purpose acquisition rights company) to save Elon Musk and Twitter financially, before Larry Ellison (Oracle) stepped in.

The problem is that Musk is a flake, and I'm not sure how different he is from Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. Yesterday, I pointed out that his firm SpaceX has the express corporate mission of colonizing Mars and not making money doing it. The YouTube video at the top of this post stresses the absurdity of this goal, with a key soundbite from Bill Maher, "How badly would we have to rat**** Earth before it was worse than a place that's 200 below zero, with no air, no water, with six months. . . " SpaceX has prestigious people on its board, but Elizabeth Holmes had even more prestigious people on the board of Theranos. And really, why would anyone want to be on the board of a company with such a wacky mission?

Musk's wackiness in his personal life is also very troubling. Yesterday I noted the Wall Street Journal story that suggested Musk has far more than the 14 children he's acknowledged by numerous women, most carried by surrogates and kept secret via multimillion-dollar payments and non-disclosure agreements.

The most recent rumor concerns Amber Heard, the Hollywood has-been who during the defamation case with Johnny Depp was alleged to have been in a legal dispute with Musk over frozen embryos they created during their own affair.

Heard shared an Instagram post on American Mother's Day revealing the birth of her twins, which she described as "the completion of the family I've strived to build for years," emphasizing that, "becoming a mother by myself and on my own terms despite my own fertility challenges has been the most humbling experience of my life."

. . . Within hours, X (ironically the platform owned by Musk) was buzzing with theories, memes, and more than a few pointed comments. "Maybe Elon Musk is their father," one tweeter wondered, while another added, "Elon is still bringing children into the world at a record pace," cynically referring to the fact that Musk has fathered many children, as he is already a father to no fewer than 14 offspring.

But why Musk specifically? Of course, this isn't just a random name thrown into the void. The connection between Heard and Musk wasn't born from gossip alone. The two had an on-again, off-again relationship between 2016 and 2018, a relationship that was, according to them, both "beautiful" and "painful." During this time, rumors circulated that they had frozen embryos together.

. . . Despite various denials and a lack of evidence, the Musk theory refuses to disappear as gossip columns continue to provide a platform for rumors, while a spokesperson for Heard told People magazine that the rumors are "100% false." Musk is currently choosing to remain silent.

It isn't unreasonable to speculate that the "twins" are a pair of frozen embryos implanted in a surrogate surrounded by a complicated legal network of secrecy. But what does this say about Musk? How much time, effort, and resource does he spend on all his exes and surrogate children vis-a-vis, say, his duties as CEO of his various companies? How did his efforts to fix the world with Trump damage his performance as CEO? Just how crazy is he, really?

I think his board members and his lenders are starting to ask serious questions, and this is what's behind his current erratic behavior -- but this is something that's always been in the background. He's always been a whack job, much closer to Elizabeth Holmes than people are willing to think, and I suspect he'll be eased out of many of his companies fairly soon.

What's Up With Elon?

I was never sure what to think about the short-lived bromance between Trump and Elon Musk. My view of Musk has always been that he's not a very stable guy, and a lot of his views are at least self-contradictory, if not just plain crackpot. For instance,

SpaceX Mars colonization program (also referred to as Occupy Mars) is the planned objective of the company SpaceX, and particularly of its founder Elon Musk, to send humans to live on Mars. The plan is to establish a self-sustaining, large scale settlement and democratic, self-governing colony. The motivation behind this is the belief that colonizing Mars will allow humanity to become multiplanetary, thereby ensuring the long-term survival of the human race if it becomes extinct on Earth.

On the other hand,

Elon Musk recently reignited discussions about global population decline by retweeting a post from Tesla Owners Silicon Valley on X (formerly Twitter). The post featured a graph illustrating projected population changes between 2018 and 2100 for major nations, accompanied by the caption: “Population collapse is humanity’s greatest threat… Elon Musk.” Musk responded with a succinct “Yes,” reiterating his long-standing concerns about the issue.

Wait a moment. Why would we want to colonize Mars -- presumably to relieve population overflow on Earth -- if Earth's population is likely to decline? Or if Earth will become uninhabitable due to the ecological impossibility of a growing human population (which Musk thinks is unlikely in any case), why would we undertake the exponentially more difficult task of terraforming Mars? After all, Earth will remain terraformed with a much lower population, Mars or no. But apparently this fits into other schemes, as was reported back in April:

A shocking new exposé from The Wall Street Journal alleged that Elon Musk, billionaire tech mogul and Trump administration insider, is attempting to quietly build a “legion” of offspring protected by secret settlements and NDAs while using his social media influence on X to approach influencers he hopes will have his children.

The sprawling, 6,000-word article published Tuesday lays bare the tactics Musk allegedly employs to manage the mothers of his many children and his privacy, all while reshaping public policy and chasing a vision of human survival that veers into sci-fi territory.

. . . Musk, according to the Journal, commonly refers to his ever-expanding brood as a “legion” and has been seeking to recruit new mothers via his platform X. Musk has had at least 14 children with four women, including the musician Grimes, but multiple sources told the Journal they believe Musk has fathered many more.

But after supporting Trump in the 2024 election, it looks like Musk thought it might be fun to run the world for a while, and he took a break from business, except that when he did, business went all to perdition:

Elon Musk said on an earnings call Tuesday that he plans to devote more of his attention to running his electric vehicle company Tesla, which reported a stark drop in sales and revenues for the first quarter of the year, amid pervasive concerns about the impacts of tariffs and Musk’s own role in reshaping the government.

Tesla’s total revenue from car sales dipped 20 percent and net income fell an astonishing 71 percent during the first quarter of 2025, the company announced Tuesday.

Musk didn’t directly address any implications about whether his involvement with spearheading steep cuts to the federal workforce and deploying his DOGE data teams throughout the government impacted his company’s sales or his decision to step back from his role with DOGE — though he said, “There’s been some blowback for the time that I’ve been spending in government” with DOGE.

Blowback? Er, blowback from whom?

Typical duties of boards of directors include . . . Selecting, appointing, supporting, reviewing the performance, and terminating the chief executive[.]

As I frequently point out here, people at Musk's level hire PR firms to keep them out of the news, not to get them into it. But for the first part of the year, Musk was cavorting with a member of his "legion" at Mar-a-Lago parties, making public jokes about firing thousands of government employees, and praising the work of DOGE minions like Big Balls, all while wearing silly outfits and sunglasses. The inevitable result was to associate Musk's image with Tesla, his most visible brand.

And as if it weren't enough that associating with Trump alienated half his potential market, the potential for having a new Tesla keyed must certainly have motivated people mulling whether to buy a Rivian instead, irrespective of their views on MAGA. Beyond that, consider how the potential for having their showrooms and stock firebombed affected the dealers' attitude toward Musk's public persona. At some point, some serious people had to have had a serious chat with the guy, who was becoming disturbingly unserious.

But also back in April,

Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly got into a heated shouting match within ear shot of Trump last week over a dispute about the IRS, according to Axios.

On Friday, it was reported that Acting IRS Commissioner Gary Shapley was OUT at the agency after an internal struggle with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

. . . According to reports, Shapley was placed at the IRS on Elon Musk’s request without Bessent’s knowledge.

. . . “Disagreements are a normal part of any healthy policy process. . . And ultimately everyone knows they serve at the pleasure of President Trump,” [White House Press Secretary Karoline] Leavitt said.

Bessent is definitely starting to look like a grounded guy, and not a flake. Elon has always basically been a flake. So now, there's an inevitable parting of the ways:

Elon Musk went scorched earth on President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that is being negotiated in the Senate after passing the House last month by a razor-thin margin.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,” he added. “You know it.”

. . . According to the New York Post and Axios, Musk’s tirade was triggered by four factors, one of which would have a direct impact on his bottom line.

• House Republicans removing electric vehicle tax credits that were part of Joe Biden’s Green New Scam. Musk’s Tesla received billions of taxpayer dollars from the bill.

• He was peeved that the Trump White House would not allow him to remain a special government employee beyond the 130-day time limit set by statute.

• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) refused to use his Starlink satellite system to help run the nation’s air traffic control. The Trump administration cited a potential conflict of interest and technological reasons for blocking the proposal,

• Trump withdrawing the nomination of Musk’s ally Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. As TGP’s Kristinn Taylor reported, Trump had deep concerns over Isaacman’s “prior associations,” likely referring to Isaacman’s past donations to Democrats.

A couple of weeks ago, Musk announced he had "done enough" political campaigning:

“I’m going to do a lot less in the future,” he said in a video interview with Bloomberg News at the Qatar Economic Forum. “I think I’ve done enough.”

When asked if paring back his political financing was driven by any blowback he’s weathered in the Trump administration, Musk said: “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future. I will do it. But I don’t currently see a reason.”

. . . Trump elevated Musk as a key figure in the White House, an arrangement that experts said posed conflicts of interest, since Musk’s companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, receive billions of dollars in public subsidies, not to mention the numerous investigations launched against his business empire by government regulators.

The story mentions "blowback" once again, and I think this also means blowback from his boards of directors, who've been forced to look at the risks posed by his high public profile. Nevertheless,

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said Elon Musk should fund primary challenges against almost every Republican who voted for President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" last week.

"I don't primary my colleagues, but I feel pretty good about him doing it," Massie told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

"There's a few others that should be spared," when asked to clarify if he meant all 215 House Republicans who supported the legislation. "But people want term limits, right? Elon can bring term limits."

Good luck. Sundance at Conservative Treehouse comments,

Thomas Massie, Chip Roy, Rand Paul and other fellow republican travelers will join with Elon Musk and the alligator emoji network to oppose President Trump as soon as they can get back into the minority.

Elon can do whatever the Tesla and SpaceX boards allow him to do, and I suspect he's already on a shortened leash. His venture into politics has been disastrous for his corporate career; on one hand, the guy is lucky, but on the other, unlike Trump, he lacks the basic instinctive good judgment to capitalize on his good luck. He just doesn't strike me as a grounded guy. I strongly doubt Musk will be in any position to fund any political ventures even within the next year or two. Another bad quarter or two, and his boards will have to take action.

I can't disagree with this post I made in 2022.