Eight weeks in to Trump 47 and the Left is in complete disarray.
As Insty and some others have pointed out, it seems that on every issue where the country is split 80/20 – like, say, trans-identifying men in women’s sports, or deporting illegal immigrant gang bangers – the Left unerringly picks the 20% side of the equation. That tells me as a group that they have lost their collective external framework of reality and are now acting reflexively. It’s like poking a drunken hobo with a stick, the hobo’s reaction is as predictable as it is mindless. The fact that it’s Trump holding the stick just makes it more amusing.
James Carville’s suggestion that the Democrats should just sit back a bit and let the Trump 47 Offensive run out of momentum is not only smart politics (never get in the way of a train), but it would force everyone on the Left to take a badly needed mental timeout. No such luck.
The fact that they have basically exiled Carville and now look to do the same with Schumer, the man who is the Left’s only elected power base left in DC, is just further validation that they are nuts.
What did Schumer do that was so bad? He realized that the Democrats cannot refuse to fund the government at the same time they are criticizing the Republicans for wanting to cut the government. Logic doesn’t matter, whatever Trump is for the Democrats have to be against.
I heard Trump is for oxygen and looking both ways while crossing the street. Just trying to be helpful
All snark aside, that 20% still has teeth. Two thoughts.
First, what we are seeing now with the anti-Tesla campaign is domestic terrorism. Whereas the post-J6 crackdown and sending 20-person tactical teams to arrest anti-abortion protesters was jack-booted government thuggery, doxxing and harassing people for the cars they drive and firebombing the respective dealerships is just straight out terrorism. Use of violence and intimidation against innocent civilians in order to achieve a political outcome is pretty much the textbook definition of it.
A friend of mine pointed out today the obvious, which is that Tesla is a publicly-traded company and as a company officer Elon has a responsibility to the shareholders. When you see Tim Walz giggling about the decline in Tesla’s share price you start to see a connection.
Going back to a post the other day, I quoted Associate Justice Sam Alito’s opinion in Phelps:
“The First Amendment does not shield utterances that form ‘no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.’”
You can exercise your First Amendment right to protest, you can exercise your First Amendment right to call for a boycott, but you don’t have a First Amendment right to intimidate or use violence. The two questions are 1) to what extent are protests like this linked organically to domestic terrorism and 2) when will Democrats call out and denounce the terrorism?
With that in mind, Keep an eye on March 29th with protests at Tesla dealerships and charging stations.
Second, I used to keep an eye on the media as a form of opposition research, given their role as the Left’s communication auxiliary, but even I have been finding the digital shrieking and general hackery a bit much. I mean it’s gotten so bad I wonder if Margaret Brennan isn’t just a deep MAGA agent; keep doing what you are doing, babe, you are just fine.
Then I see headlines like this in the NY Times:
“Pentagon Set Up Briefing for Musk on Potential War With China”
The article begins:
The Pentagon was scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Another official said the briefing would be China focused, without providing additional details. A fourth official confirmed Mr. Musk was to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but offered no details.
Hours after news of the planned meeting was published by The New York Times, Pentagon officials and President Trump denied that the session would be about military plans involving China. “China will not even be mentioned or discussed,” Mr. Trump said in a late-night social media post.
It was not clear if the briefing for Mr. Musk would go ahead as originally planned. But providing Mr. Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of his already extensive role as an adviser to Mr. Trump and leader of his effort to slash spending and purge the government of people and policies they oppose.
It’s only after you read the entire article that you realize that all you know for sure is that Elon is going to the Pentagon. Everything after that is supposition based on anonymous sources, the DC version of middle-school gossip. Strictly speaking the article is truthful in that it is reporting what the sources said, but it is dishonest because we have no way of verifying if the sources are being truthful.
Keep in mind that there are five reporters by-lined in the article and they have based the entire premise of their big story on two anonymous sources at DoD who in fact could be anyone at the department. The fact that the reporters then tried to hedge their claims by quoting two other sources doesn’t refute the fact that they had injected what amounts to malicious gossip about Elon into the infosphere.
This story reminds me of a situation almost exactly eight years ago when James Comey was running things at the FBI and had briefed Trump regarding allegations of his colluding with Russia. Comey told Trump there was nothing to the allegations and then right after the meeting leaked to the press that he had briefed Trump on the matter. Comey knew what he was doing because he had just provided the media with the go-signal to get involved and inject the Trump-Russia meme into the public spotlight.
It took 2 ½ years to deal with that damage.
The five NY Times reporters are alleging Elon has a conflict of interest, making a direct connection between an alleged Pentagon briefing regarding war plans and his extensive financial ties in China. The implication is that Elon might be willing, if pressured by the Chinese, to give up information in order to protect those interests. In other words, be a traitor.
The other parts of the NY Times article are straight from the gotcha playbook:
A White House spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment about the purpose of the visit, how it came about, whether Mr. Trump was aware of it, and whether the visit raises questions of conflicts of interest. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump signed a conflicts of interest waiver for Mr. Musk.
The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, initially did not respond to a similar email seeking comment about why Mr. Musk was to receive a briefing on the China war plan. Soon after The Times published this article on Thursday evening, Mr. Parnell gave a short statement: ‘The Defense Department is excited to welcome Elon Musk to the Pentagon on Friday. He was invited by Secretary Hegseth and is just visiting.’
About an hour later, Mr. Parnell posted a message on his X account: “This is 100% Fake News. Just brazenly & maliciously wrong. Elon Musk is a patriot. We are proud to have him at the Pentagon.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also commented on X late on Thursday, saying: “This is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans.’ It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great!”
Standard operating procedure for the media is to ambush a target by asking them to comment right before the story is going to print. That way the reporter in question can claim he was being thorough while also being sure that he will either 1) get no response or 2) or get a response so flat-footed that it looks guilty. That appears to be the case here.
The best part of the article was this little nugget:
“Roughly 30 minutes after that (Trump’s) social media post, The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Mr. Musk had been scheduled to be briefed on the war planning for China.”
So the WSJ independently confirmed the NY Times story? Not so fast, because the WSJ article’s lede is:
“Elon Musk will receive a briefing Friday on the U.S. military’s top-secret war plans for China, according to two U.S. officials…”
Want to bet it was the same two officials from the NY Time story?
Everything about this stinks, but it shows what you can do with the weak side of a 80/20 split.
1) We have a “grassroots” resistance/domestic terrorism campaign aimed at Elon Musk’s businesses that if not encouraged, is certainly tolerated by the Democrats.
2) We have what amounts to malicious gossip by multiple media outlets in what is almost certainly a planned information op that Elon Musk is putting the nation’s security at risk.
3) The point of the op is not to resolve whether Elon should have access to certain information so much as to paint a target on his back, create doubt among Trump’s supporters, and fuel a resistance campaign.
That’s what the political opposition looks like in the 2025 Democratic Party. Small, petty, and violent.
That the Great Unwashed is wise to the grift is proven by the media’s ever declining ratings and subscription numbers. The real news was that DOGE is about to go through the DOD like Attila through a Brownie troupe. Talk about a target rich environment. I’ll bet there are a lot more than two people having trouble getting to sleep.
What is good in life? To audit and drive the bureaucrats before you. To listen to the wailing and lamentations of their contractors and tame congresscritters.
“What is good in life? To audit and drive the bureaucrats before you. To listen to the wailing and lamentations of their contractors and tame congresscritters.”
*snicker* That’s gonna leave a mark.
There were three people arrested earlier in the week for those Tesla fire bombing attacks. Facing years in prison.
I will be very curious to see if there are more of these attacks . As we saw from lack of reaction from the election it is all funny games until there are consequences
Let’s see what happens next week with these protests.
I must ask, how is it that the rank and file D’s do not revolt and ‘walk away”? I seem to have multiple relatives that support that political party, and somehow think it is OK to remain regular if not fervent members.
I do not know how they can reconcile the kit and kaboodle of anti-democratic pandering to small interest groups at the expense of the majority of the fellow party members, not to even consider the more-than majority of the US voter base that does not agree. IOW, they kowtow by not protesting the fervently insane policies that seem to be pushing the D party towards the junkyard full tilt boogie.
Why do we not hear protests from the middle of America D party members that this is NUTS? Why do they remain members? It seems that eventually the people pushing so hard for the non-rational policies will drive the party into the ditch, election-wise, even as the membership remains about the same. Too stuck in their ways to leave or at least protest vociferously the goofy group perhaps?