Cruelty Is The Point, Profits Are The Bonus When The Art Of The Steal Meets The Cult Of The Bro

Vandals In Charge: Trump, Musk And The War On The Public Good

"Fanning The Flames" by Nancy Ohanian

I heard someone call my name in a City of Hope waiting room when I was there for chemo on Thursday. She was masked and a smaller version of herself. But it was Eloise Reyes, an old friend, the former Assembly majority leader and a current state senator. It brightened my whole day to see her and meet her husband and son. We exchanged hospital stories. I urged her to have the masseuse give her a massage while she was getting her infusion. She told me about her doctor’s research was just defunded by everyone’s least favorite president. Can you imagine de-funding cancer research? I mean who’s in favor of that? Even the billionaires who are getting the massive tax breaks… do they want to see cancer research defunded? (Also black lung disease.)

Yesterday Trump announced he’s defunding NPR and PBS, (and the National Endowment for the Arts), revoking Harvard’s tax-free status, partially defunding the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies… but putting billions more into Musk’s SpaceX. And that was just yesterday— one day, not one week, one month or 100 days!

Eventually, Trump will blame Musk for all the cuts that go wrong. (He already hinted at what’s in store for Musk.) Michael Tomasky didn’t both with any hints: “Elon Musk Is an Evil Piece of Garbage— and an A-Level Fraud Too. He is stupid. He is incompetent. He is cruel. He is sinister... [I]t’s not only or even mainly on fiscal grounds that he deserves our contempt. The cuts are leaving thousands of good people unemployed. And they will literally kill people. Coal miners will die prematurely. Children all over the world will die from malaria and other diseases because of the demise of USAID, which Musk called a ‘criminal organization.’ In fact, this is already happening: Children with AIDS in Africa have died because of the elimination of a President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, outreach program. That’s just the beginning of the enormous pain these cuts will inflict across the world. And the richest man on the planet, who grew up amid vast wealth from his father’s emerald-mining operations and has never known hardship or had to rely on a government service in his life (unless you count $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits for his companies), is responsible for every drop of it.”

“Musk,” he continued, “is a poisonous human being. He may be good at making money (with the help of government subsidies), but he is planet Earth’s greatest walking proof that that skill does not automatically confer other skills, despite how much our culture (and especially right-wing media) lionizes the super-rich. Musk is stupid about a great many things, and especially about government administration and public service. He is incompetent. He is cruel. And he is sinister.”

There’s a uniquely toxic alchemy between Trump and Elon Musk— two rich, thin-skinned narcissists who mistake cruelty for strength and grift for genius. One’s a washed-up game show host who dreams of revenge and dictatorship; the other’s a subsidy-suckling tech bro cosplaying Tony Stark while gutting labor rights and poisoning public discourse. Together, they’re dismantling anything that smells like the common good. Cancer research? Arts funding? Public broadcasting? All on the chopping block. Why? Because they can. Because decency doesn’t poll well with the base and empathy doesn’t goose the stock price.

Musk is Trump’s favorite kind of billionaire: one who hates regulation, mocks the vulnerable, and treats public infrastructure like a toy to be broken. Trump, in turn, gives Musk the perfect playground— an America where truth is optional, expertise is suspect and the only thing that matters is owning the libs. This isn’t governance. It’s vandalism at scale. And the rest of us are just collateral damage in their mutual delusion.