If multi-hyphenate CEO Elon Musk succeeds in getting Donald Trump is elected next week, he’s warning that he’ll use his new powers to cause drastic shocks to the economy, resulting in “hardship” for many Americans.
As Rolling Stone reports, Musk said during a virtual town hall on his social media platform Twitter-formerly-X last week that “we have to reduce spending to live within our means.”
If Trump is elected, he’s vowed to put Musk in charge of a “government efficiency commission,” effectively allowing the mercurial executive to plow through government agencies like a wrecking ball.
During the town hall last week, Musk promised to “balance the budget immediately,” something that would result in people being “upset.”
The efforts would “involve some temporary hardship,” he warned, “but it will ensure long-term prosperity.”
“I’ll probably need a lot of security, but it’s got to be done,” he said. “And if it’s not done, we’ll just go bankrupt.”
Suck It, Poors
But as MSNBC points out, this latest talking point makes little sense, because there’s no evidence that the US is at any risk of going “bankrupt.” And if it was, Trump would be the last person to fix the issue; during his presidency, Trump’s tax cuts for the rich caused the national deficit to soar.
What’s far more likely is that Musk’s belt-tightening measures will prove unpopular and lead to outrage, just as he predicted — while also unraveling systems of governance designed to protect people for no particular reason except to line the pockets of the uber-wealthy.
Meanwhile, an increasingly desperate Musk has resorted to handing voters cash in an apparent effort to persuade them to vote for Trump. Even an angry letter from the Department of Justice, which warned him that his pro-Donald Trump super PAC’s “daily” $1 million giveaway could be illegal, hasn’t done much to dissuade him from flagrantly paying for votes.
So far, Musk’s Ameria PAC has spent well over $100 million in efforts to get Trump elected.
To see the richest man in the world support a candidate who mainly seems concerned about wellbeing of the ultra-wealthy isn’t the least bit surprising.
If Musk is given his druthers, a far more likely outcome is an exponential rise in poverty rates in the US. Case in point, that’s something that happened in Argentina, where Trump-like populist president Javier Milei’s budget cuts have sent poverty rates soaring to an astonishing 53 percent over the first six months of his tenure.
Last modified: October 31, 2024
