BY MATT BERG
& CROOKED MEDIA |
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In the first Trump term, it took a disease to destroy the economy. This time, he is the disease.”
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Elon Musk’s “dark MAGA” politics are sparking a backlash as protestors swarm his car showrooms, pelt his Cybertrucks, and publicly shame Tesla owners. His fortune is shrinking — ironically, thanks to Trump.
- Heavy sits the crown on Shadow President Elon Musk. He’s still the world’s richest man, but his money bags are getting lighter. The stock market valuation of his biggest company, automaker Tesla, fell 15 percent on Monday alone — capping an almost 50 percent dip since December. It was the worst day for Tesla since the pandemic hit in 2020, and the company has lost some $700 billion in value over the past two months.
- Musk admitted he’s having “great difficulty” running his six companies. Well, no shit! He spends most of his time attempting to smash the federal government, tweeting all day and maintaining a world-class videogame regimen (though, okay, he also hires gamers to play for him). Little wonder things are… blowing up. Literally. SpaceX, his heretofore massively successful rocket launch company, has suffered two major explosions this year.
- Tesla stock accounts for the bulk of Musk’s fortune. But if he thought throwing up what looked like a Nazi salute and boosting Germany’s far-right political party would help the brand, he was wrong. “Tesla is becoming a political symbol of Trump and DOGE, and that is a bad thing for the brand,” financial analyst Dan Ives told PBS News. “You think it’s helping, but it’s actually hurting.”
- Protestors are targeting Tesla dealerships. Last week, shots were fired at a showroom in Oregon, a protester threw molotov cocktails at another in Colorado, and police arrested people in Manhattan. Outside a Tesla dealership in Maryland, dozens of protestors recently gathered and held signs, spotted by a What A Day reader: “Honk if you think Elon is a fascist,” “Boycott Tesla,” “Elon Musk is looting America,” “Menace, Usurper, Sadist, Kleptocrat,” and “Do not buy a Swasticar.” Tesla trucks in a Lundi Gras parade in New Orleans were pelted with beer cans and beads, until a window reportedly cracked and the Teslas fled.
- Now, Trump is going to bat for his favorite centibillionaire and biggest political donor. He’s buying a Tesla — and threatening those protesting against the company. “You should cherish him,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. This afternoon, Trump said he’ll label protesters at Tesla dealerships “domestic terrorists.” (Can he, uh… even do that?)
Between Tesla’s struggles and the stock market collapse, it looks like, so far, MAGA has been bad for business.
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He’s 83 years old. He’s not in power. He’s expected to retire soon. And despite all that, he’s still drawing so many people to political rallies that they have to turn people away.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the only elected progressive politician who had embarked on a nation-wide campaign to challenge MAGA, and the reception has far exceeded his expectations, he told Crooked’s Jon Lovett on Pod Save America.
“These are all the scariest times in my life. That's objectively the truth,” Sanders said. The massive crowds show Americans aren’t going to let Trump “turn us into an authoritarian society, and they're not going to allow him to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut the programs that working class people need.”
What Trump and Musk hope is they can create a sense of powerlessness in people, Sanders explained. Both men are signaling to voters that “‘I got all the money, I got all the power, I own the media, I can buy elections. What do you think you can do? You can't stop me.’”
If people believe that, Democrats are going to lose, Sanders said. “But if people understand that when they stand up and fight back … [they can] lay the groundwork for victory.”
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The Trump administration announced that it will fire half of all Education Department employees tonight. About 4,400 people work there. In a statement to What A Day, Tariq Habash, a former adviser in Biden’s Education Department, accused Trump of “illegally attacking Department staff with decades of expertise” to “silence dissent and target anyone who opposes his agenda.” The department didn’t respond to our request for comment.
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THERE'S MORE IN STORE
Trump has blamed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices for everything from wildfires to plane crashes to inflation. Kind of like an all-purpose “The dog ate my homework,” excuse but in this case Trump thinks the dog is gay.
In any event, the Crooked Store has new merch to help you embody Trump’s new favorite boogeyman. Grab a DEI Hire shirt to poke some fun at MAGA lunacy and show that you won’t stand for reversing this country’s hard-won progress. Or wear it to your next family gathering and really make things interesting. The possibilities are endless. Head to crooked.com/store to pick up yours today.
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A new documentary aims to show that aliens are real and that there is a government cover-up, based on interviews with dozens of government officials. The problem is, according to one reviewer, “nothing is proven, and thus nothing can be refuted.” Still, it’s nice to think there are living creatures in this universe who don’t have to deal with Trump’s BS.
The Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling that made it harder for the family of a Holocaust survivor to recover an impressionist painting — worth tens of millions of dollars — looted by Nazis right before World War II. The painting is currently being held in a Spanish museum that doesn’t want to give it up, but now there’s “hope,” the family’s attorney said.
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