Trump insults Elon

Elon Musk recently made a pivot, saying the Democrats had become "the party of division and hate," something the right has been saying for a while, now. Musk also said he'd be voting Republican in the future, but Donald Trump just made things a little harder on that score when he called Musk "a bullshit artist" during a recent speech. In that same speech, Trump said he'd had a look at the Musk-Twitter contract, and he concluded it was a bad deal. He predicted that, in the end, Elon wouldn't take the deal (although he hedged later on and said that maybe Elon would). He also said that Elon had publicly claimed he'd never voted for a Republican before; to this, Trump appeared humorously confused, saying, "He told me he'd voted for me," which led to Trump's calling Musk "a bullshit artist." Was this dig meant spitefully? Spitefully or not, Trump issued the insult to a crowd of thousands, so there's no taking it back now, and it's likely Musk will not vote for Trump in 2024. 

But with Trump, you never know: he made permanent enemies out of John McCain—who carried a vendetta against Trump until his death from brain cancer—as well as Jeb Bush, whom Trump utterly stomped during their 2016 debates while they were both campaigning to be the GOP nominee for president that year. Meanwhile, Trump called Ted Cruz "lyin' Ted," but Cruz ended up becoming a firm Trump ally. So it's impossible to predict how these things are going to go. Maybe Musk will become a Trump ally, too, despite the recent slight. Or not. Musk probably sees Trump as beneath him: on the scale of super-billionaires, Trump is a small fry on the same level as Oprah—somewhere in the $2-4 billion range. Musk, meanwhile, occupies his own empyrean realm at $238 billion. However successful Trump has been, Musk has done more in less time.

I see this insult as a function of Trump's over-inflated ego, and probably unwise. Trump needs an ally like Musk, although he needs to persuade Musk to pull out of places like China, where virtual slave labor is being used to crank out Teslas and other "woke" American products like Macs. But I fear Trump can't help himself; his speeches are almost always about himself and his achievements, and that ego can become grating for regular citizens. I understand that righties generally like Trump because "he fights," as the quote goes. Trump doesn't put up with the left's bullshit. At the same time, though, Trump unwisely surrounds himself with ass-kissers who end up betraying him, and he often appears to be floating around inside his own little reality-bubble. Despite his spot-on intuitions about human nature in general, he's a terrible judge of character when it comes to picking a staff. Trump needs to surround himself with sharp, no-nonsense people who can rein in his baser tendencies. Musk could be one of those people, but not if Trump keeps jokingly insulting him.