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You are here: Home / Archives for Economics / Grifters Gonna Grift

Grifters Gonna Grift

Late Night Open Thread: Elon’s Latest Public Tantrum

by Anne Laurie|  July 7, 202511:29 pm| 128 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Opposition to Trump-Musk, Elon Musk

I guess “White Party” was just too on the nose?

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— Aubrey Hirsch (@aubreyhirsch.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 12:57 PM


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Everybody be quiet and let Elon spend billions becoming the Republican version of Jill Stein.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 2:44 PM


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Elon Musk should just cut to the chase and call his third party the National Socialists.
It’s gonna be that no matter what name he gives it.

— Charles Johnson (@charles.littlegreenfootballs.com) July 5, 2025 at 8:53 PM

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May Elon do as much for the GOP as Jill Stein has done for the Democrats!

Trump is wrong. Ralph Nader, & Jill Stein/Gary Johnson, were wildly successful.

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— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 1:20 AM


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Musk announces the arrival of the new "America Party" after his split with Trump.

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— Politico (@politico.com) July 5, 2025 at 5:35 PM

… As Trump on Thursday flaunted his successful push to muscle the Republican megabill through Congress this week, Musk sought to drum up support for his potential third party launch, positing that his new party would target a handful of vulnerable swing seats to leverage political power.

“Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people,” he wrote.

While Musk may have the millions to pour into backing certain candidates — which he has already promised to do, pledging to support Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) reelection campaign amid targeting from Trump — establishing a third party involves a series of thorny obstacles including navigating complex state laws, ballot access regulations and other legal hoops.

So far, the billionaire would-be party founder has yet to outline a concrete plan forward. Just two months ago, Musk had vowed to cut back on political spending, saying he had “done enough.”

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Trump is melting down over Elon forming the “America Party,” which is polling at 15% already, mostly with male Republicans.

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— God (@thegodpodcast.com) July 7, 2025 at 3:19 PM

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Wonder if the America Party will be like Tesla, and drive randomly to the right and burn up.
#Satire

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— Lawprofblawg (@lawprofblawg.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 1:49 PM

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I’m very excited about the America Party and I encourage anyone else who wants to fund a third party on the right to take a shot also

— post malone ergo propter malone (@proptermalone.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 2:57 AM


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Musk is gonna recruit his favorite blue check reply guys as congressional candidates and the oppo uncovered on them is going to be the most cursed shit that the American discourse has ever encountered. Mark Robinson's NudeAfrica forum posts will feel like a simpler, more innocent time.

— Zeddy (@zeddary.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 5:05 PM


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lmao. not elon musk spending $500 million to spoil republican candidates in marginal districts and get Dems to 240 house seats

— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) July 6, 2025 at 9:05 PM

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The number of Democratic voters that (a) like Elon Musk, (b) think Dem leaders are too woke, & (c) want to cut entitlements is in the single digit millions. Likely even less.
Meanwhile, that's like 90% of Republicans. I don't think this is going to work out the way he thinks

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— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) July 6, 2025 at 9:17 PM

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Counter-argument (do we need to take this seriously?)

Both Putin and Elon are dissatisfied with Trump, so the focus is going to change to Congress. And Musk is basically just a frontman for a larger group of interests.
We're under attack from so many different directions. Read this for more insight.

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— Khashoggi's Ghost (@urocklive1.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 5:25 PM

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Haha, “incumbent parties” (WTF does that mean?) don’t “control ballots.” Most states they get ballot access by exceeding some % of the overall vote, often 2%. Minor parties/ballot access hucksters find suckers like dead end candidates or fools like Cuban to pay for their lines
Cuban was a mark

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— Dana Houle (@danahoule.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 1:08 AM


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Creating a spoiler third party is actually a huge win for Elon even if he’s too dumb to realize it, he splits the Republican votes so Dems dominate the government, he then gets all the benefits of Dem policy while posting constantly about fighting the woke mind virus or whatever

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— Ed (@notdred.bsky.social) July 6, 2025 at 7:35 AM

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Manifesting this: Elon Musk, if he sticks to this third party thing, does it the way he's done everything else: something like, offering incumbent elected Republicans hundreds of thousands of dollars to run as candidates for his party instead

— Adam Gurri (@adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com) July 5, 2025 at 5:00 PM

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'Fat drunken slob': Elon Musk and Steve Bannon are now at war over proposed third party https://twp.ai/4inywY

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— #TuckFrump (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) July 4, 2025 at 9:02 PM


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They're gonna ratfuck elon and it's going to be hilarious

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— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 11:52 AM

Late Night Open Thread: Elon’s Latest Public TantrumPost + Comments (128)

Late Night Immigration Open Thread: To the Surprise of No One…

by Anne Laurie|  June 30, 202510:11 pm| 71 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Grifters Gonna Grift, Immigration, Trump Crime Cartel

Bartiromo: "Have you been backing away from [deportations]? Recently you said let's ease up on…farms and hotels."
Trump: "I don't back away. What I do, I cherish our farmers…Let the farmers sort of be in charge. The farmer knows. He's not going to hire a murderer."

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— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) June 29, 2025 at 11:14 AM

What the Felon-in-Office ‘cherishes’ is the thought of indentured servants, with no rights that a Big Important Employer (like Mr. Trump at Mar-A-Lago) needs to respect. Per the Washington Post, ICE is arresting migrants in worksite raids. Employers are largely escaping charges. [gift link]:

Trump administration officials have vowed to hold companies accountable for employing people who are in the country illegally — no matter which industry they are in or how big or small they might be.

But the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement operations have overwhelmingly focused on arresting workers rather than punishing employers.

Since the start of the year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has posted news releases regarding approximately two dozen raids on the “Worksite Enforcement” section of its website. Local news outlets have documented dozens more. The Washington Post was able to identify only one employer charged after the raids ICE has publicized. The Post reviewed court filings and searched for records involving individuals named in corporate records of businesses DHS has raided.

Charging company owners for employing undocumented workers has historically been rare because the government needs to demonstrate that the employer knew of the worker’s illegal status. That is a high burden of proof, and investigations can take months. Neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have made worksite raids as much of a priority in the past. The Biden administration halted large-scale immigration arrests at worksites and focused enforcement on employers.

The raids immigration officers are conducting have largely targeted small businesses such as car washes. Some are carried out in a span of minutes. Two business owners said officers did not show a warrant, even when asked for one, raising questions about whether immigration agents are violating constitutional rights in their effort to drive up migrant arrests.

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“The difference about these raids of the last six weeks is that this is not principally an action against employers,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “This is principally an action in pursuit of mass deportations. When they could not produce the number of arrests that they had been hoping for, they suddenly said, ‘Let’s raid employers.’ It was not, ‘Let’s penalize employers.’”

Though the recent raids in Los Angeles outside Home Depots and at a garment factory drew much attention, immigration authorities have conducted enforcement operations in states throughout the country. They arrested 33 workers at construction sites near Ocala, Florida, and 11 at Outlook Dairy Farms near Lovington, New Mexico. The first raid ICE publicized took place at Complete Autowash in Philadelphia eight days after President Donald Trump took office…

Small businesses with limited resources are easier targets than deep-pocketed corporations, immigration experts say. That’s because they’re less willing to challenge government actions or stir up a public commotion. Though immigration officers need a judicial warrant to enter private areas within a business, they can go into any areas considered publicly accessible, such as the space where customers eat at a restaurant. Nonetheless, two business owners whose companies were raided said armed DHS agents had entered areas restricted from the public….

DHS did not respond to questions about how many workplace raids have led to charges against employers. In April, ICE announced it had arrested more than 1,000 workers who were in the country illegally during Trump’s first 100 days and proposed more than $1 million in fines “against businesses that exploit and hire illegal workers.”…

The administration has claimed it is going after the “worst of the worst” and prioritizing the arrest and deportation of people who are a threat to public safety. But former ICE officials said raiding car washes and taco trucks is not an effective strategy for reaching that goal.

“This is the exact opposite,” said John Sandweg, acting ICE director under President Barack Obama. Under the second Trump administration’s approach to worksite raids, “you are much more likely to find non-criminals because professional criminals don’t work at car washes, typically.”

Late Night Immigration Open Thread: To the Surprise of No One…Post + Comments (71)

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: The GOP Death Caucus

by Anne Laurie|  June 25, 20255:59 pm| 63 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Trump Crime Cartel

People in wheelchairs are getting arrested right now in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC. They showed up to tell Congress not to cut their Medicaid, because they cant afford health care without it. If you look closely you can see the zip ties on their hands. #WeWontGetOverLosingMedicaid

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— Aaron Black (@aaronblack.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:26 PM


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We really would benefit from national attention shifting to how bad this bill is for the state of American health care.
Millions will lose care. Millions more will find it their costs increase and odious practices that deserve to be banned for good could come roaring back.

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— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 1:51 PM

…Medical bankruptcies, “job lock,” deferred treatment, the psychological agony of uninsurance—Obamacare made all of these problems much smaller. It has been a boon to American liberty. Democrats in 2009 and 2010 could have reduced the uninsured population to a similar degree without prohibiting the status quo barbarism: If they’d reduced the Medicare eligibility age, increased the income threshold for Medicaid, tweaked rules governing employer-sponsored insurance, it would have been a good bill, and reduced human suffering quite a lot, just as the ACA did. But there’d still be a hole in the center of our safety net large enough to swallow many lives; sick people left out of the incremental expansions would have been screwed.

So when Republicans began their most recent crusade against Medicaid, the affront did not feel quite as severe as when they went after pre-existing conditions protections per se. Mitch McConnell knows as well as anyone how hot the politics of health care legislation can get, and even he’s grown complacent.

“I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid,” he told Senate Republicans Tuesday. “But they’ll get over it.”…

That explains why he keeps lying about his party's intent to cut Medicaid

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— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 9:47 AM

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With President Donald Trump’s July 4 deadline drawing near, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told POLITICO on Tuesday night he believes the Senate is “on a path” to start voting on the megabill Friday.

But he’s got several fires to put out first. For one, he’s under immense pressure to water down the Medicaid provisions the Senate GOP is counting on for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of savings.

Speaker Mike Johnson is warning in private that Senate Republicans could cost House Republicans their majority next year if they try to push through the deep Medicaid cuts in the current Senate version, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the matter.

That comes as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) cautions GOP senators that those same cutbacks could become a political albatross for Republicans just as the Affordable Care Act was for Democrats…

“[Barack] Obama said … ‘if you like your health care you can keep it, if you like your doctor we can keep it,’ and yet we had several million people lose their health care,” the in-cycle senator told reporters Tuesday. “Here we’re saying [with] Medicaid, we’re going to hold people harmless, but we’re estimating” millions of people could lose coverage.

GOP leaders are trying to ease concerns by preparing to include a fund to help rural hospitals that could be harmed by the reductions, even as Thune insisted Tuesday “we like where we are.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who’s been pushing for the fund, said while that “helps lessen the impact,” she remains “concerned about the changes in the funding for Medicaid in general.”…

Nobody hates his own supporters more than Donald Trump.

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— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:29 PM

…GOP lawmakers have also included provisions in their so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” to crack down on the health care provider tax that states charge health care providers to help fund Medicaid, particularly in rural areas. Under the new proposal, the federal government would limit reimbursement to states, with some conservatives citing “abuse” of the program by undocumented migrants in blue states.

A cap or freeze on that fee would cost rural hospitals, like the Hermann Area District Hospital, billions of dollars in funding, according to providers, physicians, hospital associations and even some Republican lawmakers. They include Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who argued the provision would “defund” rural hospitals.

Dr. Michael Rothermich, the chief of staff at the Hermann hospital, said it is already treading water with current funding levels…

The hospital has just three full-time physicians on staff to service patients in two counties, where 1 in 4 rely on Medicaid.

“There are fewer and fewer people to take care of it and fewer and fewer resources to try and do what we need to do to take care of people,” Rothermich said.

In southern Missouri, Karen White, the administrator for Missouri Highlands Health Care, said the new provisions could mean they need to prioritize which patients to care for.

“I think we will see loss of life, maybe not immediate, but if chronic conditions go untreated for an extended period of time, it does result in lower quality of life, less people working,” White said. “We’ve lost three hospitals in the last 10 years in our region, and that has left Missouri Highlands as the only form of health care.”

Missouri Highlands is a federally qualified health center, or FQHC — a community-based health care provider that relies on federal funding to operate. White said 46% of the population there is on Medicaid, and Missouri Highlands is the only health care provider in a three- to four-hour radius…

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: The GOP Death CaucusPost + Comments (63)

Saturday Night Fights Open Thread: Something Unpredictable, But in the End, It’s Right

by Anne Laurie|  June 7, 20256:23 pm| 145 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Trumpery, Elon Musk, Schadenfreude

anntelnaes.substack.com/p/the-mark-o…

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— Ann Telnaes (@anntelnaes.bsky.social) June 7, 2025 at 11:59 AM

Albert Burneko, at Defector — “Donald Trump And Elon Musk Throw Day-Long Tantrums At Each Other”:

Other than every interaction either of them has had with another living being in their entire lives, as well as every single thing that is true about either of their personalities, and everything that either of them believes about themselves and each other and all others and life and the world, and their being the absolute two worst people presently alive, there was no reason to think, or even to fear, that Donald Trump and Elon Musk would not remain loyal allies and strategic partners forever. Alas, the dream of lifelong friendship died on Thursday, in a cascade of insults and threats posted to their respective embarrassing social media platforms. I don’t know about you, but I’ll never trust again…

Listen. Recounting the, like, political or financial reasons why Donald Trump and Elon Musk fell out is among the more absurd things I can imagine doing; for one thing it grants a conceivable alternative reality in which they were not always going to become enemies at some point. The ultimate and most salient reason Donald Trump and Elon Musk fell out is that they are, respectively, Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Sure, yes: There may be proximate triggers for their having fallen out on Thursday, June 5, 2025, as opposed to some other time; there inevitably would be specific triggers whenever they eventually turned on each other. But they never were not going to turn on each other, because they are Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Anyway they did! At a Thursday Oval Office press availability pegged to his meeting with German chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump sniped when a reporter asked him about Musk’s criticism of the bill. First he referred to their “great relationship” in the past tense, then blithely suggested Musk is upset about the loss of EV subsidies his company depends on. Then he did the classic Trump thing where he insults someone by listing the favors they did for him—in Trump’s view, you are by definition a sucker from the very moment you do anything for him that he didn’t pay for in advance, and he is 100-percent right about that—while simultaneously dismissing those favors as worthless…

That set off Musk. Soon after, on Twitter, he derided the bill as containing a “MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK” and made a classic Elon Musk Fake-Smart History Gibberish claim that “in the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that [is] both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this!”

Typically, if someone said That’s hitting him where it hurts about remarks as dumb and toothless as these, that would be an example of sarcasm. Not in this case! Calling his bill ugly and disgusting is exactly the kind of thing that actually would bother Donald Trump, much more than some sober analysis of its probably disastrous effects on American society, about which he does not and will never give a frig…

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Shortly thereafter, Musk posted on Twitter that Trump “is in the [Jeffrey] Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.” This would register as a blockbuster revelation if Gawker had not reported on it in 2015, and if Trump had not been photographed with the infamous financier roughly eleventy zillion times. Still! It’s really quite something for the world’s richest man to be calling the president of the U.S. a sex criminal like 90 hours or whatever after the two of them were chilling together in the Oval Office. Like just as a How We Live Now moment.

You might wonder, at this point, about Musk’s decision to spend (according to him) hundreds of millions of dollars securing the election to the presidency of a guy he’s now, by implication, calling a child rapist. The explanation is that Musk simply does not care about that at all. He just figures it might damage Trump, or at least make him very angry….

By the end of the day, or by the time I moved on with my life, onetime Trump Svengali moron Steve Bannon had leapt into the fray, calling for an investigation into Musk’s immigration status and suggesting he should be deported. Also, Tesla’s stock had dropped around 14 percent of its value; according to the New York Times, this “wiped out about $150 billion from Tesla’s market valuation.” That last bit, I think, put the kibosh on silly speculation that this whole thing was some kind of planned stunt by what people still, even now, like to imagine are two Masters of the Distracting Arts.

Enough! I will recap this feud no further. This is what happens when butter-soft inheritance babies with fragile egos get mad at each other. Neither can conceive of taking the L; neither has or can conceive of any move other than clumsy conflict escalation, imprinted into them from a life of throwing tantrums until mommy gave them a lolly. Either would vaporize the entire planet before conceding defeat or seeking conciliation. The big chickens couldn’t even bear to insult each other face-to-face, or even on the same social media platform…

Next to Trump and Musk, Shatner and I look like adoring newlyweds.

— George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 5:38 PM

A wise woman once said "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man you should trust with nuclear weapons."
America should've listened to her.

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— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) June 6, 2025 at 8:46 AM


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@joshmankiewicz.bsky.social

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— Peggy Brava (@peggybrava.bsky.social) June 5, 2025 at 10:42 PM


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New: Elon Musk has deleted some of his harshest recent posts against Donalr Trump, including the one about Jeffrey Epstein and the one endorsing Trump's impeachment
time.com/7291898/elon…

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— Aman Batheja (@amanbatheja.bsky.social) June 7, 2025 at 11:01 AM


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May the worse man win! #both Please share #laloalcaraz cartoons and visit GoComics.com/laloalcaraz for more, not to. mention all the Lalo cartoons over at www.calonews.com/multimedia/l…

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— Lalo Alcaraz (@laloalcaraz.bsky.social) June 6, 2025 at 11:41 AM

Saturday Night Fights Open Thread: Something Unpredictable, But in the End, It’s RightPost + Comments (145)

TL, DR Good Read: ‘The Newest MAGA Intellectual Hero Was Denounced as a Total Crackpot’

by Anne Laurie|  June 7, 202510:23 am| 116 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Grifters Gonna Grift

A SparkNotes version of the latest Very Serious Right-Wing Thought Leader spotlight, because the New Yorker takes far too many words, unlike Mr Charles P. Pierce for Esquire:

I can’t do better than James Fallows’s assessment of Curtis Yarvin, the Caesarist Internet crank who has a grip on many members of the techno-Right, including the vice president of the United States of America, J. Divan Vance, and who also seems to be a dumb person’s idea of a smart person, if the dumb person is playing Dungeons & Dragons while watching Gladiator on mushrooms. Yarvin is the subject of a fine profile by Ava Kofman in the current issue of The New Yorker. In a thread on Bluesky, Fallows calls Yarvin a “barroom savant.”

If you’ve lived in a small town, you know the character of the “barroom savant.” Knows the inside story on everything. Knows what “they” are covering up. Tells you that he (always “he”) tested into Mensa. But never went mainstream. Feels sorry for you if you believe what “they” say. And what books you need to read to blow your mind. And did I forget, he has a “genius IQ?” We’ve met this guy before…

To circle back to the start, guy high on his own supply of the virtues of the “high IQ”—as individuals, and as breeding stock. My sample-size of interviewees is limited but over the years have had first-hand exposure to: One [professor] in college. One [professor] in grad school. Nine or ten people I’ve interviewed and written about. Each of whom was a Nobel laureate. Strangely, none talked about their own IQ, or anyone else’s. But this guy does. As Trump does too! I give you, the intellectual leader of Thiel, Vance, Miller, and the MAGA era! (I was tempted to say, “We call it The Aristocrats.”)

C’mon, Fallows. Unleash that inner blogger!

Kofman’s piece is a treasure trove of empowered lunacy spooned out by Yarvin into the hungry mouths of America’s techno-oligarchs—most of whom have a lot more money than sense, as Rod Stewart once sang. He first came to their attention when he was blogging as one Mencius Moldbug and dropped a 120,000-word dung-bomb onto the innocent Intertoobz…

Yarvin also quoted The Matrix in his screed, which is the kind of dead giveaway that a fondness for Atlas Shrugged used to mean. This manner of thinking always will find suckers. The problems always come, however, when they find suckers with money, and Yarvin struck the motherlode…

Deep in the piece, we discover that Yarvin’s flight from political sensibility began with, of all things, disillusionment when he discovered that swift boating John Kerry wasn’t enough to derail his 2004 presidential campaign. Also, Kofman gets major points for describing Yarvin’s crackpottery as being “surrealized” by the Trump administration. The Triumph of the Swill.

TL, DR Good Read: <em>‘The Newest MAGA Intellectual Hero Was Denounced as a Total Crackpot’</em>Post + Comments (116)

Open Thread: The Grifts That Keep On Giving

by Anne Laurie|  June 6, 20251:17 pm| 62 Comments

This post is in: DOGESHIT, Grifters Gonna Grift, Republican Venality, Trumpery, Elon Musk, Lock Him Up...Lock Them All Up

Open Thread: The Grifts That Keep On Giving

(Clay Jones via GoComics.com)

It's like a genie curse how a man so clearly desperate to be liked has ended up hated by absolutely everyone https://t.co/yRnVAvCHmO

— Fentanyl Tsar ?????? (@canderaid) June 6, 2025

We have a new definition for “defining deviancy down” https://t.co/ymJSK188K2

— Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) (@speechboy71) June 5, 2025

Senator Professor Warren brings some receipts, via Rolling Stone — “Elon Musk’s Reign of Corruption Chronicled in Elizabeth Warren Report”:

As Elon Musk departs the Trump White House — at least officially — a new Senate report examines how the world’s richest man leveraged his access to the levers of federal power to boost his myriad personal businesses, including his electric vehicle company Tesla, aerospace contractor SpaceX, social media platform X, and brain-chip firm Neuralink.

Musk is leaving his post as a “special government employee” — a status that limited his stint in the executive branch to 130 days. As Donald Trump made clear in a press conference, where he gave Musk a “key” to the White House, the billionaire’s influence will live on, as will his crusade against his own regulators.

Issued by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the report is titled “Special Interests Over the Public Interest: Elon Musk’s 130 Days in the Trump Administration” and features a list of 130 actions by Musk, his companies, and family members that “raise questions about corruption, ethics, and conflicts of interest.”

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Musk, of course, was Trump’s biggest benefactor in the 2024 campaign, spending nearly $300 million to put Trump and Republican candidates into office. He then camped out at Mar-a-Lago during the presidential transition and moved to Washington with the 47th president. At times appearing to be the nation’s true chief executive, Musk commanded the forces of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and sent critical agencies like USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development) through the “woodchipper,” likely condemning millions of vulnerable people across the globe to death by preventable diseases…
The Warren report divides its list into 15 categories, which Rolling Stone can exclusively preview below:

1. White House Promotion …
2. Lucrative Contracts …
3. Stymied Investigations…
4. Hobbled Oversight…
5. Policy Perks…
6. Special Access…
7. A Personal Deep State…
8. “Personal Parochial Interests”…
9. Intimidation Campaign…
10. “Weaponizing” Federal Power…
11. “Influence-Peddling in Congress”…
12. Piggyback Deals…
13. All in the Family…
14. Judicial Meddling…
15. “Maximum Transparency” — Denied…

PDF of the full report at the link.

Open Thread: The Grifts That Keep On GivingPost + Comments (62)

Thursday Evening Open Thread: Repub Influencers in Disarray

by Anne Laurie|  June 5, 20256:20 pm| 100 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republicans in Disarray!

For some reason, BlueSky has — temporarily, I hope — disabled its drop-down embed function. This is annoying, not only because it makes my posts less vivid, but because I stockpile those snippets for future use.

Anybody got a work=around for a tech illiterate like me?
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Meanwhile, we can but hope this is a harbinger. Will Sommer, at the Bulwark — MAGA World Starts Turning on Trump’s Star Vote Getter:

EVERY RIGHT-WING INFLUENCER needs a shtick. Scott Presler’s is that he registers tons and tons of new Republican voters. Whenever there’s a crucial election coming up, there’s a good chance Presler will be in the area, registering scads of new voters for the GOP—and posting about it. A lot.

Often, Presler advertises how he targets unique demographic groups, like truck drivers or the Amish. This has made him into a heroic figure on the right and earned him more than 2 million followers on X. Every time the RNC chair seat is open, Presler’s fanbase demands that he be appointed to run the party. The president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump nearly did hire Presler to work for the RNC last year, until the resurfacing of an unsavory incident from Presler’s past in which he had sex in a Republican office, then posted the pictures on Craigslist. Presler is also gay, which made the incident a bit harder to land in GOP circles.

That colorful backstory hasn’t dimmed Presler’s star much, though. Last year, Elon Musk gave $1 million to Presler’s voter-registration PAC. Presler criss-crossed Wisconsin ahead of the state’s much-watched Supreme Court election in April, vowing that “the cavalry is on the way.”

But the cavalry failed to prevent a 10-point Republican defeat in that race. And since April, Presler has faced a growing chorus of Republican critics who say he is overstating the value of his voter-registration work, particularly in the battleground state of Pennsylvania…

Presler’s most prominent critic on the right has been Brandon Straka, a former friend of his who made his own name on the right as the head of the “WalkAway” movement, which encourages traditionally Democratic groups like LGBTQ people and racial minorities to “walk away” and become Republicans.

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Presler and Straka have a lot in common. They’re both gay, they both have hairstyles that are unusually dramatic for operatives of the staid GOP, and they both claim to have brought new demographics into the Republican party…

They were also both in Washington on January 6th. But while Presler spent the day hugging his fans on the streets of D.C., according to his social media posts, Straka egged on the mob at the Capitol and was sentenced to three years of probation for it.1

Now the recipient of a presidential pardon, Straka has become an outspoken critic of Presler, claiming that he inflates his importance in a way that weakens Republican get-out-the-vote efforts. Straka calls it the “Scott Presler Early Vote Action delusion.”…

THE CLASH BETWEEN PRESLER AND HIS CRITICS is bigger than personalities. It’s about the fevered world of right-wing influencers seeking to position themselves as key to the party’s future—and whether anyone beyond Trump can take credit for GOP victories.

The 2024 election had seemed to quiet these debates. But they’ve revved back up with remarkable speed after Musk’s failed attempt to influence the Wisconsin Supreme Court race by flooding money into it. It raised the question of how valuable high-profile voter registration efforts actually are—or, more importantly, whether it’s election tactics or just Trump himself being on the ballot that is key for the GOP’s success…

Of course, the question of whether Don TACO’s unique apathetic-voter appeal has an ongoing legacy is not new. But I think this relatively niche bottom-feeder brouhaha might be an indicator that Elon Musk’s current public tantrums might be a leading indicator. To which I can only pray: As below, so above!

Thursday Evening Open Thread: Repub Influencers in DisarrayPost + Comments (100)

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