A bombshell story last night from the Wall Street Journal reported that billionaire Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, who is backing the election of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with a daily million-dollar sweepstakes giveaway and gifts of tens of millions to the campaign, has been in regular contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin since late 2022. Reporters Thomas Grove, Warren P. Strobel, Aruna Viswanatha, Gordon Lubold, and Sam Schechner said that the conversations “touch on personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions.”
Musk’s SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite system, won a $1.8 billion contract with U.S. military and intelligence agencies in 2021. It is the major rocket launcher for NASA and the Pentagon, and Musk has a security clearance; he says it is a top-secret clearance.
Today, NASA administrator Bill Nelson called for an investigation into the story. “If the story is true that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia,” Nelson told Burgess Everett of Semafor, “then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.”
Musk appears to be making a bid for control of the Republican Party for a number of possible reasons, including so he can continue to score federal contracts and because the high tariffs Trump has promised to place on Chinese imports would guarantee that Musk would have leverage in the electrical vehicle market.
But Musk has competition for control of the party. Today, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who lead the establishment Republican faction and the MAGAs, respectively, and thus are usually at loggerheads, issued a joint statement condemning Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris for “labeling [Trump] as a ‘fascist.’” They suggest she is “inviting yet another would-be assassin to try robbing voters of their choice before Election Day.”
Observers immediately pointed out that, in fact, it is Trump who has repeatedly called Harris a fascist—as well as a Marxist and a communist—and that those calling Trump a fascist are former members of his own administration like former White House chief of staff General John Kelly, or leaders like former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, whom Trump himself appointed to his position and who called Trump “the most dangerous person to this country.”
Harris’s contribution to this discussion was that when CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Harris directly if she thinks Trump is a fascist at a town hall this week, she answered: “Yes, I do. And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted.”
Aside from the gaslighting of attacking Harris for something that Trump is the one doing, the statement seemed a calculated attempt to demonstrate Republican solidarity. But it was glaringly obvious that McConnell and Johnson found that solidarity only in attacking Harris. Their statement contained no praise of Trump.
The struggle over the Republican Party also seemed evident in yesterday’s decision by the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, biotech tycoon Patrick Soon-Shiong, to kill that paper’s planned endorsement of Harris. Choosing not to make an endorsement in the race, Soon-Shiong said that he thought an endorsement would “add to the division” in the country. Elon Musk praised his decision.
Today the Washington Post also decided not to make an endorsement in the presidential race, despite the fact a piece endorsing Harris was already drafted. Publisher William Lewis said the paper was returning to its roots of not endorsing presidential candidates, although it has endorsed candidates for decades and did so in its early years as well. His statement seemed a weak cover for the evident wish of the Washington Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, to avoid antagonizing Trump.
Bezos gives Musk a run for his money at being the richest man in the world. But while Musk wants high tariffs against China to protect his access to electric vehicle markets, Bezos’s fortune comes from Amazon, and high tariffs would shatter his business. When he was in office, Trump went out of his way to find ways to hurt Amazon to get back at Bezos for unfavorable coverage in the Post.
Los Angeles Times editorial page editor Mariel Garza, along with journalists Robert Greene and Karin Klein, resigned from the paper after its decision not to endorse Harris, and nearly 2,000 readers canceled their subscriptions. The Washington Post, too, has seen about 2,000 subscribers bow out, and fourteen of the newspaper’s columnists called the decision not to condemn Trump’s threats to the “freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution” “a terrible mistake.” Cartoonist Ann Telnaes published a blacked-out square, playing on the Post’s motto that democracy dies in darkness.
Readers are speaking out against the Washington Post for demonstrating what scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder calls “obeying in advance” the demands of an authoritarian leader (although Washington Post legal journalist Ruth Marcus, who signed the letter calling the decision a terrible mistake, pointed out that the Post itself was publishing the many letters of condemnation). “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given,” Snyder’s “On Tyranny” reads. “In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
The aftermath of the Post’s decision demonstrated what scholars say will happen after such obeying. Rather than winning favors, such a demonstration of weakness invites further abuse, as anyone who has watched Trump in action ought to know by now.
Trump’s people pounced, with advisor Stephen Miller posting: “You know the Kamala campaign is sinking when even the Washington Post refuses to endorse.”
Trump then promptly went a step further, claiming that Democrats had taken part in “rampant Cheating and Skullduggery…in the 2020 presidential election” and warning that in 2024, “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again…. Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
Trump’s threats are designed to convince people he is a strongman who will inevitably win the 2024 presidential election. But to do that, he will have to go through the voters, who are demonstrating their enthusiasm for Democratic candidate Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.
After the announcement by the Washington Post, others stepped up to endorse Harris. The largest Teamsters union in Texas endorsed Harris before her rally tonight in Houston. In a blistering editorial, the Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Harris, saying: “America deserves much more than an aspiring autocrat who ignores the law, is running to stay out of prison, and doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
Tonight, Trump taped a podcast episode with Joe Rogan in Austin, Texas, hoping to reach Rogan’s large audience. He was still on the ground in Austin when he was supposed to be appearing at a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, and blamed the long taping for the fact he was three hours late to the rally. Tired of waiting, rally attendees streamed out. When he finally arrived, about 47,000 viewers watched the PBS live stream of the rally.
Harris was in Houston, where she took the fight for abortion rights to the heart of a state where an abortion ban has endangered women and driven up the infant mortality rate. People began standing in line before sunrise to get into the rally at the Houston Shell Energy Stadium and filled the 22,000-seat stadium to capacity. About 2.5 million people watched the PBS live stream.
Harris shared the stage with actor Jessica Alba and music legends Beyoncé and Willie Nelson, who asked the crowd: “Are we ready to say Madam President?” —Heather Cox Richardson’
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Notes:
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/musk-putin-secret-conversations-37e1c187
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/joe-rogan-takes-center-stage-in-an-election-season-dominated-by-podcasts-2c14d348
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/10/25/politics/elon-musk-vladimir-putin
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/10/12/mark-milley-donald-trump-fascist/
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4953596-johnson-mcconnell-harris-trump-fascist/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/25/washington-post-endorsement/
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/25/jeff-bezos-killed-washington-post-endorsement-of-kamala-harris-.html
https://www.axios.com/2018/03/28/trump-regulation-amazon-facebook
https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-times-editors-resign-af6c077d502c9d4878bee01fa6575450
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/25/patrick-soon-shiong-the-billionaire-la-times-owner-who-blocked-harris-endorsement
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/25/los-angeles-times-owner-blocks-harris-endorsement
https://www.yahoo.com/news/editor-resigns-subscribers-cancel-washington-190844964.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/25/post-columnist-no-endorsement-2024-trump-harris/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/25/post-editorial-board-wapo-endorsement-2024/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 