Leah Feiger: Properly, I imply, as a result of the safer possibility. That is the richest man on the planet and the President of the USA. I wish to consider that there’s thought behind any of this.
Zoë Schiffer: 100%.
Leah Feiger: And that is precisely what a bunch of those conspiracy theorists have been saying during the last 24 hours. Senior reporter, David Gilbert, revealed a narrative at present about how the whole conspiracy world thinks that the Musk-Trump breakup is a PSYOP, it is 5D chess. It is messy, messy, messy. We’re speaking posts of individuals simply being like, “No, no, no, that is their plan. It is all to go the Democrats into publishing the Epstein information totally.” It is sort of wild to behold, actually, however I feel we’re about to see a little bit of a fissure in Republican politics actually for the primary time in about eight months, 9 months, they’ve had a great run.
Zoë Schiffer: Okay, I really feel like we have to take just a few steps again and simply discuss how did we get right here?
Leah Feiger: Is their relationship nonetheless helpful to the opposite? Elon Musk continues to be the richest man on the planet, and as irritated as Trump could also be proper now, they’ve a number of very nonetheless shared vested pursuits. Musk has a number of contracts with the US authorities that he in all probability would not wish to threat. They’ve some Qatari pursuits. There’s a number of enterprise there, however this invoice looks like it is turning into a sticking level. We’ll need to see.
Zoë Schiffer: Proper. And I really feel wish to that time, one in every of Musk’s predominant, no less than public grievances about it, is that it provides to the debt deficit, but additionally one of many provisions within the invoice is that it reduces electrical car credit. Clearly, this is a matter for Elon Musk and Tesla. So how a lot of that do you suppose is impacting his views right here?
Leah Feiger: Once more, I am unable to get totally into his head, however as a lot as Elon Musk has been like, “Scale back the deficit, scale back the deficit, that is the aim of DOGE, we’ll lower $2 million,” that do not even actually exist in US federal spending. So when it comes to slicing the deficit, it is arduous for me to truly ascribe his motivations there. Does he care? I am not 100% satisfied. Does he care about Tesla? Completely, and also you’re precisely on the cash with the EV credit score. I imply, I feel it was one thing final 12 months, Tesla had spent no less than 1 / 4 of one million {dollars} lobbying on behalf of the electrical car tax credit score that will get lower on this invoice. And that is some huge cash, that is a number of time. Musk additionally was reportedly doing a number of advocating for the credit score behind the scenes, and so I may very a lot see this type of being slightly little bit of a, “Screw you. I did all of this for you, I requested for this one actually large factor, and you continue to have it in there anyhow.” And such as you stated in regards to the egos, I may actually see it in so some ways coming right down to that, and I’ve to say, as a result of this has additionally been occurring, clearly issues haven’t been tremendous easy crusing for Musk with the White Home 100% of the time for the previous couple of months, and the opposite factor that is come up in the previous couple of days, which has come up earlier than, is Musk has actually favored selecting individuals which can be taking sure authorities positions. A few days in the past, it was over the weekend, I consider, this man named Jared Isaacman, who is that this Musk ally, was nominated for NASA administrator, and Trump has eliminated that. And Musk has run into these points with Scott Bessent, secretary of the Treasury, with Sean Duffy from transportation. And so it is arduous to say precisely what the one factor is, however all of this collectively, the EV tax credit, the not with the ability to really say who’s going to be in cost, I may see this being very a lot not gratifying for him, let’s simply say.
