What happens with thugs is that they don't have real friends.
They have lieutenants, followers and victims, sometimes the three rolled in one.
Most of us learn this in approximately third grade, when parents and hard blows teach us how to discover who can trust and who will eat it for lunch.
Elon Musk, at 54 with $ 400 billion at the bank, learned this week, when his dispute with our boss stalker became threats that the president will have deported the South African natives.
Speaking about the support of the Musk government for electric cars, Trump warned this week that Musk “could lose much more than that.”
“We could have had to put Doge in Elon,” Trump said, referring to Musk's cost reduction effort called the Government's efficiency department. “Doge is the monster that … I could have to return and eat to Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible?”
Yes I know. Schadenfreude is real. It is difficult not to sit with a little satisfaction “Tellye” while we see Musk, who has almost only demolished, from the monitoring of hurricanes to international help for hungry children, he realizes that Trump does not love him.
But because Musk is the richest man in the world, who now also understands that he has the power to buy votes, if not the elections, and Trump is grabbing power at every opportunity, there is too much at stake to ignore the unfortunate interpersonal dynamics of these two Titans Tantruming.
What has to do with you and for me, you ask yourself? Well, there is a possible consequence that is worrying: the use of denaturation against political enemies.
In case you have been blessed by the collapse of Trump-Musk-Musk, let me recapitulate.
Once once, nine months ago, Musk and Trump were so tight that he literally had musk jumping with joy. During a surprise appearance in a political rally by Butler, Pennsylvania, (the same place where Trump was almost killed), Musk jumped into the air, with the raised arms, the exposed belly, with the pure delight of simply being included as a follower, although one that channeled $ 290 million in the co -chiefs of the elections. At that time, Musk had no concern that it was not his own dazzling presence what gave the invited places.
In January, Musk had made the transition to the lieutenant, inventing Doge, complete with Swag Carsy, as a solitary preteen who dreamed with a secret club in his house in his tree. Only this club had the power to dismantle the federal government as we know it and create a level of social destruction whose effects will not be fully understood during generations. Severe villain energy.
But then he filled too much with himself, sin number 1 for a lieutenant. Somewhere on the line, Trump noticed (or maybe someone whispered in the president's ear) that Musk was as powerful as he, perhaps more.
Cue The Fallout, the great “See already” of the White House (complete with a fight with another Trump lieutenant) and Musk's sad understanding that, like everyone else in the orbit of a stalker, it was being used as a Kleenex and was never going to end anywhere other than garbage.
So Musk resorted to his social networks platform to start hitting Trump and the “Great Beautiful Law”, which was approved in the Senate on Tuesday, clearing the way for our national debt to shoot while the poor and the middle class suffer.
“If this crazy spending bill passes, the America party will form the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Uniparty Democrat-Republican so that people really have a voice,” Musk threatened, conjuring a new political party in the same way that Doge gin.
Musk even promised to finance more elections to support the candidates to expel Trumbans who voted for the bill.
“And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this earth,” Musk wrote. Presumably before I goes to Mars.
They were those direct, and plausible threats, to Trump's power that caused the president to give Sauron's view in the musk, flexing to consider deportation for this transgression of challenge. It may seem entertaining if Musk, whom the Washington Post reported could have violated the immigration rules, would start from our borders, but would establish a chilling precedent to face this president was punished with a loss of citizenship.
Because the threat of deporting political enemies did not start with Musk, and surely would not end him.
For days, Trumpians have suggested that the mayor's candidate for New York City, Zohran Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a US citizen in 2018, should also be deported, by the crime of support of the policies that vary in description of progressive to socialist to communist (quite sure that those who label them in communism in communism.
On Tuesday, Trump intervened in Mamdani.
“Many people say they are illegally,” Trump said, which, of course, no one is except Trump's attack dogs. “Let's see everything.”
The denaturation for immigration fraud, basically lying or misrepresenting things in your official application, is nothing new. Obama did it, like Trump in his first mandate, and has a long history before that.
But combing the documents of political enemies looking for pretexts to call fraud is chilling.
“This culture of arming the law to persecute enemies, is something that is against our founding principles,” Ben Radd told me. He is a law teacher and political science expert at UCLA.
“It is largely an abuse of executive power, but [Trump] He comes out with his until there is a legal challenge, ”said Radd.
While Musk and Mamdani have the power to fight Trump in a court of justice, if it is it, other naturalized citizens do not.
There are about 25 million citizens of this type in the United States, people who emigrated in the “correct” way, whatever that means, they jumped for the hoops, they said their promise of fidelity to this country and are now Americans. Or they thought.
Actually, under Trump, they are mostly Americans, as long as they won't get angry. The threat of having citizens stripped of opposing the administration is powerful enough to silence many, at a time when many immigrants feel a personal duty and impulse to speak to protect family and friends.
Earning that threat in Musk can be the opportunistic wrath of a thug, and even look fun.
But it is an intimidation destined to show that no one is too powerful to be punished by this bully and, therefore, no one is safe.
