NPR's Steve Inskeep struck again this morning. I was dawdling in bed, but I bounced even before this seven-minute absurdity was over.
INSKEEP: So I want people to know we talk from time to time. I don't really ask about your personal life, and I don't want to go too far here, but have you ever had a breakup like this?
SWISHER: Not like this. Not publicly like this. It's really quite strange, actually, but it's sort of in keeping with their relationship over the last year or so as Musk became very close to Donald Trump.
That's how it began, and it didn't get any better.
SWISHER: Well, I think they've had - you know, he sort of fell in love quickly, didn't he? He sort of went crazy, jumping up and down, doing the chainsaw thing, dedicating his life, moving into Mar-a-Lago, all this stuff, and shifted rather dramatically. Because he sort of was somewhat neutral in politics, had voted for Obama, you know, had a relationship with Trump in the first term, but certainly wasn't, you know, as deeply in love with him as he - and I hate to use these terms, but it's really been quite intense, calling himself BFF or best buddy or first buddy or whatever the heck they used.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
SWISHER: And Trump reciprocated, too.
If you have time and a strong stomach, click through and listen to the audio. Later on, Swisher says of Trump and Musk that "they're not serious people"; neither are she and Inskeep. Remember this the next time someone calls NPR a radical-left outlet.
Also, this is weird: NPR's Scott Horsley reported that according to the Congressional Budget Office, Trump's tariffs "could cut the federal debt by $2.8 trillion" in the next decade, while the Associated Press reported that the CBO forecast that Trump's budget bill would "spike deficits by $2.4 trillion over the decade." Horsley didn't mention the latter forecast, which seems to me a bit one-sided. Horsley mentioned the effect of tariffs on wine prices, which inspired Inskeep to say:
INSKEEP: Hope you're able to pour yourself a glass, Scott. Thanks so much.
HORSLEY: You're welcome.
But back to the Musk-Trump clash. Liberal and left commentators were very excited about it yesterday, and you'd have thought that the two titans were clashing in person, face-to-face, instead of remotely. They were also excited by Musk's threat that Trump's relations with Jeffrey Epstein were going to be revealed, as if Musk weren't a recreational liar who's posted false predictions often before, and as if the Trump-Epstein connection weren't well-documented already. What happens when two habitual liars clash? Do they cancel each other out, like matter and anti-matter? None of this is really news anyway. Many people had predicted that Musk would terminally piss off Trump, and vice versa; the only question was how long it would take.
Rumors are swirling like the dust from the Canadian wildfires that are making my eyes burn even as I write this. First I read that Trump and Musk were going to meet to iron out their differences, then that the White House had denied it. But it does seem that some highly placed Democratic centrists believe they see an opening to woo Musk to their side. May their memory be a curse.
