Toronto There’s a new malady that is sweeping the country virally and creating its own sort of pandemic. The President calls it: “Trump derangement syndrome.” Now that we are months into the second term the impact for supporters and opponents alike has grown from a gnawing pain to a reddening sore. As the President realizes the impact the syndrome has on people, he says “They wake up in the morning, the glamour is gone, the whole world is different and they become hostile.” He’s right. I can feel it sweeping over me right now.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and formerly Trump’s and the Republican’s key political financier and advisor, is not exactly Patient Zero, but he caught it bad and, rather than quarantining himself and taking to his bed, has manifested another one of the symptoms, blurting whatever he thinks on social media and publicly. Trump, a serial blurter couldn’t call any doctors to help, because Robert Kennedy, Jr. is running shop now and doesn’t believe in them. He suggested, wrongly, just cover your eyes, when most doctors would have said this is all transmitted orally, and you need to shut your mouth.
The old saw about “sticks and stones” rather than “words” hurting you has not kept up with how words have been weaponized in modern public life or the fact that money bags seem more likely to be hurled between billionaire egomaniacs. Not many sticks and stones in the manicured lawns of their lives.
The back and forth between X-Twitter, owned by Musk, and Truth Social, owned sort of by Trump, where both of them are obsessive and complusive posters was on fire with charges and countercharges, threats and promises, blah, blah, blah. Trump says save more money by cutting all of Musk’s contracts. Musk says he bought the election, now has buyer’s remorse, will decommission his rocket that NASA depends on, and more. Who can keep up?
The after-action report at this point gives the odds of winning this battle, ostensibly about the Republicans’ horrid budget bill, to Trump, but Musk might be able to still win the longer war. Republicans need Trump now, while he’s still near the height of his power, so most of them are staying with him to vote on the bill. Pundits even believe that Musk has inadvertently strengthened support for the bill in the Senate because none of them want to end us as collateral damage while this spit fight is on. Musk’s pledge to put up $100 million for the Republicans in the midterms is now on hold and that is worrying some of them. Many of the supplicants are trying to be peacemakers, but this is a big boy schoolyard knockdown drag out thing where they would be advised to continue to hide behind the teacher and to stay out of it.
Both Trump and Musk have too much to lose and regardless of all of the earlier professions of love and devotion, their relationship is transactional. With these guys and most of their supporters when the question comes down to love or money, it will always be about the greenbacks. Enjoy the mess from the sidelines now, but the Trump derangement syndrome will only spread and with both Tesla and Trump Social stock falling like a rock both of them will pretend soon to be friends. Like the rest of the country, it will just never be the same again.