Trump+Musk: Folie à Deux - Trump thread #137

[Spandauer]

The clock is already ticking and he's an old man. Mid-terms: November 3, 2026

Thanks to @AcrossThePond55 for the thread title.

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5206120-the-grown-ups-have-left-the-building-trump-thread-136

@Efacsen it is Yr Wyddfa not Wylfa and not unpronounceable if you try,
With-Va is close.
But I wasn’t referring to that, it was the comment about Musk’s supposed Welsh name.

I'm South African born but left the country when I was 3. My parents made the decision to leave because they realised that they could bring my younger brother and I up to abhor apartheid and have no friends or to be exposed to the prevailing white societal norms and end up estranged from our parents

It didn't help that my dad's farm was in Northern Transvaal (Afrikaner territory). The only reason my "branch" is English speaking is my great grandfather married an Irish woman who came to SA during the Boer War as a nurse.

In many respects though, the worst racism was from the white English speaking community in Natal (now Kwa-Zulu Natal) as they considered themselves "liberals" and did not have any self-awareness of their own ingrained attitudes.

Mum and Dad brought us up to abhor all racism and discrimination.

I like Yr Wyddfa and Eryri. They are not difficult to pronounce, just wish I could roll my r's

Third plane crash in short time

Missing Alaska plane found with three confirmed dead - US Coast Guard

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c05l28jne2ro

Very sad.

Doesn't seem to be an ATC issue though. How much of that will be explained in the US remains to be seen.

If Americans are as jumpy about air travel as they were after 9/11 then I wouldn't be investing in any US airlines right now.

My chemistry teacher for A level was South African. He left when he was a student and never returned because of apartheid.

He once told us that motorcycle police used to like driving alongside cars queued at traffic lights and bang the elbows of anyone resting their arm on the window.

"Riotous Assembly" and "Indecent Exposure" by Tom Sharpe coloured my imagination of how it may have been.

And if you want a film that makes you scream in rage "A Dry White Season" is a good choice.

My dad has a beautiful portrait picture taken of him by Tom Sharpe. Dad was a very good looking young man - a bit like James Dean.

The hitlist seems to be anyone who has offended Musk or Trump in their lives. Australia is keeping its head down and hoping not to be singled out for a trade war. And still paying enormous sums of money for a dud submarine deal in the remote future.

.

Candidates for national security roles in the new administration have been posed loyalty questions, such as: Was Jan. 6 an inside job, and Was the 2020 presidential election stolen? They were asked to give straight "yes" or "no" answers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/08/trump-administration-job-candidates-loyalty-screening/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzM4OTkwODAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzQwMzczMTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3Mzg5OTA4MDAsImp0aSI6ImJhY2ZmMzQ4LTUyNjQtNDFiZS1iOWNkLWQ0Mzk5MjJmZGRjNCIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9uYXRpb25hbC1zZWN1cml0eS8yMDI1LzAyLzA4L3RydW1wLWFkbWluaXN0cmF0aW9uLWpvYi1jYW5kaWRhdGVzLWxveWFsdHktc2NyZWVuaW5nLyJ9.yxvFgWdeOV9RrerwIJTWnzd_J5k4UIFHbwb3lUoMHcM

It was just a joke because we were (briefly) discussing the renaming of things/places in the style of Trump's Gulf of Mexico change due to the Governor of Illinois trolling him, which moved on to Wales renaming national parks, and when @SerendipityJane suggested Cunt as a noun for Musk...

But as any writer or comedian knows, if you have to explain a joke, it's not a good one.

I wish on of the new reaction emojis was the shocked😱 face one.

Was thinking exactly the same thing a couple of days ago!

With my basic knowledge of the US, I thought it was loyalty to the Constitution and to protect the US from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

Project 2025 is working on a line in the constitution that says whatever POTUS says goes. When this hits SCOTUS, they can either "decide" that Trump is the first King of America. Or they can risk MAGA declaring war on unelected judges interfering in democracy. Thus disproving the trope that Americans don't know what goes on in the rest of the world.

The nature and extent of the executive power is less clear.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S1-C1-1/ALDE_00013790/

Ivanka describing her childhood

m.youtube.com/watch?v=R6FZ5kj3FGo

Nigel Farage famously hated unelected officials

https://www.alternet.org/creating-chaos-top-doge-dem-introduces/

I find her totally nauseating

But it's good to see China have rescinded all her trademarks from 2018. Because of her father's tariffs

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-recruiting-palantir/

The Recruitment Effort That Helped Build Elon Musk’s DOGE Army

At least three individuals associated with Palantir or its cofounder Peter Thiel were involved in an online recruiting effort for DOGE late last year, WIRED has learned.

The establishment of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) relied on a recruitment campaign carried out, in part, by young software engineers fanning out across online chat groups and Discord servers, according to three sources and chat logs reviewed by WIRED. Some of the engineers are associated with data analytics firm Palantir or its cofounder and board of directors chair—and Musk ally—Peter Thiel.

I have absolutely been expecting Palantir and Peter Thiel to be in the mix somewhere.

Locking the Muskovites out of the sensitive systems now might already be too late. They may already have dumped the data out. It wouldn't be surprising if, say, Palantir were ready and waiting.

NB Palantir already has its hands on a lot of personal NHS data, as Dominic Cummings handed it over during Covid and it went into Palantir's Foundry software.

This is the press piece on the NHS data:
healthtech.blog.gov.uk/2020/03/28/the-power-of-data-in-a-pandemic/
A G-cloud data processing contract is in place. Palantir is a data processor, not a data controller, and cannot pass on or use the data for any wider purpose without the permission of NHS England

This is absolutely no reassurance whatsover, because MAGA don't give a shit about the law and the Brexit Boys have a long history of working with illegally obtained data (Cambridge Analytica's Facebook grab, Arron Banks' insurance data repurposing, etc).

I said back c2016, keep your eye on the South Africans.

That was because I'd spotted Banks and a few others. I don't think Musk was on my radar and I hadn't pulled anything coherent together. It's just I know how the tiny the South African elite of their era is.

Thousands protest against Trump’s war on immigrants after Ice raids: ‘Fight for our neighbors’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/09/protests-trump-ice-raids-colorado

Meanwhile ...

Here we go. Laying the groundwork now

https://bsky.app/profile/thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3lhr7utijtk2m

.