Mr. Musk Leaves Washington

One particularly annoying phase of Trump’s second administration is finally coming to a close. Elon Musk is taking a step back from politics. And, best of all, everyone on Earth thinks he’s both cringe and a nazi. Another masterful gambit from irl Tony Stark.

Musk has been doing a round of exit interviews in the media this month as he hands off his Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE), looking more bitter and dejected with each appearance. In a Fox News interview earlier this month, Musk lashed out at everyone who got mad at him sieg-heiling several times in public while supporting President Donald Trump, telling interviewer Laura Trump, “Now, obviously, I’ve not harmed anyone in my life, so it’s an outrageous thing to claim that I’m a Nazi.”

And then, during an interview with Bloomberg this week at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, an extremely sullen Musk said, “I think I’ve done enough,” when asked if he’d keep spending money on right-wing politics. A clip of the exchange is embedded below. If you look closely you can see that all of the light has left his eyes 🥲

Things came to a head yesterday, when Musk went on CNBC’s Power Lunch and got into a fight with anchor David Faber, signing off at one point and then returning to the show about an hour and a half later. Musk had started having a meltdown after Faber questioned the amount of money DOGE claims it’s saved through its idiotic non-layoffs this winter.

As this chapter comes to a close, it has led to a lot of questions flying around about exactly how we should view Musk’s involvement in all of this. Was he, as Cartoons Hate Her’s Clare Haber-Harris wrote on X, “just another Omarosa” and not a “nefarious shadow emperor”? Or was he played by the new head of DOGE, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russell Vought, as some users of Reddit’s r/fednews have speculated?

I tend to think this was almost entirely an own-goal on Musk’s part and that it didn’t need much politicking to take him down. In fact, back in April, I wondered if Musk was going to get “Vivek’d” after he failed to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court election for Trump. My theory was that Musk assumed he could use his celebrity and fortune to bribe voters and was telling Trump and his inner circle that he actually had some kind of magical “technology” that could win them elections. And now that it was obvious that both X and xAI were duds and his giveaways didn’t work either, they would give him the boot. And Republican insiders appear to agree with me here.

An anonymous Republican source told Politico this week, “He’d go to Wisconsin thinking he can buy people’s votes, wear the cheese hat, act like a 9-year-old... It doesn’t work. It’s offensive to people.” The Politico story also has quotes from prominent Republicans who went on record to basically say, “Elon Musk is a fucking weirdo.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

In February, as the three factions of Trump 2.0 began to take shape, I warned that while Musk’s DOGE was the buzziest of the three, it was not the one that could do the most damage to American democracy. It’s the aforementioned Vought, the new head of DOGE, that I’ve been the most worried about. A genuine true believer and chief architect of Project 2025, someone who The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins recently dubbed, “the visionary of Trump 2.0.” And Coppins makes an argument similar to the one I’ve been screaming for the last few months.

“Behind all the DOGE pyrotechnics, Vought — who serves as director of the Office of Management and Budget — is working methodically to advance a sophisticated ideological project decades in the making,” Coppins writes. “Vought is taking the shattered pieces of the federal government and reassembling them into a radically new constitutional order.”

That’s Musk’s true political legacy. He’s not some political mastermind, he doesn’t even have the conviction to be a true demagogue. He was an embarrassing clown that jumped around on stages like an idiot and posted edgy memes he stole from iFunny while truly evil men, happy to let him LARP as Second President, worked tirelessly on their plan to send America back a hundred years. And Democrats and the carcass of the mainstream media were easily dazzled by their favorite rich doofus hawking Teslas on the White House lawn because it was easier than facing the enormity and existential terror of Project 2025 head on. And even now, prominent liberals like Tesla defender Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are still whining about Musk. Yeah, haul him before a subcommittee or something. Sure. But if I was a betting man, I’d say they’ll keep going after Musk long after he’s driven his burning Cybertruck out of DC because dealing with Vought would require actually engaging with Trump’s coup. Which they are clearly afraid to acknowledge because they want to grab a handful of conservative voters in 2026. In fact, I checked the Project 2025 tracker this morning. They’re nearly 50% of the way through their objectives and we’re just over 100 days into Trump’s second term. Maybe by the time they reach 100% the Democrats will start taking them seriously.

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Cursed Deodorant

The Duolingo Owl Is Flying Too Close To The Sun

—by Adam Bumas

Duolingo is one of the few relatable brand accounts that’s been able to actually get attention in an oversaturated field, between following trends (see Duo The Owl’s morning routine) and starting their own (see his death by Cybertruck earlier this year). But the company’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, may have upset the delicate balance. 

A few weeks ago, von Ahn announced the company would “become AI-first,” which means using AI to “power content creation” and, in words that actually mean things, that they’ll ”gradually stop using contractors.” He also said on a podcast that AI and Duolingo will replace all modern schooling. But the language app guy should know the present tense matters as much as the future, because now every post the company makes is getting flooded with angry comments.

The brand is not your friend, but fascinatingly, it’s still trying to be. Over the weekend, Duolingo deleted all the posts from their Instagram and TikTok accounts. And yesterday, they uploaded a video, supposedly from “a member of the social team,” raging against the CEO and other “elites”. Fast Company wrote that they seem to be “trying to have it both ways,” and it isn’t working. No matter how much the account mixes it up in the comments. Ironically, if the funny app owl crashes out, that might just be its most relatable move of all.

Theo Von Breaks Rank On Palestine

Podcaster and comedian Theo Von posted a video to X last night where he broke down crying while describing images and videos he’s seen coming out of Palestine. Most importantly, in the video, he refers to the conflict as a “genocide.”

The reactions to Von’s video have been all over the place. The replies are mostly from Verified X users demanding he make another video addressing Israeli hostages and October 7th. And some of his fellow podcasters like Tim Pool are whining about it in the quote-posts. “It's one thing to criticize the war. It's another to call it a genocide. Massive swing to one side on an issue he doesn’t know much about,” Pool posted. Von does admit he doesn’t know much about the conflict in his video, for what it’s worth.

Writer Ayesha A. Siddiqi made the most cogent point, I thought, writing, “Outclassed a lot of other podcasters who consider themselves more progressive and cultured than him, what do their sensibilities ultimately amount to when they fall short of even peers like this?”

The big picture takeaway, though, is that the manosphere is not a political monolith and should not be treated as one. In fact, I hesitated above to refer to Pool as a peer of Von’s because I do think amid all the post-election podcast hysteria, a lot of guys like Von were, perhaps not unfairly, but, rather, inaccurately grouped in with hardcore far-right influencers. (Which is, of course, exactly what the far right wants.) And this point has been made recently by both Sen. Bernie Sanders — who I think actually really bungled it and did a bad job talking about this — and also by Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal, who did a better job. Democrats don’t get ignore an entire media ecosystem and then turn around and complain that no one is paying attention to them!

The All American Rejects Are Doing An Actually Very Cool Thing

Huh, of all the bands of their generation, I didn’t think All American Rejects had it in them. They’re out on tour promoting a new single and upcoming album. But there’s a twist. They’re only playing house shows and other small venues like bowling alleys and usually the shows are free. They’re also focusing on midwestern states like Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota.

Frontman Tyson Ritter has also been taking time out of the show to rage against overpriced live music, telling the audience at one show, “We’re not trying to sell you finance tickets to Coachella, we’re not trying to sell you Ticketmaster fucking penalty fees, we’re not trying to sell you $25 parking.” Here’s a good Kerrang! piece with a roundup of clips from all the shows.

Now, a few things worth noting here. All American Rejects aren’t the only band trying to figure out a way around Ticketmaster. A favorite artist of mine, Jeff Rosenstock, did an “infinite” rolling residency at a venue in Brooklyn last year, adding a new show every time the previous one sold out. Also, All American Rejects, I have to assume, have the money to do something like this thanks to their countless massive radio singles when all came out back when you could make money from those. (Who knows though, maybe not.)

But the most interesting thing here for me, when it comes to a content perspective, is that thanks to short-form video platforms, you can make small shows like this feel huge, in terms of attention. Which the band has admitted is all the care about. They just want people to hear their new record. So while they may be losing some money on free shows, by focusing on something cool and weird irl, with the knowledge kids will film it, they end up grabbing a lot more ears than they could with a small club tour or something.

SAG-AFTRA Is Going After Epic Games Over AI Darth Vader

—by Adam Bumas

Last week, Fortnite announced the latest addition to its enormous toy box: A “conversational Darth Vader”, speaking in the AI-recreated voice of James Earl Jones. Within a day, streamers figured out how to make Vader swear, get racist, and more (WIRED has a good roundup). Epic Games had to patch their rickety AI model multiple times, but they’re also facing trouble from SAG-AFTRA, which announced on Monday they were suing Epic for ignoring their guidelines for AI recreations.

This isn’t Epic’s only legal battle, since Fortnite is currently trying to return to iOS devices, after Apple’s latest salvo in an ongoing war between the two aspiring monopolies. Meanwhile, the AI Darth Vader is part of a $1.5 billion deal with Disney, and as Polygon has pointed out, it’s the largest use of AI in a big-budget game we’ve seen yet. Just like with Apple, it’s clear that Epic is trying to set a precedent that they’re too big to care about any rules. And for the moment, it looks like their strongest challenge will be from SAG-AFTRA, which is currently on strike over this exact issue.

Also, if you want a quicker way to add Star Wars to everything, copy-paste this section into the intro generator.

A Good Post About A Good Thread

Here’s a link to the war zone.

Some Stray Links

P.S. here’s what anxiety sounds like.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***