Leah Feiger: Nicely, I imply, as a result of it’s the safer possibility. That is the richest man on the planet and the president of the US. I wish to consider that there’s thought behind any of this.
Zoë Schiffer: 100%.
Leah Feiger: And that is precisely what a bunch of those conspiracy theorists have been saying during the last 24 hours. Senior reporter David Gilbert printed a narrative at present about how the whole conspiracy world thinks that the Musk-Trump breakup is a psyop, it is “5D chess.” It is messy, messy, messy. We’re speaking posts of individuals simply being like, “No, no, no, that is their plan. It is all to goad the Democrats into publishing the Epstein information totally.” It is form of wild to behold, truthfully, however I feel we’re about to see a little bit of a fissure in Republican politics actually for the primary time in about eight months, 9 months; they’ve had an excellent run.
Zoë Schiffer: OK, I really feel like we have to take a number of steps again and simply discuss how did we get right here?
Leah Feiger: Is their relationship nonetheless helpful to one another? Elon Musk remains to be the richest man on the planet, and as irritated as Trump could also be proper now, they nonetheless have plenty of shared vested pursuits. Musk has plenty of contracts with the US authorities that he in all probability does not wish to danger. They’ve some Qatari pursuits. There’s plenty of enterprise there, however this invoice looks as if it is turning into a sticking level. We’ll should see.
Zoë Schiffer: Proper. And I really feel prefer to that time, one in all Musk’s primary, a minimum of public, grievances about it’s that it provides to the deficit, but in addition one of many provisions within the invoice is that it reduces electrical car credit. Clearly, this is a matter for Elon Musk and Tesla. So how a lot of that do you suppose is impacting his views right here?
Leah Feiger: Once more, I am unable to get totally into his head, however as a lot as Elon Musk has been like, “Cut back the deficit, cut back the deficit, that is the objective of DOGE, we’ll minimize $2 trillion,” that do not even actually exist in US federal spending. So when it comes to slicing the deficit, it is laborious for me to really ascribe his motivations there. Does he care? I am not 100% satisfied. Does he care about Tesla? Completely, and also you’re precisely on the cash with the EV credit score. I imply, I feel it was one thing final yr, Tesla had spent a minimum of 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 {dollars} lobbying on behalf of the electrical car tax credit score that will get minimize on this invoice. And that is some huge cash, that is plenty of time. Musk additionally was reportedly doing plenty of advocating for the credit score behind the scenes, and so I might very a lot see this type of being a bit little bit of a, “Screw you. I did all of this for you, I requested for this one actually massive factor, and you continue to have it in there in any case.” And such as you stated in regards to the egos, I might actually see it in so some ways coming all the way down to that, and I’ve to say, as a result of this has additionally been happening, clearly issues haven’t been tremendous easy crusing for Musk with the White Home 100% of the time for the previous few months, and the opposite factor that is come up in the previous few days, which has come up earlier than, is Musk has actually favored selecting folks which can be taking sure authorities positions. A few days in the past, it was over the weekend, I consider, this man named Jared Isaacman, who is that this Musk ally, was nominated for NASA administrator, and Trump has eliminated that. And Musk has run into these points with Scott Bessent, secretary of the treasury, with Sean Duffy from transportation. And so it is laborious to say precisely what the one factor is, however all of this collectively, the EV tax credit, the not with the ability to truly say who’s going to be in cost, I might see this being very a lot not satisfying for him, let’s simply say.
