It’s Time for “Celebrity Oligarch Feud”

Elon Musk and President Donald Trump in happier times, at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on October 5. Alex Brandon/AP

It was easy to relish the nasty catfight that erupted between Elon Musk and Donald Trump on Thursday, as these two narcissists used their respective social media platforms to fire off message-bombs at each other. After Musk dumped on Trump’s extremist domestic policy bill for boosting the national deficit, Trump threatened the assorted contracts Musk’s companies have with the federal government. Musk went DEFCON 2 and tweeted Trump “is in the Epstein files,” essentially accusing the president of being a pedophile. And the ketamine cowboy endorsed a call for Trump’s impeachment. From there it got worse.

By the time you read this, who knows what will be the state of this feud? I suppose the two could reconcile and laugh off this spat. That would make great television. Which is what Trump always wants. Trump practices politics that is akin to professional wrestling, a world in which nothing is real. Except getting what you want—i.e., making money. That is all driven by showmanship. Is the Musk-Trump meltdown bread and circus without the bread? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Then again, Trump has always considered celebrity quarrels a key component of his successful schtick. Remember his long-running beef with Rosie O’Donnell. He’s engaged in limelight combat with a long line of bold-faced names, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Chrissy Teigen to Pope Francis. Recently, he tried to gin up disputes with Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, and Oprah Winfrey. It’s more WWE-like posing in which he can pursue one of his great desires: vengeance. As I’ve pointed out far too many times, Trump is a revenge junkie. He will manufacture squabbles just to be able to quench his thirst for retribution. Moreover, Trump appears to have a psychological need to attack and (in his mind) vanquish much-admired people. One can wonder why.

This episode did demonstrate—once more—that we are being ruled by fools. As Logan Roy said on Succession, “You’re not serious people.” It’s quite a stunning development when that is true for both the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world. Together, as I noted last week, this pair is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths that will result from the demolition of USAID and its programs. (See the latest figure here.) If Trump manages to pass his big ugly bill as it is presently constituted, 11 million or so people will lose their health care coverage. How many deaths will result from that?

It's far easier to titter about the mean-girl face-off between these two broken-soul celebrities than it is to thoroughly ponder all the pain and suffering for which they and their handmaids are responsible. Who wouldn’t rather laugh than cry?

I don’t have much else to say about this clown show. I had originally intended to lead this issue with an item on another Bonzo: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So let’s move on to that…

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

While reading a recent article in the New Yorker, I came across this passage:

Citing evidence, ignoring appeals to authority, reserving judgment, demanding more research—these are potentially exhausting traits in a conversational partner, but they’re also marks of a scientific mind. Rather than being “anti-science,” Kennedy seems enchanted by it.

Daniel Immerwahr, the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University and a contributing writer for the magazine, was apparently suggesting that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. possesses a “scientific mind.” To bolster this point, he noted that Kennedy’s “accusatory book ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ (2021) is packed with discussions of clinical studies” and “Kennedy has published two books with the subtitle ‘Let the Science Speak.’”

I was floored.

Immerwahr’s essay—"R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise”—was an intriguing examination of who determines scientific consensus and who is allowed to determine what is and is not an acceptable challenge to the prevailing wisdom. An obvious case study for this is Covid, and Immerwahr explores whether public health experts went too far in establishing an orthodoxy about masks, lockdowns, and other countermeasures and in casting opposing views as improper and outside the boundaries of reasonable debate.  

It's a heady and important topic. When do we trust established science? When ought we not? And he expands his exploration to the larger notion of expertise. When should we believe the people in charge? He applies this question to the John F. Kennedy assassination and other contentious matters, such as the early ideas about the causes of and best treatments for AIDS. As the piece’s subtitle notes, “It used to be progressives who distrusted the experts. What happened?”

Immerwahr sets up Kennedy as the poster boy for authority-defying inquisition. “Kennedy’s rise,” he wrote, “represents a growing epistemological rift in the country. Increasingly, ‘left’ and ‘right’ don’t just describe divergent political judgments but also sealed-off understandings of what is true and how we know it. For all his unfounded beliefs and suspicions, Kennedy’s revolt isn’t against research but against the power long held by scientific insiders like Fauci. And in this he might have a point.”

That’s like saying when Alex Jones decries government officials for advancing hidden agendas he might have a point—though Jones claims their secret plan includes operating a global pedophilia ring and eating babies.

Kennedy has what best could be called a pseudo-scientific mind. He aims to present his conspiratorial and fact-challenged notions with the patina of science. He dresses up his arguments with data that has the ring of verisimilitude. He knows that’s how best to sell his ideas. But if you dive in and check his footnotes, you will often find his sources do not say what he claims they say. He makes stuff up and then cloaks it with mischaracterized citations and disinformation. It looks as if he is engaged in the rigor we associate with scientific research or investigative journalism. But it’s a con.

I saw this when I did a deep-dive examination of a far-out narrative he was peddling in 2022. He claimed that a global elite led by the CIA had been planning for years to use a pandemic to end democracy and impose totalitarian control on the entire world. He insisted he had concrete proof: a videotaped recording of a gathering of members of this elite and a report from the National Security Agency. Yet the video—available on YouTube!—did not match his description at all. And neither did the NSA report. But to the uninformed, Kennedy, who’s quite deft as spewing what appear to be facts, could come across as having the goods.

This is his methodology. Using scientific-sounding lingo, he has repeatedly said that of all the vaccines—except the Covid vaccine—none have been safety tested against a placebo in pre-licensing. This means, he asserts, the public health community does not understand the risk profile for those shots. That’s false. There have been hundreds of such studies. He has also pointed to a debunked study to suggest vaccines cause autism. And he called the called the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” (Uh, no.)

His anti-vax books and public presentations are full of references to research—packed with discussions of clinical studies, as Immerwahr says. But Kennedy misrepresents, and he lies. He prevaricated about his connection to a deadly measles outbreak that occurred in Samoa in 2019 that claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children. He recently falsely stated the MMR vaccine “contains a lot of aborted fetal debris.” Last week, he released a Make America Healthy Again report that he said was backed up by “gold-standard” science, noting it referenced more than 500 studies and other sources to support its claims. Its citations, though, were loaded with errors, including misstated conclusions. Several of the cited sources don’t exist.

That was pure RFK Jr. Come across as scientific and steeped in the research, but mangle the facts and the truth to serve his end. I’ve heard from people who used to work with him when he was an environmental activist that his colleagues worried that his fiery speeches were jammed with factual errors. They would try to fact-check his drafts before delivery but feared he would go off script. They adored his passion and positions but did not trust his presentation of facts.

In recent days, Kennedy has put millions of people at risk. His Department of Health and Human Services killed a $766 million program to develop an mRNA vaccine to safeguard people from flu strains that could become pandemics, such as the H5N1 bird flu virus that has been increasingly worrying public health officials. It also ended a project that was progressing toward developing a HIV/AIDS vaccine. And he has presided over draconian budget cuts that will set back biomedical research for a generation.

He does all this relying on science-speak to sell his hokum. It’s been a good gig for Kennedy. He has made millions of dollars selling his anti-vax books and maintaining he has done his own research with scientific rigor.

Immerwahr asks an important question: “Which skeptical views merit consideration? Which are denialism?” He justifiably counsels humility in deriving consensus and locking out dissent. But to build his argument upon the case of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a mistake. In his penultimate paragraph, Immerwahr acknowledges that Kennedy, in four months as HHS secretary, has racked up a terrible record, repeating his false claims about vaccines’ dangers, promoting a crackpot remedy for measles, and prosecuting Trump’s war on science. Yet Immerwahr credits Kennedy too much as a gadfly, as he challenges the inclination of the scientific establishment to belittle or, worse, smother dissent.

Kennedy is no gadfly. He is a snake-oil salesman who has adopted the trappings of science to pitch his wares. Why do people fall for his bunk? That is the problem. Given the threats that we might face in the future, finding an answer to that critical question could be essential to our survival.

It was yet another overwhelming week for the judges. The Musk-Trump clash yielded a flood of stupid remarks—and not just from the two combatants. Some MAGA-ites hailed both narcissists for fighting like real men. Right-wing commentator Joey Mannarino gushed: “Trump and Elon aren’t attacking one another in a way that won’t be fixed. People forget how men with testicles spar. You’re watching two people with balls the size of the moon debate an issue. This is what masculinity look like.”

Yes, calling someone a pedophile is a sign of manliness.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) issued one of the dumbest remarks from a sitting US senator in a long while. At a town hall meeting, responding to criticism that Republican efforts to slash Medicaid would lead to deaths, she quipped, “We are all going to die.” That ignited a firestorm. She responded by offering a phony apology. In a video apparently shot at a cemetery, she said she wished to “sincerely apologize” but then continued:

I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we’re all going to perish from this earth. So I apologize, and I’m really really glad that I didn’t have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy, as well. But for those who would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

Most galling is that she thought she was being clever.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick once again is in the running, this time for an exchange he had with Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Penn.) during a congressional hearing:

Dean: What's the tariff on bananas?

Lutnick: …Generally 10 percent

Dean: Walmart has already increased the cost of bananas by 8 percent…

Lutnick: If you build in America and produce your product in America, there will be no tariff…

Dean: We cannot build bananas in America.

Trump was back in the hunt for a non-Musk-related comment. When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz met with him at the White House to try to persuade Trump to bolster US support for Ukraine, Trump mentioned that the United States had once done Europe a big favor.

Merz: Tomorrow is the D Day anniversary, when the Americans once ended a war in Europe.

Trump: That was not a pleasant day for you? This is not a great day.

Merz: In the long run, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship.

Trump seemed to be suggesting that Germans should be sad that the Nazis were defeated. And there was another beaut that came out of that press availability. Trump declared, “Eggs have come down 400 percent. Everybody has eggs now.” Four hundred percent? Does that mean you go to a grocery store, and they give you the eggs for free and $18.00?

Nice try, Mr. President, but the winner this week is New York City Republican councilwoman Vickie Paladino. Assailing Zohran Mamdani, the Ugandan-born New York State assemblyman running in the Democratic primary for mayor in the Big Apple, she tweeted, “Let’s just talk about how insane it is to elect someone to any major office who hasn’t even been a US citizen for ten years—much less a radical leftist who actually hates everything about the country and is here specifically to undermine everything we’ve ever been about. Deport.”

This was major othering. It’s always amusing (and sad) to see right-wingers castigate newcomers or first-generation immigrants who embody the American dream as haters of America. (That’s what many did to Barack Obama.) As the judges have previously noted, a contestant who combines hatred and stupidity has an edge in this contest. Paladino hit that spot in a highly competitive week.

I will use any excuse to plug Les Misérables, one of the best musicals, period. It’s about to open at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and Trump and his wife, Melania (remember her), and Vance and his wife, Usha, are planning to attend the first show—and turn the evening into a high-dollar fundraiser. Yet some of the people who would normally be singing that night will be silent. Major cast members and others in the ensemble will not perform that day in protest of Trump, according to CNN. The boycott seems appropriate, given that the show, based on the Victor Hugo novel, is much about the 1832 rebellion in Paris, in which students and radicals challenged a plutocratic regime. I wonder how audience members will react to Trump’s presence. 

John Morales, a veteran meteorologist in Florida, delivered bad news to his viewers: Trump and the GOP’s spending cuts will make it harder to track the progress of hurricanes:

As you’ve grown accustomed to my presentations over my 34 years in South Florida newscasts, confidently, I went on TV, and I told you [the hurricane is] going to turn. You don’t need to worry. It is going to turn. And I am here to tell you that I am not sure I can do that this year because of the cuts, the gutting, the sledgehammer attack on science in general… But specifically, let’s talk about the federal government cuts to the National Weather Service and to NOAA.

Did you know that central and south Florida National Weather Service offices are currently basically 20 to 40 percent understaffed from Tampa to Key West, including the Miami office? Twenty to 40 percent understaffed. Now this type of a staffing shortage is having impacts across the nation because there’s been a nearly 20-percent reduction in weather balloon releases… And what we’re starting to see is that the quality of the forecast is becoming degraded. There’s also a chance, because of some of these cuts, that NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft will not be able to fly this year. And with less reconnaissance missions, we may be flying blind, and we may not exactly know how strong a hurricane is before it reaches the coastline… I was asked to talk about this today. I’m glad I was. I just want you to know that what you need to do is call your representatives and make sure that these cuts are stopped.

We need more of this. People in positions of influence outside politics explaining the consequences of Trump’s war on government.

Many readers agreed with me that Elon Musk, as he departed Washington, got off easy. That was before the dust-up with Trump.

Duane Hybertson wrote:

Thank you for this article describing the damage Musk and DOGE have done. I share your perplexity concerning why the press portrays his tenure in his terms—he did not cut as much waste and fraud as he wanted, but it was a valiant effort--rather than the elephant in the room: the enormous damage he has done to this country and the world.

Linda Jack emailed:

If the mission of DOGE was to eliminate waste, inefficiency and fraud, it would have employed auditors and accountants. As it was comprised of programmers, the logical conclusion is that it was intended to data mine the personal info of hundreds of millions of Americans, and alter government databases, as well as possibly install malware, Trojan horses, or backdoors that would allow Musk to access or change those systems at will.

Not sure how concerned (or paranoid) we ought to be about this. But since there was no supervision of Musk’s efforts, it's not unreasonable to worry about these sorts of things. 

Donna Halper shared this:

Among the Musk actions that might have gotten more press attention in the Before Times was the downsizing and downgrading of the US Office for Civil Rights. My sister worked there. Musk never met her, nor did he meet the many dedicated civil servants who also worked there, taking on cases and defending the civil rights of Americans who felt they had nowhere else to turn. But Musk said civil servants are lazy and corrupt. So it was that multitudes of hardworking folks, my sister among them, got the email telling them they were no longer needed. But here's what I know: My sister and her colleagues were neither lazy nor corrupt. And their fight to defend the marginalized used to be something our culture respected. However, DOGE decided there was no further need for what my sister and her colleagues were doing. After all, it's white men who are truly discriminated against, according to numerous Trump allies. Meanwhile, my sister gave 30 years of her life to that agency. She believed in its mission. She still does. But evidently, MAGA values of hatred and cruelty towards "the other" have become so normalized that the Office for Civil Rights is no longer relevant. I find that profoundly disappointing. So does my sister.

Donna, please convey my best wishes to your sister. There are thousands who should be thanked for their service, not denigrated in this manner.

“What are you doing, Moxie?”
“Feeling the wind.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Like this is the right place to be.”