Muskrat Love

For those of you who wisely decided to avoid the conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, or who were unable to tune in due to Twitter’s crapulence, or who were unable to understand Trump’s mouthful of marbles, I’m sad to report that there’s a full transcript of it online now.

Because I hate myself, I took a look and I’m delighted to report that it doesn’t make much more sense than what we heard on Monday night.

First of all, look how they frame the utter failure of Musk’s website to handle the slight surge in traffic. Nothing is ever their fault; every failure is just another hater trying to stop them from Winning.

That general sense of victimhood — the one mood that summarizes what’s left of modern conservatism these days — became an early theme in the conversation, with Musk letting Trump milk every single possible ounce of pity and compassion out of the story of his near-assassination.

Again, never mind that the shooter was a registered Republican using the exact gun that Republicans like Trump have fought to make so widely accessible, this was clearly an attempt to Silence him for Telling Truths.

The assassination coverage goes on and on and on, likely because Trump is still hurt that the country shrugged it off in a few days and moved on to more important matters than the maxipad bandage on his ear. A lot of this:

Eventually, they get off the topic of how much people hate Trump — enough to bring down Twitter, enough to shoot at him — and they move on to other topics.

And there’s a lot that these two have in common — they were both born on third base, inheriting a great deal of wealth and influence without having to do a thing; they both then managed to steal second, somehow ruining virtually everything they touch; and they both seem incapable of forming actual human relationships, as they were raised by fathers who apparently never said “I love you.”

But the one thing they really wanted to talk about, a topic dominated the chat, was how much they despise immigrants. (Never mind that Musk is an immigrant himself and Trump has married two. They’re, uh, talking “immigrant” immigrants. You know the ones. Wink.)

For as much as they both profess to care about the topic, they still seem to lack any basic understanding of the issues. Here, for instance, is Trump wowing the audience with the new information that immigration involves people from all over the world.

The issue of immigration, for these two Mensa members, is vitally important in this election, not just because appealing to white nationalism and nativism has been a key part of Trump’s political appeal ever since he glided down that gilded elevator in Trump Tower to cast aspersions on Mexican immigrants as being mostly rapists and murderers, but because they think they can use the issue specifically to target Kamala Harris.

This is really the perfect Trump whine.

Start with the passive voice framing, that she “was called the Border czar the first day.” She was called that by whom? Not the Biden administration, for sure. And the first day … of what? Again, not the new presidency.

It was on headlines everywhere? I can’t find it, but if Donald Trump thinks newspaper headlines now establish something as fact, we can try to apply that to everything.

“She never even went there.” Very next sentence: “She went to one location.” So, we’ve invented a job she never had, added requirements of the job she never had that she didn’t meet, ok, met partially, and … sorry, I stopped paying attention.

Anyway, they never quite say the Fourteen Words in the conversation, but the weird fantasies over the border wall and the proposed mass deportations of millions of people from American soil come close.

They segue into a discussion of foreign affairs, which includes such Trumpisms as

I’ve read the start of that second paragraph three times and I still have nothing. “We wouldn’t have had Afghanistan”? Like, the place would have vanished. “But we think of it.” Indeed.

As an aside, there are several moments of crosstalk in the interview which provide us some gems like this:

And then my favorite part of the entire conversation:

Only Donald Trump could get the science so wrong and somehow conclude that the upshot of a rise in sea levels will be “more oceanfront property” (instead of less, like the losers and haters say).

And, of course, he still thinks he’s running against Biden who (checks notes) “might not even have a [sic] IQ at all.”

Then the World’s Smartest Ex-President goes on to discuss the economy, showing his usual command of facts:

Oh, hey, news about inflation this morning. Huh.

And then there’s this take, in which Trump says, sure, with all those tax cuts we racked up more debt and a higher deficit than everyone before us combined, but I was just about to solve that … with more tax cuts.

Anyway, it rambles on from there for some time, and apparently I’ve almost hit the limit for length here for the first time.

You can read the rest at the transcript if you’re a masochist — I recommend the section where Trump complains about the state of education in America, then calls for getting rid of the Department of Education because all the states will do a better job, well, not the loser states, but maybe some of them, who knows?