There Are No Girls on the Internet - Musk and Trump's Big Breakup： America's Sweethearts Calling it Quits

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00:00:40.700 Pro Society is a weekly podcast

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00:01:05.020 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:01:07.980 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

00:01:11.700 what should have destroyed them.

00:01:13.700 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:01:17.400 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

00:01:21.100 abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:01:24.740 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:01:28.800 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:01:40.480 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:01:48.580 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:01:54.740 We all knew this day was going to come eventually.

00:01:57.860 When most of us saw that Elon Musk was working with Donald Trump,

00:02:01.720 I think we were all thinking it's only a matter of time until these two split,

00:02:06.100 and when it happens, it is going to be messy.

00:02:09.240 We waited, and we waited, and it seems the day has come.

00:02:13.580 So today is Thursday, June 5th, 2025.

00:02:16.020 It's about 10 o'clock p.m. Eastern time.

00:02:18.060 And Donald Trump and Elon Musk have spent most of today

00:02:21.460 tearing each other apart on their respective social media platforms.

00:02:25.780 Elon posting on X, of course, and Trump on Truth Social.

00:02:29.480 So setting aside that these two billionaires are ridiculously posting at each other,

00:02:34.040 sniping on platforms that they both privately own,

00:02:37.200 it has truly been like one of those days.

00:02:40.980 To be perfectly transparent, we had started working on our typical news roundup.

00:02:46.140 We had written out all the stories, all of that.

00:02:49.340 then my producer mike and i were talking and we're both like are you seeing this this is wild

00:02:55.100 we decided to scrap our regular news roundup and just talk about this so i'm joined by my producer

00:03:00.480 mike we sort of watched this go down in conversation you and i yeah uh hi bridget it was uh it has been

00:03:09.260 quite a day and it was like one thing after another with these guys like i kind of spent the

00:03:16.320 first part of the day working on some other stuff so i was pretty heads down and not really paying

00:03:20.680 attention to social media and then uh somebody messaged me it was like hey are you seeing this

00:03:27.500 and i was like oh my god oh my god wow he said that yeah i will say i mean i most folks know i

00:03:35.160 kind of gave up on twitter even though i do still have a platform and i actually dusted off my old

00:03:40.740 Twitter account just to see what was happening on that side of the digital woods. And I will say,

00:03:47.080 I don't think that we have had a day like that on social media in a long time. But those days where

00:03:53.800 everybody's getting in on the jokes, everybody is talking about it. In the older iteration of

00:03:59.360 Twitter, there was no better time to be plugged into Black Twitter than these days where something 0.98

00:04:03.660 was happening and nobody was getting any work done. Everybody was on Twitter, refreshing, 0.94

00:04:07.960 refreshing refreshing making jokes the only the two days that come to mind were i think most

00:04:13.480 recently when the queen died that was a day that i remember a lot of people had a lot to say and

00:04:20.420 then this one this one is like if you really are an og the n-word navy that's a pretty good that's

00:04:27.200 a pretty good day on social media for me but we haven't had a day like this in a while and it's

00:04:31.520 very funny to me that when we do get a day like this for the first time on X because it's a

00:04:37.880 terrible platform, it is about Elon Musk. I find that to be so interesting. Yeah, that's a good

00:04:44.400 observation because I also signed into X for the first time in what has to have been months. I

00:04:50.200 don't know. I don't go there at all. I wonder how many other people signed in. And also somewhat

00:04:57.780 But ironically, what I signed in, the first thing I did was search for Elon Musk because I wanted to see what he had been tweeting.

00:05:05.800 And it's funny because the last time I was there, the platform was aggressively trying to get me to follow him.

00:05:12.840 It was like recommending accounts that you might want to follow.

00:05:16.000 It was like Elon Musk, Steve Bannon.

00:05:18.080 And I was like, no, obviously I have no interest in following these.

00:05:21.160 uh but the thing that brought me back was wanting to see what elon had to say about his erstwhile

00:05:27.980 buddy trump so let's get into it i have to give a really big caveat before we do though

00:05:33.360 it goes without saying that we're talking about the reported behavior of two liars i almost didn't

00:05:40.060 want to make this episode because everybody knows that you cannot take the behavior of two messy

00:05:44.700 stunt queens at face value, especially during a bad breakup. Like that is just understanding the

00:05:51.400 world 101, right? Especially when they're doing these big dramatic things that I think, especially

00:05:57.780 Elon, are meant to get people talking. You know, I almost get kind of paranoid where I'm thinking,

00:06:04.440 oh my God, they want us to be talking about this drama. Trump is a classic reality television show

00:06:10.020 guy that's where he got his start so this is classic real housewives on bravo villain behavior

00:06:16.260 i would say um trump is really giving us kenya more right now if you know you know where it's

00:06:22.460 like i'm gonna do something very big and over the top and everybody is going to be talking about it

00:06:27.300 is trump the kenya here or is elon don't even get me started because i will go all day okay

00:06:32.480 but i i'll just i'll just add this and we can move on this is gonna be like that interview

00:06:37.540 where the filmmaker David Lynch is being interviewed

00:06:40.040 saying that Eraserhead is his most spiritual film.

00:06:43.060 And the interviewer says, oh, elaborate on that.

00:06:45.760 And David Lynch just goes, no,

00:06:47.920 Donald Trump is the White House's Kenya Moore. 0.56

00:06:51.020 I will not be elaborating, no questions. 0.56

00:06:53.140 Okay, there we have it.

00:06:54.420 So I almost, like I said,

00:06:55.860 I almost didn't want to get into this.

00:06:57.940 However, and this is going to sound like it sounds,

00:07:00.560 but I truly have so little in my life right now

00:07:03.360 that I deserve it.

00:07:04.480 I deserve to have a little kiki

00:07:06.980 about this breakup honestly i felt the same way it's it's been rough and uh yeah these guys are

00:07:15.060 liars i share your concern that this is all some sort of elaborate con that they're pulling on us

00:07:20.940 uh but because they're con men because they're con men yeah that's what they do they've both

00:07:27.180 become enormously wealthy through conning so uh but i don't know i'm with you it just it's too

00:07:36.260 good. It was really fun putting this together, working on this script with you. It's just nice

00:07:43.320 to hate on two people who are pretty contemptible at the end of the day. Yeah, you were telling me

00:07:51.260 about that Russian expression. Yes. A friend told me about this Russian saying that describes

00:07:57.440 the situation where you have two equally unsympathetic forces who are engaged in some

00:08:04.340 kind of rivalry uh or you know contest that you hope damages both of them because they're both

00:08:10.620 so unsympathetic and contemptible you can say and my russian is awful 0.99

00:08:15.820 which means the toad fucked the viper wait so if trump is the kenya moore of this situation 0.98

00:08:26.840 who which one is the toad and which one is the viper actually don't answer that 0.99

00:08:31.640 i don't i can i can see your gears turning you would be like actually i thought about this and

00:08:37.820 here's why here's my very analytical breakdown as to why elon musk is the toad in this situation 0.99

00:08:42.700 and not the viper i think they both think they're the toad oh good call just two toads fucking each 0.97

00:08:48.640 other so let's take a little bit of a flashback back to rosier times between these two if this 0.99

00:09:00.480 was a lifetime movie. There would be like a flowery song playing right now while we reminisce

00:09:06.440 on better days. So in July 2022, Trump claimed that Elon Musk was, quote, desperate to meet with

00:09:14.260 him and said that Musk had come to the White House during Trump's first term asking for

00:09:19.020 assistance with subsidized projects. And Trump was really gloating about how much Elon Musk

00:09:24.800 essentially humiliated himself at the feet of Donald Trump. He even bragged that if Musk had

00:09:31.500 been asked to beg on his hands and knees, he would have done it. So on July 13th, 2024, you might

00:09:37.240 remember during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump was allegedly shot at. That

00:09:41.680 is what pushed Musk to formally endorse him. He said, I fully endorse President Trump and hope for

00:09:46.800 his rapid recovery. In the weeks that followed, Musk became a top Trump donor. The Post reported

00:09:52.920 that he spent $288 million on Trump and other Republicans ahead of the November election.

00:09:58.640 Musk also went on the campaign trail for him, rallying for him and being the very public face

00:10:03.980 of the campaign in battleground states like Pennsylvania that Trump would go on to win.

00:10:08.320 There is a very memorable image of this event where Elon is on the stage next to Trump and

00:10:15.140 he's doing this leap in the air and his shirt's coming up and you can see his stomach and his

00:10:20.260 legs are kind of bent behind him and he like i guess i just feel like when a man has you

00:10:26.360 leaping into the air with glee you got it you are down bad like you got it bad i i would believe it

00:10:32.220 i am trying to think back to the last time i leapt with glee

00:10:37.100 uh it's been a while i don't think that a man has nor ever could have me out here being

00:10:48.820 photographed navel out leaping with glee i just don't see it i just don't see it so i will say

00:10:55.680 i mean like i think elon was experiencing a passion that i have yet to experience right like

00:11:01.280 like that that image of him he is like jubilation i think so i i mean i i do wonder if he was

00:11:10.240 experiencing like true joy for the first time or if he was just like doing a Nathan Fielder

00:11:19.520 style performance of what he thought joy is supposed to look like or if he was just

00:11:24.640 I mean I've been there okay so I want you to have that image in your head and you know on

00:11:36.360 e-true Hollywood story where the happy picture suddenly turns black and white because the good

00:11:42.380 times are over. And then the music gets into a minor key. Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:11:48.020 Yeah, totally.

00:11:49.000 They were friends until they weren't. So that is what I want you to be thinking when we pivot

00:11:55.340 to this next part, like Elon frozen in midair, mid leap as the scene fades to black. And there

00:12:00.920 is like a minor key piano note, very gloomy playing. Because May 30th, 2025 rolls around,

00:12:08.700 and Musk resigns from his role at Doge after 114 days, citing a need to focus on his failing

00:12:13.920 businesses. His position within the White House was sort of always meant to come to an end after

00:12:18.740 a while because special government employees are a class of temporary workers that Musk was,

00:12:24.060 and they can only typically work 130 days in a calendar year, though that time could be split

00:12:28.820 up. So it is possible that Musk could have worked another couple of weeks if Trump had wanted him

00:12:34.640 to. Also, who knows, because neither of them really care much about following the law. But

00:12:40.400 that's what the law says, 130 days. So the White House first publicly acknowledged Musk's role on

00:12:45.520 February 3rd. So he's probably winding down the clock on that 130 days. So him leaving around this

00:12:51.940 time in and of itself is not particularly juicy. At this point, Musk also starts saying that he is

00:12:57.780 done with politics, saying that, I think I've done enough. Just last week on May 28th, he said

00:13:03.840 that he was stepping back from politics, saying, I think in terms of political spending, I'm going

00:13:07.980 to do a lot less in the future. I think I've done enough. The White House held this very weird

00:13:12.960 farewell event. I watched part of it. It was sort of just weird and somber. Trump said that

00:13:19.460 Musk is not really leaving because he's always going to be my advisor and we're always going to

00:13:24.660 be friends oh my god so the event itself was pretty tame but there was tons of drama behind

00:13:31.820 the scenes like for instance elon musk showed up to this farewell event with a black eye by the way

00:13:38.560 i i initially was referring to this as a shiner but i was on a call with a bunch of gen z folks

00:13:45.140 and i was like oh yeah did you see he had a shiner and everybody was like what's a shiner

00:13:48.920 And I was surprised to learn that Shiner is sort of old-timey slang for a black eye.

00:13:55.560 Yeah, you brought this up to me, and I've been thinking about it.

00:13:59.220 You grew up in a household where boxing was a pretty important sport, right?

00:14:05.040 Your dad was a boxer, your brother boxed, you boxed.

00:14:09.420 So y'all were probably getting black eyes all the time.

00:14:12.020 Yeah, giving a Shiner and getting a Shiner were not unusual things in my household.

00:14:16.540 and it was like a common topic of conversation

00:14:20.100 that was not unusual. 1.00

00:14:21.980 So yeah, a black guy is so cumbersome. 1.00

00:14:24.020 You gotta just like shorten it to Shiner, you know? 1.00

00:14:26.380 Yeah, I guess for most of us, that wasn't a real issue.

00:14:30.480 You know, I don't wanna like prompt

00:14:32.080 any critical reevaluations of your childhood,

00:14:34.280 but yeah, for most of us, didn't come up that often.

00:14:40.820 Well, so Musk said that his Shiner was given to him

00:14:44.840 by his four-year-old son.

00:14:46.640 Some people watching had some questions like,

00:14:49.080 how does a four-year-old toddler

00:14:50.460 give a grown man a shiner? 0.95

00:14:52.220 Or is this liar perhaps lying

00:14:55.340 about how he got this black eye?

00:14:57.400 So one explanation comes from Steve Bannon,

00:14:59.580 who I should note is a longtime enemy of Elon Musk's 1.00

00:15:02.640 and again, himself is a liar and a criminal. 0.99

00:15:06.500 So Steve Bannon was a chief strategist 0.99

00:15:08.860 during Trump's first term in office.

00:15:11.320 He told the Daily Mail that Musk's turbulent time

00:15:13.940 in the White House took a dramatic turn when he allegedly shoved 62-year-old Treasury Secretary

00:15:19.660 Scott Bessent during a heated exchange. Now, according to Bannon, again, known liar. So I 0.96

00:15:26.460 don't know. That's going to be a theme is that everybody who comes up in this is a liar. So you 0.89

00:15:30.780 just don't know what's going on. Well, they lie. He lied. They're all liars. I don't know what's

00:15:34.380 going on. So Bannon said that Bessent confronted Musk over his sweeping but yet unfulfilled promises

00:15:41.480 to deliver $1 trillion in budget cuts.

00:15:44.480 Scott Besant called him out and said,

00:15:46.460 you promised us a trillion dollars in cuts

00:15:48.380 and now you're at like $100 billion.

00:15:50.280 Nobody can find any savings.

00:15:51.760 What are you doing, Bannon recounted.

00:15:53.800 And that's when Elon got physical.

00:15:55.900 It's a sore subject with him, Bannon said.

00:15:58.300 It wasn't an argument.

00:15:59.300 It was a physical confrontation.

00:16:01.380 Elon basically shoved him.

00:16:02.980 So one thing I do want to interject here to this story

00:16:05.580 is that according to Steve Bannon here,

00:16:07.720 uh scott besant the treasury secretary is mad at elon musk because elon musk like didn't find

00:16:21.520 enough fraud and waste and cuts but like scott besant is the treasury secretary right like

00:16:29.020 shouldn't that be his deal like his job shouldn't he know more about the budget and like

00:16:37.320 the treasury than elon musk not that i'm trying to defend musk here or anything but like

00:16:43.340 i don't even want to say the story doesn't make sense because in trump world 0.99

00:16:47.860 maybe this is how it works but like it sounds stupid it sounds stupid and something about it 0.98

00:16:54.540 doesn't sound right to me and also the fact that it's steve bannon long time elon musk enemy 0.98

00:17:00.500 running to the daily mail to be like oh he shoved him i agree with you something doesn't sound

00:17:06.720 something in the buttermilk's not clean on this one i don't know exactly what happened but i agree

00:17:11.260 it doesn't sound quite right to me also if you want to get really messy like what the real tea

00:17:18.220 is according to rumors this is not me saying this this has been reported in places like the gray

00:17:24.380 lady the new york times steven miller and his wife katie are allegedly again i am not saying

00:17:31.320 This is what I have read from reporting in some kind of a throuple with Elon Musk, question mark.

00:17:40.000 Obviously, I'm not there.

00:17:41.640 I could not say whether this is true or not.

00:17:43.320 I have not seen any evidence myself.

00:17:45.460 However, Katie Miller is leaving the White House to go work for Musk personally.

00:17:50.740 Apparently, her job is something to do with communications for Musk.

00:17:53.480 Per CNN, she might be helping to arrange interviews for him. 0.94

00:17:56.580 I know if I were married to Stephen Miller, I'd also be looking to hitch my wagon to somebody who could get me off the planet. And sidebar, I hate to give Elon Musk any credit here. Like, me and him have beefed forever. However, I have to give him credit on this one. Stephen Miller to Elon Musk, I hate to say it, is an upgrade. Right?

00:18:21.920 It's amazing how every character in this story just gets worse and worse.

00:18:28.080 Like, Stephen Miller is, I do believe he is of the undead.

00:18:35.060 I don't think he is of the living.

00:18:37.540 I think he feeds on the misery of the living.

00:18:42.800 That is what sustains him.

00:18:44.880 I once saw somebody on Twitter say, he looks like he drinks the milk right from the utter. 1.00

00:18:51.920 do you know what a like piece of shit you have to be to have your wife leave you for elon musk 1.00

00:19:01.320 and have everybody agree like well kind of an upgrade like you you like really there is nothing 1.00

00:19:05.780 lower yeah i i look forward to some point in the future assuming any of us are still alive and like

00:19:14.720 writing books to like the retrospective documentary about Stephen Miller just to understand like what

00:19:22.820 is going on with him because he he just seems to like hate everyone you know back in college

00:19:29.160 he was writing op-eds about how people the other students shouldn't be nice to the janitorial staff

00:19:35.280 because that's what they're paid for to clean up after us like that was his whole thing like he has 1.00

00:19:39.860 been a hateful son of a bitch his whole life, even when he was youthful. Go back and look up 1.00

00:19:45.420 pictures of him in college. In college, I feel like most people in college, even horrible people,

00:19:51.140 you're like, oh, I can see he's bright-eyed, full of life. He has a lot going for him, yada, yada,

00:19:56.960 yada. Stephen Miller somehow looks worse back then. He somehow looks more hate-filled than he

00:20:03.120 does now, just in a different way, like a permanent sneer. As a college student, an undergrad,

00:20:08.720 I'm not kidding.

00:20:09.500 Look up a picture of him if you've not seen it.

00:20:12.060 I would say that we would post it in the show notes, but we're not going to do that to our listeners.

00:20:16.000 Absolutely not.

00:20:16.760 Absolutely not.

00:20:22.700 Let's take a quick break.

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00:21:14.960 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

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00:22:13.000 See you between the pages.

00:22:15.120 When I was 14 years old,

00:22:17.380 I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:22:20.880 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring

00:22:23.600 how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:22:27.340 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. 0.70

00:22:30.880 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

00:22:39.400 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:22:43.660 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:22:48.220 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:22:55.660 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:22:59.480 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:23:03.140 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:23:06.740 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:23:20.280 And we're back.

00:23:25.300 Okay, so back to Musk.

00:23:27.080 So over the weekend, after Musk officially left his position within the administration late last week, things already started to unravel.

00:23:35.200 Trump announced that he was pulling the nomination of Musk ally Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, a nomination that Trump had been glowingly talking about back in December and was already approved by the Senate subcommittee.

00:23:48.000 Sidebar, it's totally fine to have Elon Musk hiring and promoting people to run NASA.

00:23:53.460 You know, the government organization that he has so many contracts with.

00:23:56.860 That's totally fine.

00:23:57.920 Nothing to see there.

00:23:58.780 Let's just move on.

00:23:59.980 So Trump pulling this nomination at the 11th hour was a shock to all parties.

00:24:04.060 And it seems like it was a pretty transparent, retaliatory move against Elon Musk.

00:24:08.420 Trump confirmed today that this was a point of contention with Musk as part of today's big tea spilling.

00:24:15.800 Now, of course, because it's Trump, he could be lying.

00:24:18.760 It is hard to know with these two because they both constantly lie and grandstand about everything.

00:24:23.840 But this is some good drama.

00:24:25.740 I don't care.

00:24:26.580 I'm talking about it.

00:24:28.140 Okay, so fast forward to June 1st.

00:24:30.760 Elon starts his first public attack against Trump's big, beautiful budget bill.

00:24:36.420 But don't get too excited.

00:24:38.000 He is against this bill because even though this bill deeply guts the public safety net, it does not gut the public safety net enough for Elon Musk's liking.

00:24:49.140 And also, Elon Musk does not personally benefit enough from this bill, so he doesn't like it.

00:24:54.860 Musk calls the bill, which is horrible for all the reasons that we've talked about on the podcast, he calls it a disgusting abomination due to its massive spending and cuts to electric vehicle initiatives.

00:25:05.980 He tweeted, I'm sorry, but I can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it.

00:25:18.400 Also, these tweets are like, a little much. I mean, he's tweeting like somebody out of a

00:25:26.680 Shakespeare play. One of the wildest things to see from this was a lot of Democrats were low-key

00:25:33.260 praising Elon Musk for this take, which was interesting. Representative Ro Khanna from

00:25:41.000 California, who represents Silicon Valley, and has known Musk, they're really friendly,

00:25:45.260 they've been friends for a decade, said that Democrats should be in a dialogue with Musk

00:25:50.460 given their shared opposition to this bill. He said, we should ultimately be trying to convince

00:25:56.020 him that the Democratic Party has more of the values he agrees with, a commitment to science

00:26:00.220 funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to seeing international students like

00:26:04.420 him. I will say not to give him a pass, but he represents Silicon Valley. He's friendly with

00:26:11.320 musk i feel like he would like he would say this this is not surprising to me yeah i definitely do

00:26:17.480 not give him a pass for this i can't believe the these efforts to like immediately try to

00:26:27.840 woo musk as like a democratic ally or something like all those things that roqana listed there

00:26:37.300 there were areas of policy agreement, not values agreement. Democratic values are things like

00:26:45.620 Nazis are bad, which is something that Musk clearly disagrees with. He supports science

00:26:51.840 funding when it's going directly into his own pocket. He's committed to clean technology when

00:26:57.300 it means massive subsidies for Tesla. Meanwhile, he's installed dozens of small and efficient gas

00:27:02.480 generators in a Tennessee neighborhood to power his data center there. And his commitment to

00:27:07.820 international students is making sure they keep working 80 hours a week at his companies on the

00:27:13.420 cheap because they'll lose their visas and have to go home if they don't. So maybe there are some

00:27:18.820 policy areas where Representative Kana might be able to work with Musk. And if so, that's fine.

00:27:24.200 That's how politics works. But I really resent the effort to sell the public and Democratic

00:27:31.920 party members democratic voters on the idea that mr nazi salute himself is suddenly aligned with 0.99

00:27:39.100 the values of the democratic party like have some self-respect yeah dog shit take from representative 0.98

00:27:46.980 khanah here i have to say like you really sum it up well okay so what is your take on representative 0.97

00:27:52.760 richie torres uh from new york he says i'm a believer in redemption and musk is telling the

00:27:58.600 truth about the legislation. But he added, Musk has done an enormous amount of damage and that

00:28:03.000 there are Democrats who would see his decimation of the federal workforce and the federal government

00:28:07.680 as an unforgivable sin. Richie Torres, Elon Musk is not telling the truth about this bill.

00:28:14.360 What he is saying is the bill's draconian cuts to social spending do not go far enough. He wants

00:28:21.660 to cut more so no richie torres elon musk is not telling the truth like have some nuance it's like

00:28:29.300 a debasement of the idea of truth you know like him saying this bill is bad that's not enough to

00:28:40.800 count as truth right like the truth is that this bill aims to kick millions of people off medicaid

00:28:46.540 and other forms of assistance that aims to decimate research in a ton of areas that matter

00:28:53.160 to all of us. It's trying to decimate climate funding, all so that they can cut taxes for the

00:28:59.180 rich, keep subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. So no, he's not telling the truth about this

00:29:05.720 legislation. He's opposing it for reasons that are entirely self-serving.

00:29:11.820 Yeah, someone saying that something that you don't like is bad for the worst reasons does not mean that they're right. Like, just because he doesn't like it and you don't like it for completely different reasons does not mean that you are in agreement.

00:29:26.800 Like, they're just, sometimes I can't, I mean, I will talk all day. Sometimes I cannot believe

00:29:31.940 that these are the people that have been elected to represent us. So up until this point, Trump

00:29:37.500 had been publicly but vaguely praising Musk's time at the White House, even as all this drama

00:29:43.380 swirled behind the scenes. Vaguely is the only way Trump talks about anything.

00:29:49.620 Oh, have you seen any of how he would talk about Elon Musk before this afternoon? He would say

00:29:55.560 things like oh you know he's been great he's just we just think so he's so good and you know it's i

00:30:03.000 mean it's it's up there with gap beautiful gowns beautiful gowns like so vague i don't know if you

00:30:09.940 get that reference uh when a re when the late aretha franklin god rest her soul was asked about

00:30:15.540 all these different female artists if they were good singers it would be like oh what do you think

00:30:20.620 of lady gaga she's a beautiful singer great range great vocals what do you think of riah carey 0.94

00:30:26.940 beautiful singer real songstress real songstress taylor swift uh great gowns beautiful gowns

00:30:33.520 really her gowns are great like the way that he would just be like oh elon musk has done a great

00:30:39.820 job we like him he is great never mentioning a single specific thing that's how you kind of knew

00:30:46.640 even before this afternoon that something was up because Donald Trump is like a verbose person

00:30:52.000 often. And so when he really has something to say about something, he like really says it.

00:30:57.040 Do you remember back in the early days of COVID when the COVID test was awful and it was that

00:31:03.020 like really long swab that went deep into your brain? Clearly Donald Trump hated that COVID test

00:31:10.180 because whenever he was asked about COVID testing, he'd be like, the current iteration is not too

00:31:14.540 nice. Like he would really talk about it in specifics. So when he has something to say,

00:31:19.780 he really is quite like descriptive about it. And so when asked about Elon Musk,

00:31:25.640 when he was like, oh, great guy, great guy, nothing to add. You really knew he was holding

00:31:30.060 back and something was up. So that brings us to today when the S hits the F during a meeting

00:31:39.060 on June 5th, 2025, the day that we're recording this. So during a meeting in the Oval Office with

00:31:44.120 newly elected german chancellor frederick mayors trump started to express some subdued disappointment

00:31:49.240 in musk's criticism now according to various news articles trump was genuinely shocked that

00:31:55.420 musk would attack his big beautiful bill while the german chancellor just sort of did the kind

00:32:01.740 of homer simpson retreating into the green grass bush this is like i'm gonna stay out of this and

00:32:07.300 probably thinking like what the heck is going on i'm here in the white house and like trump is

00:32:12.780 crashing out over Elon Musk? What's going on? So Trump suggested that Musk's objections were

00:32:19.620 self-serving and that the only reason that he didn't like the bill was because it eliminated

00:32:23.960 subsidies for electric cars, a move that would directly hurt Musk's company, Tesla. Trump said

00:32:29.840 that Musk knew all along that these subsidies would be eliminated even before the text of the

00:32:34.060 bill was public. In like Dwight Schrute style, Musk hits back, false. This bill was never shown

00:32:41.640 to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress

00:32:46.520 could even read it.

00:32:48.120 I will say this about that, which is that one of the stories I was going to talk about

00:32:51.680 in the news roundup this week was how Marjorie Taylor Greene was saying that she voted for

00:32:56.080 this bill not knowing about the provision in the bill where states could not enforce

00:33:01.820 laws around AI for 10 years.

00:33:04.620 And she was saying, you know, I didn't read the bill.

00:33:08.540 I missed that part.

00:33:09.560 i'm a big states rights person so i would never have have voted for this if i had known that was

00:33:13.860 in there and i remember thinking like a girl you didn't read the bill like what it what like what

00:33:19.340 that's a kind of your like the main part of your job then i watched a longer interview that she did

00:33:24.620 on news nation where she essentially says the same thing that musk is saying here again both 0.95

00:33:29.620 liars so who the fuck knows but she said that they gave her the full text of the bill so close 1.00

00:33:36.140 to the vote and at night that she didn't have time to read it again she is also a liar so i'm 1.00

00:33:42.480 not taking her at her word but just some context there that i was sort of ready to drag her for

00:33:48.580 not having read this bill and that both musk and green are saying they gave it to us so close to

00:33:55.560 the vote that we didn't have time to read it so so who knows yeah so but we can break down a little

00:34:01.820 bit of which of these lying liars is lying about this particular thing so like we do know that like

00:34:10.240 it's true that the final text of the bill wasn't available until like hours before they were forced

00:34:16.880 to vote on it so uh so marjorie teller green is not lying about that however she should still be

00:34:23.340 dragged because uh it's just inexcusable to vote to make something a law when you don't even know

00:34:30.860 what you're voting for uh i mean i guess that's a kind of bootlicking subservience to authority

00:34:38.600 that the republican house is like into these days uh but like yeah i believe that she didn't know

00:34:49.000 the text of the bill uh and i guess i would believe that you know elon didn't get a chance

00:34:54.900 to read the bill before it was passed either. However, it also is not any surprise to anyone

00:35:05.520 that electric vehicle subsidies were eliminated. I mean, Trump said that over and over again on

00:35:12.240 the campaign trail. And it was also just like patently obvious to anyone who was even remotely

00:35:20.820 paying attention that the Republican Congress was going to cut anything and everything related to

00:35:29.700 green energy or trying to deal with climate change. So of course that was going to be cut.

00:35:35.620 So for Musk to act all shocked about it, I think he's lying. Well, one quick thing about

00:35:44.620 Marjorie Taylor Greene is that in that News Nation interview, I do like that she says,

00:35:50.820 Don't I get some credit for admitting I didn't read it?

00:35:53.880 I just thought that was really funny.

00:35:55.800 Okay, so with the electric vehicle subsidies, Trump, when he was hitting back on Truth Social, he basically was like, Elon knew that I was removing the provisions that forced people to buy garbage electric vehicles that nobody wants.

00:36:19.740 So it's not just like, Elon, we're removing this provision. It's your cars are garbage and nobody wants them and you know this. It's so high school. This just reminds me of a lot of the drama that I had when I was growing up.

00:36:38.200 of there's a way to say this where it's just here's the facts you knew this you were aware of 0.94

00:36:43.420 this as you said that's not what what trump said trump said your cars are garbage and don't nobody 0.99

00:36:49.360 want them and you know this and that's why you're upset but also he has been saying that same shit 0.99

00:36:54.060 for 10 years you know maybe elon was like dissociating to be like oh this is my buddy 0.95

00:37:01.460 when he says that he hates electric cars and he's going to end the subsidies what he means is

00:37:08.440 some other thing babe have you never been in a relationship before elon can fix him he's like

00:37:15.200 i i can fix him i mean i i've i've been this girl in a relationship of like he doesn't mean this

00:37:23.040 stuff that he says constantly and does this is a surprise to me to find this out and i am hurt

00:37:30.220 even though he's been saying the same thing for many years, very clearly in both his words and

00:37:34.880 behavior. You know, that just makes, that just reminds me of a friend of mine who described

00:37:41.060 this whole thing that went down today as the messiest breakup to happen in Pride Month.

00:37:47.220 Yet, it's still early. Okay, so this afternoon, Trump was asked about Elon, and you can kind of

00:37:53.080 tell something's up. He says, oh, well, he hasn't said anything bad about me personally yet, but I'm

00:37:57.380 sure that will be next. I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped him a lot. Trump kind of

00:38:02.660 suggested that maybe Elon was having a big reaction because he was missing all the glamour

00:38:07.660 of working in the White House. Glamour is the actual word that he uses. He says,

00:38:11.660 some people who leave my White House administration miss it so badly, the glamour

00:38:16.560 of working with me. They actually become hostile. Musk responds on social media,

00:38:21.960 accusing Trump of being ungrateful and says that the only reason why Trump was elected in the first

00:38:27.300 place was because of him. He tweeted, without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would

00:38:32.660 control the House and the Republicans would be 51 to 49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.

00:38:38.460 So my understanding is that this was really the thing that set Trump over the edge. We know that

00:38:44.820 Trump cares a lot about being considered popular. He's obsessed with things like crowd size.

00:38:50.340 Ever since his failed re-election bid in 2020, he's been screaming about this non-existent fraud

00:38:54.780 and how the election was rigged against him

00:38:56.940 because he simply cannot accept the idea

00:38:59.300 that he lost fair and square.

00:39:00.960 So I think in making this claim,

00:39:03.980 Musk is basically saying that Trump 0.92

00:39:05.300 would have been a loser without his help. 0.95

00:39:07.620 And I'm sure it stung. 0.97

00:39:08.840 Like this is, my understanding is that

00:39:10.880 this is the kind of thing that hits Trump where it hurts.

00:39:15.060 Like we're going to get into it,

00:39:16.140 but later Musk essentially accuses him

00:39:18.520 of being a sex offender. 0.99

00:39:21.140 And he's like, I don't give a fuck about that. 0.99

00:39:23.040 And just don't say that I'm a loser who would not have won the election without you. 0.99

00:39:27.900 Also, this is how we know that we've all sort of been waiting for this moment because the New York Times sent out multiple breaking news alerts about it.

00:39:35.320 It was like breaking news, trouble in paradise, couple on the skids.

00:39:39.740 Like, it was really like, that's how I know it's like we've all been waiting for this moment.

00:39:43.580 The New York Times is like, we are going to capitalize on this.

00:39:46.740 Everybody, we've all been waiting for this.

00:39:48.820 Trouble in paradise, America's sweethearts calling it quits.

00:39:53.040 So Trump hit back, responding on Truth Social, threatening to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts.

00:40:01.360 We will come back to this bit about canceling Musk's federal contracts later on the episode.

00:40:06.560 But for now, let's just clock this and understand this as a big F you to Elon and keep going with this play by play because this is too good to stop.

00:40:13.760 Okay, so Musk then further escalates his feud by alleging without evidence that Trump's name appears in the unreleased Jeffrey Epstein files implying a cover-up.

00:40:25.960 As we remember, Jeffrey Epstein was a wealthy financier and donor who died by suicide after being exposed to being a ringleader of a sex trafficking and child sex abuse ring.

00:40:40.040 So Musk tweeted, time to drop the really big bomb.

00:40:44.200 Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.

00:40:46.740 That's the real reason they have not been made public.

00:40:49.320 Have a nice day, DJT.

00:40:51.840 So I will say we did sort of know some of this already.

00:40:55.660 Flight records have shown that Trump flew six or seven times on Epstein's plane between

00:41:00.580 1993 and 1997.

00:41:02.220 But what Musk is saying is that Trump is all over the not public logs of what happened

00:41:09.080 with epstein which reminded me do you remember back in february when the white house did this

00:41:13.560 terrible stunt where they invited all of these conspiracy theorists and like influencers to the

00:41:18.040 white house and they did this whole photo op where they gave each of them this massive binder that

00:41:22.380 said epstein files like stamped on the front of it and it was this big photo op but then later when

00:41:28.340 they got home they opened the binders and there was like no new information about epstein in these

00:41:33.300 binders. It was just stuff that was already public. I do remember that. And I think, you know, for

00:41:40.340 for people like us, that was just like a weird thing that happened with some like 0.98

00:41:46.620 shitty nutbags who got invited to the White House. But I think for a lot of people who voted for 0.92

00:41:52.580 Trump, or at least a large number of very vocal people who voted for him, that was like a major

00:41:57.080 thing of his appeal during his campaign. He was talking about how he was going to release the

00:42:02.240 epstein files and like making all these q anon winks and nods uh that those epstein files were

00:42:10.180 gonna come out and all the democrats were gonna be in there and he was gonna drain the swamp blah

00:42:17.100 blah blah uh and he just like ditched those people so fast i would almost be like some like some of

00:42:26.380 those influencers were angry about that stunt when they got home and poured over these these

00:42:32.660 binders and was like oh this is nothing uh so yeah promises made promises i don't know vaguely

00:42:40.000 referenced to in a stunt and then never referenced again i don't know yeah i bet they were angry uh

00:42:46.300 and they probably still are but we don't know about it because uh once trump stopped amplifying

00:42:53.480 the voices of these QAnon people, uh, they just kind of disappeared because they were no longer

00:43:00.260 of use to him. But yeah, the connections between Trump and Epstein are, uh, there are like fact

00:43:08.180 based evidence for, uh, for those connections. Uh, later in the, uh, the afternoon today,

00:43:16.700 Musk retweeted a video of Trump dancing at a party in 1992 that was hosted by Jeffrey Epstein.

00:43:23.480 Uh, the video is a clip from MSNBC and it not only shows Trump, uh, dancing, having a good time, but it also shows him, uh, huddling with Epstein, whispering a joke into his ear, uh, or whispering something in his ear.

00:43:40.820 I assume it was a joke because Epstein then doubles over in laughter.

00:43:44.240 And like, so these two, these two buddies are just having a good old time in 1992.

00:43:49.900 Yuck.

00:43:50.420 Yeah. In the ongoing effort to figure out which of these lying liars is lying about what. Seems like there's a lot of evidence to think that Elon's claim here. Maybe there's something to it. But, you know, we know that Trump and Epstein were. They at least attended a party together and had a nice time together. 1.00

00:44:13.440 Yeah, I just don't think that Elon Musk saying, I was willing to overlook what I knew about you potentially being a child sex criminal because the business arrangement that we had together was working out for me. I don't think that's the flex he thinks it is.

00:44:27.760 and not for nothing

00:44:29.540 Elon Musk has also been accused

00:44:31.460 of sexual misconduct and sexual abuse 0.99

00:44:33.920 so they're all liars 1.00

00:44:35.580 they're all creeps 0.99

00:44:36.780 they all have allegations

00:44:38.180 when I saw this truly I was like

00:44:41.380 it's not this

00:44:44.000 but this is what I was thinking

00:44:44.940 you were on Epstein's Island

00:44:47.260 I saw you there

00:44:48.180 oh what were you doing there

00:44:49.600 that's the vibe I kind of got

00:44:52.300 yeah maybe they were there together

00:44:53.880 who knows

00:44:54.940 these guys

00:44:56.180 More after a quick break.

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00:47:59.280 Let's get right back into it.

00:48:11.920 day of the week so elon further escalates by posting trump's own tweets from 2013 in which

00:48:22.620 trump categorically rejects the idea of raising the debt ceiling and condemns any republicans

00:48:27.660 for voting for it this is kind of ironic because today trump is saying the exact opposite and

00:48:32.340 demanding that republicans do raise the debt ceiling which is very convenient so musk is

00:48:37.340 resurfacing these posts that trump once made and said where is the man who wrote these words

00:48:42.680 was he replaced by a body double again i feel like where is the man who wrote these words

00:48:48.520 that is a text that i have written during a breakup like you said you loved me it's so dramatic

00:48:55.400 it is like

00:48:56.680 yeah it's like shakespearean where is the man who wrote these words whenceforth has he gone i know

00:49:06.860 So this is some, like, Mary J. Blige, like, if you ever listen to the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack, this is some, like, I was your lover and your secretary working every day of the week, like, just some jilted lover, just some good jilted lover words.

00:49:23.420 So Musk then endorses the idea of Trump being impeached and replaced by Vice President J.D. Vance, which makes complete sense to me because Vance was sort of always the tech billionaire in-guy plant.

00:49:37.860 Trump then hits back on Truth Social, writing, Elon was wearing thin.

00:49:43.000 I asked him to leave.

00:49:44.180 I took away his EV mandate that forced everybody to buy electric cars that nobody wanted, that he knew for months I was going to do, and he just went crazy.

00:49:52.760 Again, I'm taken back to being like, she knew I was going to Beach Week with my friends and that I didn't have my phone charger with me.

00:50:00.660 I don't know why she's acting crazy and telling all of her friends that she didn't know after the fact, but I know that she did because I texted her.

00:50:06.720 Like, it's really a lot.

00:50:09.200 So I will say the idea that Elon was sort of wearing out his welcome in the White House, there has been a ton of reporting to support this.

00:50:17.280 did you read that kind of bombshell new york times piece on musk's drug use while in the

00:50:24.100 administration i did and it was like so perfectly timed with his exit from the white house it was

00:50:32.360 like the i think it was the day after he left the white house and both just like i don't know

00:50:39.280 it was just such a hit piece i also believe a lot of it is probably true and so again just so

00:50:48.360 messy like it's it seems like deliberate smear campaign but using true facts yeah and i will say

00:50:58.580 the authors of that new york times piece have been writing about musk's drug use for a while

00:51:03.160 But I think that maybe people are giving more information about it from within the White House because it's like, oh, God, we can't stand this guy.

00:51:12.800 There was also lots of pieces about how cabinet members were reportedly getting really tired of Musk, especially his attempts to be funny and his deep seated belief that he is smarter than everybody else.

00:51:23.880 A senior official told a reporter, I have been in the same room with Elon and he always tries to be funny and he's not funny like at all.

00:51:30.980 He makes these jokes and little asides and smiles, and then almost looks hurt if you don't lap up his humor.

00:51:36.480 I keep using the word annoying.

00:51:38.040 A lot of people who have to deal with him do, but the word doesn't do the situation justice.

00:51:42.500 Ivan just thinks he's smarter than everyone else in the room and acts like it, even when it's clear he doesn't know what he's talking about.

00:51:49.200 The official then described Musk as the most irritating person they have ever dealt with, saying,

00:51:54.160 Talking to the guy is sometimes like listening to really rusty nails on a chalkboard.

00:51:58.180 He is the most irritating person I've ever had to deal with, and that is saying something.

00:52:02.600 Yeah, like the people giving these quotes are political operatives in the Trump White House.

00:52:08.200 Like, I bet they deal with some highly irritating people.

00:52:11.840 The piece ends with this line,

00:52:13.740 Musk has nodded the patience of an array of high-ranking administration officials,

00:52:17.580 to the point that, according to this official and two others,

00:52:20.380 Trump lieutenants have walked out of meetings and earnestly asked one another

00:52:23.480 if they thought Musk was high.

00:52:25.600 So Steve Bannon actually told a New York Times reporter that he advised Trump to investigate

00:52:32.460 Musk's drug use in the White House and also maybe deport him. There has been no love lost

00:52:39.120 between these two since the beginning of the administration. Bannon has been a frequent

00:52:42.860 critic of Musk, accusing him of self-dealing, failing to find all of this so-called fraud he

00:52:47.520 made big promises about. And also, according to Bannon, being an illegal immigrant. Bannon's

00:52:53.380 really nativist ideology has always been this like noxious foundation of Trump's most hardcore 0.98

00:52:59.320 supporters, while Musk appealed to a totally different set of like racist shithead. So you 0.98

00:53:05.560 really kind of have these two coming to a head. Now that thought line in the MAGA universe between

00:53:10.500 Musk and Bannon and their particular strains of like toxic racist ideology has cleaved all the

00:53:17.100 way through and the grand bro-lition has been sundered. So let's talk about the big picture

00:53:22.980 and what this all means, especially given Trump's threat to cancel all of Elon's company's federal

00:53:28.660 contracts. So Eric Berger of Ars Technica really shed some light onto what this would actually

00:53:34.860 mean. He wrote on Twitter, this would both end the International Space Station and simultaneously

00:53:39.560 provide no way to safely deorbit it. Musk then retweeted this saying, go ahead, make my day.

00:53:47.720 and this really gets at the heart of why i think this is an important thing for us to talk about

00:53:53.080 not just all the over-the-top emotional late night crash out tweets but this i think is really the

00:54:00.100 heart of it and that is the fact that elon musk a private person who is messy chaotic when they're

00:54:07.920 doing profiles of him they like to use the word mercurial which i think is maybe just like polite

00:54:13.920 white guy way to say like, oh, this person uses a lot of drugs and like does things when he's

00:54:19.540 under the influence of them. But we have allowed this one chaotic person to take over so much of

00:54:26.980 our public infrastructure to the point that we find ourselves in this situation where in this

00:54:33.580 crash out with Trump, he could personally end the International Space Station and leave it with no

00:54:39.740 way for us to get it back from space. So it is not just SpaceX. Starlink, for one, is widely used by

00:54:46.420 the military and the militaries of our allies. Remember that Ukraine was deeply reliant on

00:54:53.220 Starlink, run by Elon Musk, during the first few months of Russia's invasion. And Musk even

00:54:59.080 briefly turned off their access to Starlink over a payment dispute which caused deaths and tactical

00:55:06.400 losses on the battlefield. He's also involved in things like energy research, defense research,

00:55:11.660 space, telecommunications, AI, transportation infrastructure. This is not really like my

00:55:16.780 personal area of expertise. So I'm not going to exhaustively list all of the many deep ways in

00:55:22.100 which Musk's companies are like deeply entangled with the federal government. But trust me when I

00:55:27.160 say they are deeply entangled with the federal government. So when we talk about Musk's role

00:55:32.220 government, the biggest issue is that the government, not just Trump, like this was

00:55:37.440 happening under Biden too, the government has allowed this one chaotic, messy private person

00:55:43.020 to essentially, in my opinion, become more powerful than the government itself because

00:55:47.560 Musk's companies provide too much essential infrastructure that really should be coming

00:55:52.180 from the government, not from him, and not from any private individual or person.

00:55:57.620 Governments are really at his mercy.

00:55:59.540 There is this really, really well done Ronan Farrow long read in The New Yorker a couple years ago about this that we'll link to in the show notes, but he really lays out the scope of this, the scale of this, and what is at stake from the moods of this one mercurial person who has a documented history of unpredictable chaotic behavior.

00:56:22.880 It describes the many ways that Musk has not only accumulated power, but done so in a way that makes him literally irreplaceable because no one, not even the United States government, is currently capable of providing the services that he provides.

00:56:35.780 The government just becomes reliant on him as this private person to provide all of these services.

00:56:41.940 But this phenomena is not unique to just Musk.

00:56:44.440 Look at how in some parts of the world, like the global south, Facebook and WhatsApp basically are the Internet, right?

00:56:52.160 And so the entire population of a country should not be forced to rely on the whims of one private dipshit for their entire internet infrastructure.

00:57:02.380 So Elon Musk is really the worst case scenario of what happens when countries rely so much on one person privately for infrastructure that really should be public.

00:57:12.220 He is like one massively inflamed, throbbing symptom of a much larger and deeper problem.

00:57:19.840 This is the natural result. This is what they wanted. Like one uber wealthy rich guy who is, yeah, like you said, almost like a peer to the government itself in terms of power.

00:57:34.940 These things that he does of providing internet to the military, providing critical infrastructure, these are things that the government should do. 0.98

00:57:47.780 These shouldn't be at the whims of one mercurial dipshit. 0.97

00:57:52.060 You're absolutely right. 0.54

00:57:53.800 He, Elon Musk is the result of the past 40 years of government policy, of just abdicating its responsibilities to the private market. And, and here we are. And so it's bad.

00:58:11.480 it's bad and even though it is the girls are fighting trump and musk are fighting it is us

00:58:19.060 for whom this will be bad for like it is us the regular citizens who are caught in the crosshairs

00:58:24.620 of this and it is us who will pay the price and don't forget that all of this is happening against

00:58:29.840 the backdrop of the senate potentially passing this bill which would gut reproductive health

00:58:34.840 care would kick millions off of medicaid would prevent states from making laws that curtail ai 0.89

00:58:39.320 for 10 years would extend deep tax cuts for the wealthy and certainly do a bunch of other awful

00:58:44.160 things they don't even know half of because the House passed it in the middle of the night without

00:58:47.900 even bothering to read it. So yeah, it's bad. I think that we should be talking about this feud,

00:58:55.080 but not talking about it in a way that obscures the fact that there are very real stakes for all

00:59:01.900 of us and we are in the crosshairs. But whatever happens when the dust has all settled from Elon's

00:59:08.840 tweets and Trump's rants, I hope we can all remember the wise words of Bravo's Andy Cohen,

00:59:14.900 who tweeted, let me host the reunion. Andy, your messy ass has got the job if it's up to me. 0.99

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - June 06, 2025

Musk and Trump's Big Breakup： America's Sweethearts Calling it Quits

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