r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • Mar 06 '25

Soft Paywall Elon Musk Suddenly Doesn’t Want Credit for Disastrous DOGE Cuts - Musk is warning Republicans to stop blaming DOGE for the cuts.

https://newrepublic.com/post/192415/elon-musk-warns-republicans-doge-job-cuts
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u/GR1ZZLYBEARZ Mar 06 '25

Also spent 40b on twitter, he’s trying to recoup from banks by selling his debt. Some investment firms who put up money for him are already on the hook for $13B.

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u/999avatar999 Mar 06 '25

I'd argue that the 40bil for twitter was what got him the Election, not the 200mil in PA. Which also shows the disgusting amount of power social media oligarchs have over the whole world basically

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u/tattooz57 Mar 07 '25

That's the plan, an oligarchy. America kinda is already. Case in point, world's richest man running the govt.

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u/999avatar999 Mar 07 '25

Yeah Elon is the endpoint to it all, though I'll still die on the hill that Zuckerberg is just as much to blame, if not more. Heard countless time from sociologists and other analysts that the proliferation of social media over the last 20 years or so, spearhead by Facebook now Meta, is what got us to where we are. The resulting social alienation and dopamine thirst is what causes people to vote for extremists in the whole developed world

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u/tomsmac 28d ago

That is definitely the case. But, for as long as I live, I’ll never forgive MAGA for throwing away their own country just to win the culture wars.

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u/GR1ZZLYBEARZ Mar 06 '25

All major media forms are owned by the elite. Bezos - Washington Post, Zuckerberg - FB/Insta, John Henry - The Boston Globe, Glen Taylor - The Minnesota Star Tribune, Patrick Soon-Shiong - Los Angeles Times, Elon Musk - X Corp, and of course the conservative conglomerates of the Murdochs and satans son George Soros.

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u/999avatar999 Mar 06 '25

Yeah for sure, but I'd argue that the tech oligarch class, be it Musk, Zuck, Bezos, Pichai or whoever else, are way more dangerous than the media owners. Sure, those have large power over the information environment, but the social media moguls have the power to shape the fabric of whole societies. The facebook files come to mind for example

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u/VaATC America Mar 07 '25

The old school media moguls did all of that as well and to great effect. Watching old news reels from the '80s is absolutely crazy. The technology has advanced to the point that those that consume traditional media Jake aged out of the tech adoption curve and are no longer evolving with the tech, so the power and influence of the old media sources is tending to wain in the face of social media. Social media is doing the same things, in pretty much all the same ways, but it has been scaled up to be able to provide for the massive population that consumes information via the new technological pathways.

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u/Thefelix01 Mar 07 '25

And it can be personalized to the individual making it far far more effective.

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u/VaATC America Mar 07 '25 edited Mar 07 '25

Yep! That is the big one. People can dig themselves so deep into their own self curated echo chambers. This happened in the past as well, but it is a bit more insidious today as there is absolutely zero control or accountability as it has to do with misinformation and non-credible sources. Today it is way easier to obfuscate the presence of 'bad actors' due to there being so many outlets to get information that they all dilute any errors in the "cohesivness of the semi-coordinated misinformation". In the past it was insidious because of how easily many of the outlets would coordinate the misinformation with each other even when pushing for opposite sides of the political spectrum. Today they do not need to try to coordinate misinformation as there are so many sources for news that any one outlet can just do and say what they want as incorrect information is either easily buried and forgotten or it is reinforced by enough alternative outlets, pedaling the same or similar misinformation that they all, intentionally or not, support each other thus raising the perceived credibility by consumers.

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u/sauerkrauter2000 Mar 07 '25

If everyone globally who dislikes the new us fascist agenda was to stop using these platforms for a couple of months they would take a big financial hit.

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u/Termsandconditionsch 29d ago

George Soros? Come on. He’s got a net worth of less than $7B, nothing compared to Musk or Zuckerberg. He’s always in various conspiracy theories but from what I’ve seen…. Musk is everything that the nutters claimed Soros was. He’s probably done some shady stuff (aside from shorting the Bank of England) but not really on the same scale.

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u/GR1ZZLYBEARZ 29d ago

It was more in reference to his political agenda and how he used his money. Soros is directly responsible for a lot of progressive prosecutor’s and DA’s, this led to massive spikes in petty theft, drug sales and use etc. monetarily you are correct, he’s not even close. In terms of using his money for evil political things, he’s close to the top.

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/117234/documents/HHRG-118-JU00-20240503-SD008-U8.pdf

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u/Thadrach 28d ago

Evil things, like standing up to communism, and then to Putin in Eastern Europe.

Anti-Soros tankies are sad...or just Useful Idiots.

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u/tomsmac 28d ago

That’s exactly right! And then when it was uncovered that X “influencers” like that prick Benny and libsoftictoc were being paid by Russia America just shrugged it off.

Im in a unique position of knowing just how bad Russia wants to harm us. And, thanks to Some extremely stupid people they’re going to. It’s going to get extremely bad folks.

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u/Top-Tangerine2717 29d ago

those oligarchs like cnn msnbc soros etc? those guys?

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u/999avatar999 29d ago

Do they own any social media?

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u/Top-Tangerine2717 29d ago

That makes the difference? 

Are you being serious?

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u/999avatar999 29d ago

Yes I was specifically talking about the role of social media and their owners on modern day politics. Reading is not that hard lol

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u/Top-Tangerine2717 28d ago

Oh you got me with that sarcastic comment 

What do you think MSM is? 

It is literally directed social media. Coordinated to the letter and pushed across all platforms. You think political members don't use that? 

You clearly forgot politico was being paid by Dem party through USAid. A fukin MSM was paid by us taxpayers to propaganda the message of the Dem party. Who was the owner of politico? The Dem party was. They literally paid the checks to the reporters via third party.

Please stop being a political cuck 

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u/999avatar999 28d ago

How is mainstream news media "directed social media"? Again that's not what I'm talking about, what I meant was the power of social media over whole societies. Just think of it, of you own one you can tweak it's inner workings to basically control how people communicate, engage or just think. Like the genocide Facebook caused in Myanmar, because their algo was set to promote provoking content (which in this case was extremist content targeted against rhe Rohingya).

It is obvious to everyone these day that social media can shape societies globally and the power over their control is concentrated to like 5 or so people. That's the danger I'm talking about the whole time. Really seems like both of us are talking about two different things lol

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u/Top-Tangerine2717 28d ago

Yes that is correct but that is exactly what msm does 

Hell they just had their asses handed to them when 20 some Dems did the exact same "Interview"   It was almost as bad as "jazz fingers" 

Did you see the mashup of it?

It was All directed to get a singular ideology out 

However if you look at X related to your post there is opposition on his (elons) own platform. 

regardless of that opposition a recent poll he did on the platform had 81% in favor of DOGE (out of 1.5xxxmillion votes). Slightly lean bias to his position but even 25% +/- (neg in this case) still leans positive 

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u/adgrn Mar 07 '25

that's not how that works in any way. he put up a few billion himself, got his friends to put in some of the rest and the remainder was funded by banks. he probably also just got a loan for his cash portion with collateral pledged on his Tesla stock so probably didn't take out one cent from his pockets at all

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u/Galion-X 29d ago

And there's been times in my life, I've been denied a 20k loan to reconsolidate debt i was already paying, but at a lower interest. But that's too risky.

This guy soaks places for billions.

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u/Thadrach 28d ago

You owe the bank a million dollars, you gave a problem.

You owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem.

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u/RabidGuineaPig007 29d ago

Anyone who invested in X deserves to get fired and be poor. They can't even sue Musk because the lawsuits against him are already in excess of his value.

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u/Successful_Sign_6991 Mar 07 '25

Most of that wasn't his. It was a lot of Saudi and Russian and other investors. It was to help with this outcome. They don't care about that money. They got what they wanted.

Theres a reason he didn't want the list of his twitter investor list released.

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u/GrumblyData3684 29d ago

And if you remember, he didn’t want Twitter and tried to back out -

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u/brianbelgard 16d ago

I feel like it's the business version of the omnipotence paradox; Can Elon amass a fortune so large that not even Elon Musk can destroy it?