Why I'm Loving the Trump-Musk Blue

Leftists hate it when their leaders fight in public. Conservatives are more robust and have more faith in the system.

The very public dispute between Donald Trump, the world’s most powerful man, and his former bro Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is the best thing to happen in politics anywhere in the world all year.

By that I don’t mean it’s merely entertaining, although it clearly is. More importantly, though, it is a long-overdue departure from the way politics is usually conducted in our “open” and liberal democracies, which features petulant imbeciles who in public pretend to be allies while behind the scenes they are sharpening knives and crossing Rubicons like psycho children playing a deadly game of hopscotch.

For a succinct insight into the underhanded way acrimony is handled in Australian politics and most other democratic places, consider the recently turbulent relationship between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his former environment minister, Tanya Plibersek.

They had an awkward moment at the Labor Party election campaign launch in Perth on May 13. Albo went along the front row greeting all his senior supporters, shaking hands for the cameras. When he got to Plibersek, she, either overcome by the occasion or hoping to ingratiate herself with the boss, went in for the kiss. Either way, Albo ducked. They are from different factions of the party, and have never liked each other anyway.

Within minutes it was being portrayed as evidence of some sort of disharmony, and so both worked the media the next morning to hose it all down. There was an election on, after all.

Plibersek told a TV station that it was somehow Covid-related, that they should have bumped elbows instead of touching because “during an election campaign, the last thing you want is to catch a cold from someone.”

Albo backed it up with: “Tanya Plibersek has been a friend of mine for a long period of time. We live in neighbouring seats. We’re good mates, and she’s doing a fantastic job.”

The BBC series Yes, Minister decades ago identified statements like these as euphemisms for treachery. And so it came to pass. Ten days after the election, Plibersek was dumped to Social Services, which as far as Plibersek is concerned is like asking Fernando Alonso to ferry old folks around a retirement village in a golf cart.

Albo added that this was a “very positive” move.

He insults our intelligence when he assumes we believe such rubbish. Ironically, though, he isn’t quite intelligent enough to realise that. Oh well.

By contrast, Musk is now publicly accusing Trump of something far more serious than the mere antipathy that had Plibersek and Albanese scurrying for damage control: wasting trillions of taxpayers’ dollars and being named in the Epstein files, which is why Trump hasn’t released them, despite being elected on a promise to do so.

As a passionate Trump supporter, I welcome Musk’s accusations. If Trump can’t reduce the size of the US federal bureaucracy, then the US and its allies, including Australia, are in deep trouble. And if there is evidence that Trump did take a ride on Epstein’s Lolita Express, he should face it.

The media has reported this mostly as if it were celebrity gossip, a lightweight art to which it pivots with instinctive ease.

This is “every bit as lowdown, vindictive, personal, petty, operatic, childish, consequential, messy and public as many had always expected it would be,” said The New York Times. “It certainly makes for entertaining political theatre,” said the Wall Street Journal. “The marriage of Elon Musk and President Donald Trump was (while it lasted) unhinged and doomed,” said the Washington Post.

Whatever analytical coverage accompanies the gossip is tainted by Trump Derangement Syndrome, which afflicts most mainstream journalists, or jealousy of Musk, which is almost as commonplace.

Genuine conservatives and even Trump supporters are more sanguine. “Judge determines Trump will get the nation on weekdays, while Musk gets every other weekend and holidays,” joked the conservative comedy site Babylon Bee. “I did not foresee Trump and Elon having the ugliest gay divorce in Pride Month history,” said conservative transgender social media star Blair White.

Again, if Musk’s allegations are correct, then we might see Trump genuinely impeached. So be it. Vice President JD Vance would easily make as good a President, if not better, anyway.

This is benefits the credibility of all involved far more than trying to hide the truth, as the Democrats tried to do for years with Joe Biden’s dementia. The Biden supporters who are now falling over each other to report the sensational news of Biden’s mental demise four years after it was blindingly obvious to everyone have about as much credibility as Brigitte Macron shopping for women’s underwear.

Trump and Musk are both alphas, and have nothing to fear about conducting their confrontations in public. It’s how alphas work. They are confident they can survive, and both probably will.

Conservatives, meanwhile, are also confident that as long as the skulduggery remains out in the open, the political system can do likewise.