LET THEM FIGHT

Who would have thought that two buddies with egos the size of the Hercules A galaxy, both narcissistic billionaires whose entire relationship was built on a shared desire to be cruel to other people and enrich themselves, would see their bromance blow up in a fiery explosion bigger than the conflagration following a failed SpaceX rocket launch?

Oh, right. Everyone. We all knew this was coming. In some ways, it's surprising that it took this long.

But it did take this long for the self-interest of these two malignant tumors of humanity to conflict, and now we all enjoy the show and pass around the popcorn.

It's undoubtedly entertaining to see—an entirely apropos situation for a reality-TV-show president—but I fear the collateral damage to come. Still, it'll likely be a net benefit in the end if the mutual takedowns succeed at all.

We're here at the point of conflict because POTUS47 insisted that his budget bill include every one of his legislative priorities, that it be "one big [redacted] bill." Then he cajoled Speaker Johnson and the House Republicans to ram through an approval of it in the dead of night without anyone having read the entire bill. Then someone read the bill and the details started to make the rounds.

Officially known as House Resolution 1 (that's right, this is the first piece of legislation the pile-of-manure Speaker of the House has brought to the floor in the five months this Congress has been in session), it's an enormous mountain of cruelty and theft, detailing the means to deprive millions of Americans of healthcare, student loans, services, and assistance of myriad kinds while redistributing all of that wealth to the richest of rich fucks, a full quarter of it to the oligarch class. It would be the largest redistribution of wealth from poor and middle classes to the upper class in generations. On top of that, it would blow another huge hole in the national debt—over a decade, it worsens the budget deficit, that is, the annual shortfall, by nearly four trillion dollars.

Let's put that in perspective. As I researched and noted in my 2024 voting aid pamphlet that apparently no one read, George W. Bush held the previous record for largest budget deficit when he ran the figure in his last year in office to nearly $1.5 trillion. The pre-GWB high-water mark, considered enormous at the time, was about $300 billion under W's dad (adjusting for inflation, about $460 billion in 2008 dollars, so less than a third of GWB's excesses). Barack Obama got it down from GWB's shocker to about $650 billion when he left. Then we got the first term of President Shitbag and it went from that to over $3 trillion before Joe Biden basically cut it in half. Now POTUS47 plans to make the annual shortfall exceed $6 trillion. The national debt is currently about $37 trillion, accumulated over 190 years since the last time the country's debt was zero (January 1835). Factor in interest and the POTUS47 plan would double that figure in no time at all—the CBO estimates that even without this clusterfuck of a budget, just the annual interest payment on U.S. debt will top $1 trillion next year.

And none of that deficit spending is to benefit anyone. None of it is for good things. Not only does this budget slash Medicare, Medicaid, ACA subsidies, SNAP, student grants and loans, the NEA, state assistance, disaster relief, environmental protections, et cetera, et cetera, it increases spending for defense contracts—guess who those will go to—and the Department of Homeland Security, home to ICE, HSI, and the various other agencies that make up this administration's burgeoning secret police.

But none of that is why the two billionaire BFF crybabies are fighting. No, no, neither of those moronic misanthropes gives a tinker's damn about fucking over the people or going bankrupt; the fight came about because the budget eliminates incentives and subsidies for electric vehicles while providing opposite measures for the fossil fuel industry. It's a direct threat to the existence of Tesla. Herr Elon might claim it's about excessive spending, but we all know that's a lie. It's because not enough of it goes to him.

So they're fighting. Throwing their takedown tantrums in public—on the social media platforms that each of them owns, which is just a chef's kiss to the whole thing—while the world laughs and while the reputation of the United States goes even further into the toilet.

What's coming next? Elon has already echoed a call to impeach Donny. Donny has already threatened to cancel Elon's many contracts. White House sewer troll Steve Bannon and Donny's shadow-president, the undead ghoul calling itself Stephen Miller, have called for Elon to be deported. Elon threatened to reveal what Donny's role in the Jeffrey Epstein saga really was. During the back-and-forths it appeared that each was just then realizing that the other was a corrupt, lying, amoral piece of shit when the rest of us knew they both were from the get-go.

Both of these people are fueled by grievance, take everything personally, and believe they are entitled to total deference and fealty. The escalation of revenge tactics to come promises to be pretty scary. The U.S. has quite stupidly become dependent on Elon for its space program, which could be all but destroyed in this mess. Who aligns with who among the oligarch class could have big economic effects on all of us. But if the end result is that the public sees proof that POTUS47 raped underage girls with Epstein, that Elon loses all his influence with the government and maybe even his companies and wealth, that the Republican Party fractures and self-immolates, then I'm here for it.

Let. Them. Fight.