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June 6, 2025 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
09:03
You Wanna Get Nuts? Let's Get Nuts.

This is a preview of The Weekender edition of the Muckrake Podcast. Please go to our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to gain access to the regular Weekender episodes on Fridays. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman dive into the brewing feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, unpacking what their falling out says about the current state of politics in general. Then they turn to the Democrats—some of whom seem eager to welcome Musk back into the fold—and debate whether that’s a savvy move or political malpractice (hint: the latter). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
Woo, buddy.
Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the Buckwick Podcast.
I'm Joe Dave Sexton.
I'm here with my friend, my co-host, my cohort, Nick Houselman.
Nick, we got a show today.
We do.
We have a show.
We have a show.
And shit's breaking loose.
So why not head over to patreon.com slash frontcreakpodcast, become a patron, listen to the entire weekender, get all of them, and on top of that, support the show, gain access to the Discord, all that.
Nick, I owe you an apology.
I owe you an apology.
And when I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
We've been talking for months, and one thing that I continually said was that there was too much money and too much power, and that was going to keep Elon Musk and Donald Trump on the same page.
You said there was no way these guys were going to be able to work together for very long.
We are now in the beginnings of June.
And as we're recording this on Thursday, June 5th, the public fight between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, which has taken many twists and turns at this point, and we'll get into how we arrived at this point, but as of this afternoon, Elon Musk has tweeted out.
Yeah, I know everyone is waiting on me to say it.
That the reason why the Epstein files were not released were because Donald Trump is in them.
It has set off an absolute firestorm, not just with the administration, but within Republican politics.
This is a really, really weird spat that is taking place and it could shake American politics, world politics, and everything down to its core simply because these two assholes cannot handle themselves.
And again, Nick, my apologies.
Your analysis was...
You were dead on right.
Well, you know, we know how Trump operates, and we also know how Elon Musk behaves.
And there was never going to be a way that would work, especially because Elon Musk literally was, like, spending Thanksgiving with Donald Trump and wasn't, like, in Mar-a-Lago, wasn't leaving.
I guess the interesting question is, did this match start?
Did it start when his supposed 180 days ended where he couldn't work in the government anymore?
Did it start when he dipped his toe to kind of criticize the big and beautiful bill?
I would probably argue that it was way before that, and this had always been brewing in the background, no matter when, when they first shook hands last summer.
But what do you think?
Do you think that this was the beginning?
Do you think there was going to be a navigation of smooth sailing?
and beautiful bill?
No, because what I thought was going to happen is what we see.
And by the way, it might still follow the trend of what happens between autocrats and oligarchs, which – I expected it to be a back and forth.
Maybe there would be some sniping.
The way this thing developed was that after Musk left the government, and this also involved a ton of rumors about what was going on with him and Stephen Miller's wife, which I still think is palace intrigue, distraction, but also it helps inform.
Kind of what has been going on, which is from the very beginning, when Elon Musk ended up spending a quarter of a billion dollars on Donald Trump to get him elected and also to buy J.D. Vance, the VP slot, which we got to talk about that in a little bit because there are ramifications in all of this as well.
There was an uneasy alliance.
As many of these authoritarian movements have, where you had the MAGA movement, which was largely a populist, nationalistic sort of cult around Donald Trump.
You then had a bunch of like neo-fascist tech libertarian psychos who then threw in with the Trump people because they saw where they had the possibility to do some things.
You also had some neo-fascist white nationalists who were all involved in the MAGA movement who hate Elon Musk.
feuds with him you now see where that ends with musk quote-unquote leaving the administration which seems real at this point taking over everything through doge then taking his leave starting to lightly criticize the republicans in congress that leads to trump who can't help himself starting to take some shots at elon musk then all of a sudden there's like all kinds of other things that are happening nick we're hearing now that steve bannon has trump's ear
But Nick, it's like watching a big, messy multi-car pileup and then trying to piece together how the pileup happened.
There's a lot going on here.
There's a lot of sort of dots to connect.
And I have some analysis about that I'll share in a little bit.
But man, this thing, to borrow a phrase, this thing escalated quickly.
It did.
I was always thinking it's more like that Scarlett Johansson movie with the guy from the Is it called The Marriage Story?
Yes.
So, you know, something like that, where, you know, you could easily morph alien versus predator, perhaps, would be a better term, if you want to get real.
And so I think this is, it is fascinating how it plays out.
I think the term leverage is going to come up a lot as we go through this, because I think you probably had felt that it was Elon Musk who had enough leverage over Trump that would ensure Musk's position in the government for however long he wanted it.
Is that safe to say?
Yeah, I think it was the money aspect.
Because not only did Musk throw a quarter of a billion dollars into the effort to get Trump elected, but he essentially set him up with the crypto nihilist in order to make him billions of dollars based on crypto coins.
Which, Nick, I don't know if you've seen it, the crypto markets are completely flatlining right now.
Like, they are plummeting out of control because this sort of marriage of convenience has become a marriage of inconvenience.
So that money all of a sudden comes off the table.
You know, you brought up Alien vs.
Predator.
You can't make deals.
Between two people—we've talked about this ad nauseum, that when it comes to authoritarians, fascists, and Nazis, they always do end up backstabbing each other.
There's always bloodletting within the ranks.
So something was going to happen where the rupture was going to take place.
I had a hard time believing the world's wealthiest man and the president of the United States of America, who has no scruples or principles, I had a hard time believing that that's where the rupture was going to take place.
I mean, this is a massive— Well, you know, I was kind of lamenting I didn't bring it up during the other earlier episodes about the big, beautiful bill.
There was cutting of this EV mandate.
And I thought, well, that's interesting because obviously it's one of the key cornerstones that props up Elon Musk's business for Tesla, right?
You can get $7,500 to buy an electric vehicle, mainly Tesla's.
And that's what Trump tries to infer or sort of, you know, say that.
That that was what made him go crazy in one of his streets.
He said Elon was, quote, wearing thin.
Why do you think he puts the two words wearing thin in quotes?
I'm trying to wonder.
What does that mean?
I think this is where things are probably going to pop off next.
And if they haven't happened since we started recording, I think you're going to start seeing Donald Trump talk about Elon Musk's drug use.
Oh, yeah.
And I think that is like where the next sort of punch comes from, which also you'll notice in all of this, tying him to the Epstein thing.
We haven't even talked about the Epstein part of it, but like tying him to the Epstein thing, it messes with Trump's base within like the online far right.
But now all of a sudden Trump is going to probably go after Musk's reputation and also his ability to lead his companies.
So all of a sudden this turns into a mutually assured destruction.
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