It would make perfect sense. I sort of assumed that something like that was the case, but I haven’t been saying anything because I saw no actual indications or any evidence. But it would make perfect sense. Maybe they realized that Trump was too big a dope to be able to really deliver what they want, whereas Musk is the perfect supervillain to have as the new pledge trying to join their club.

That settles it then. My official prediction at this point is:

• Musk keeps fucking everything up, with no one in our sclerotic government doing anything about it, until something goes really wrong. It actually might happen that bird flu or some geopolitical event happens first, and all the Musk-induced fuckery can kind of get overlooked in the chaos, but if no external crisis happens to divert attention I think it is inevitable that Musk will eventually pull the wrong lever and fuck things up badly enough for enough people that the country gets genuinely angry for real.
• Trump blames Musk and throws him under the bus, which is a 100% predictable pattern
• Musk flees to Russia, and keeps doing his shtick there until the end of time

Making predictions about the future is a fool’s game, but every step of the process (except where that one first-step caveat is concerned) seems so absolutely inevitable that I feel comfortable tentatively laying it out as a prediction.