Following a May jobs report that saw more jobs created than expected, some, like newly out-and-proud Republican Elon Musk, were unimpressed. In an email to employees Friday morning, the world’s no. 1 wealth hoarder said he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy, which, of course, was very much predicated on his feelings. Musk, notably, has a net worth of $229.7 billion and has spent the last two months trying to buy Twitter.
Addressing a Reuters reporter, President Biden responded to Musk’s bleak outlook on the economy on Friday and, for an old white guy, didn’t pull his punches: “While Elon Musk is talking about that, Ford is … increasing the investment in building new electric vehicles. Six thousand employees–union employees, I might add, in the Midwest,” Biden said. Musk, you’ll recall, has been found guilty of union-busting by the National Labor Relations Board on multiple occasions, all while paying his factory workers some of the lowest wages in the auto industry. Biden continued: “The former Chrysler Corporation, they also are making similar investments in electric vehicles. Intel is adding 20,000 new jobs making computer chips.”
Then came the real kicker: “So, you know, lots of luck on his trip to the moon,” the president concluded. In other words, Have fun on that little trip of yours, to where, again? The moon? How quaint!
Underwhelmed as I might be by the Biden administration most days, I daresay the president is at his best, perhaps even his most useful, when he occasionally sticks it to societal super-villains like Amazon, Starbucks’ union-busting executives, and, in this case, Elon Musk, an alleged sexual harasser accused of exposing himself to a flight attendant and groveling for sex in exchange for a horse.
Musk, ever the feisty little keyboard warrior with more time on his hands than a geriatric Floridian, almost immediately responded to Biden’s remarks on Twitter: “Thanks Mr President!” he tweeted, attaching a link to details about NASA’s 2021 award of a $2.9-billion contract to SpaceX, Musk’s company, to build a spacecraft to bring astronauts to the moon. Curiously enough, the link includes no mention of the SpaceX flight attendant Musk solicited, nonconsensually touched, and paid $250,000 to silence.
In any case, Musk has previously bitched about how the administration has “done everything it can to sideline and ignore Tesla.” And today, it seems he expects hero-worship for the NASA contract, all while repeatedly mistreating and retaliating against his workers, and now, threatening to fire 10% of them as he, again, holds a $229.7 billion net worth.
At a time when Musk is supposedly deeply concerned about the economy, a time when mass shootings and national crises seem to be happening in rapid succession of each other, Musk seems to believe his $2.9 billion NASA contract should be top of mind for everyone right now. And to that, I join the president in saying very sincerely, “Lots of luck on [your] trip to the moon!” I hope Musk has such a lovely time that he decides to stay there, forever.
