Tech tycoon Elon Musk joined a call between US President-elect Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the day after the presidential election, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
Since when do we allow regular civilians to participate in diplomatic calls?
Since they have over $200 billion dollars
So pay to play is back.
It left?
Since the US bacame an oligarchy.
It’s almost like a member of Trump’s cabinet was sentenced to prison for doing that exact thing between Trump’s 2016 election and taking office.
Yeah but for people to know that would require actually understanding the impeachment proceeding and prior/subsequent investigations.
I think we all know how that went.
When you have a president that dgaf about anything saying otherwise.
It’s beyond naive to call Elon a regular civilian
My point was to point out he’s not part of the government
Neither is Trump. However Elon can still become part of Trump’s future cabinet.
True, haven’t thought about Trump not being part of the government yet. I would hope some restrictions would apply if Musk becomes part of it (conflict of interest wise)
Yeah, he’s an illegal immigrant, get it right.
Ukraine is f*cked now and soon Europe too.
Technically, a lot of NATO countries still have nukes. So they might be half as fucked.
This is bad
I guess we now know who will really hold power in the oval office. Spoiler: it’s not Trump
nice, a five year old participating in diplomacy regarding nation destroying wars. what could go wrong.
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He paid for Ukraine’s StarLink connections that he shuts off when Musk feels like it, and the incoming president who will shut off aid when Musk feels like it.
hasnt musk given his starlink crap to the russian military?
My prediction is Zelenasky will call for an ellection allowing Trump to fund the war without looking weak after the shut he said about Zelenasky.
It is a real possibility since iran and russia are working together and trump backs israel against iran. The logical next step is to back ukraine againts russia.
That’s a very uninformed thing to say. Trump is beholden to Putin.
I wouldnt be too sure of that. Trump is a businessman who will take what he can and give back as little as possible. Trump got the presidency why honour any agreement with putin?
Because Trump is a narcissist and Putin has dirt on him.
He admires Putin. Just watch.
Imagine putin started setting his trolls on the agenda of whatever kompromat they have on trump. I imagine it’s a lot. That would definitely make trump mad. First and foremost he protects his ego.
God, I feel for Zelensky… Imagine fighting for your existence against Russia and having to talk to these morons for help.
I’m sure his conclusion at the end was “We need to build nukes immediately”.
My guess is Trump essentially extorted him in the namel of “making a deal” in exchange for American aid.
Remember when we had a whole impeachment hearing against Trump for withholding aid to Ukraine so he could get a political hit piece on Biden? I’m wondering how long it will take before a quid pro quo scenario pops up again. Either in Ukraine or elsewhere. So ya, we’re all feeling for Zelensky in the next few years.
There will be no agreements.
trump is going to change US policy to excluding all intelligence and military support and will “leak” all known military intel to putin.
As though nobody considered what he was actually doing with all those confidential documents.
With everything else, I somehow forgot about those documents
Don’t worry. He was just confused last time and totally will never steal and leak sensitive information ever again because that would be against the law. Just like he won’t extend his presidency or rig an election because that would violate the constitution.
We’ve been seeing this shit for months. At first I thought it was just contrarian dumbasses. But I have increasingly realized that this is people convincing themselves that it was fine to vote for trump. Oh, he wasn’t REALLY going to do anything to violate teh constitution when he led an armed insurrection against the capital and was just buying time for rudy g to solve things. Oh, he isn’t going to serve the country to putin because all those heroic men and women in uniform will stop him this time for real.
It is fucking idiocy.
As a 4th generation veteran, it makes so angry to think how many people died in the name of democracy and suddenly half the population is choosing for someone intending to end it to run the show.
We’re in for some dark times ahead.
And a lot of those people are the children of parents that fought/died in WW2 against the Nazis, and had family or children even that fought/died against dictators like the one they fucking elected!
Not only that, but they tried to overthrow the government their family died defending for this charlatan. It’s so pathetic my brain goes in loops trying to understand the absolute madness of it.
And all those 5* Generals and going to stand by and salute ?
You really don’t understand America .
Someone in another thread said that Trump could fire generals until he gets someone who is willing to use troops domestically.
He honestly wouldn’t need to.
In a past life I worked with a LOT of senior military folk for the purpose of grants and funding and the like. And basically anyone (guesstimating) above the rank of a Captain equivalent (outside of SF) is basically a lifer. And they very rapidly learn how political the upper echelons are and that they need to stay as neutral as possible to get further promotions and have good assignments.
I could very much see various Lieutenants and even some Captains complain about leaving the Ukrainians to die. They will then be immediately told by the nearest Major or General that they are a disgrace to the uniform for refusing orders and blah blah blah. And that will propagate down the line so that the NCO who is ACTUALLY valued for their initiative understands that they will be brought up on treason if they violate these orders.
Because those Generals? They build their entire lives around always being able to say “I was just following orders”. They KNOW when you get things in writing.
That’s not even worth comment. Was it LemmyUnder11 or something ?
A president can’t a fire a general. He cannot fire a dozen generals an retain control of the military.
The president can’t? Let’s see of the Supreme Court has anything to say about that. Right now, I’m not confident the word can’t is in their dictionary as far as a president is concerned.
Since Trump technically can’t commit crimes as a president, nothing is stopping him from killing the generals until they comply.
Theres an unfortunate autocorrect there that confuses my point :
The president CAN fire a general, but he cannot fire 12 generals . That’s the point I want to make.
You’re right.
Just like none of us understood when they all sat with their thumbs up their asses waiting to see how January 6 would shake out. But hey, that is fine. It was because they were waiting for orders from the POTUS or the VPOTUS… that the VPOTUS had a lynch mob and compromised secret service agents hunting down.
But hey, I want me some salmon so Support The Troops God Bless America We Are Number One Make America Great Again, right?
Honestly mate I’m I don’t mean to rude, but you haven’t got a clue, have you ?
the Military industrial complex is making bank. The military is fighting Russia on the cheap, without a single soldier lost, and its strangling the Russian economy.
You think anyone is going to interrupt that ? Be allowed to interrupt that ?
Ah. So they are going to fight to save the economy, not the country.
That is at least somewhat believable. Except… it isn’t like we are going to pay them less. And that still involves military officers revolting unless we live in a world where you think Lockheed Martin have secret kill switches in… I don’t even know what. The cell phone trump uses to talk to putin?
Impeaching him might be on the docket, if the Republicans really want Vance in the puppet seat. I think they’d rather manipulate him than whatever fucking impending shit-splosion Trump will become about 3 minutes in.
I think Vance might at least be convinced to do logical things. We know that isn’t happening with Donny.
I think Vance might at least be convinced to do logical things.
He’s more likely to competently implement project 2025. Or at least more competently than Trump.
And that’s not a good thing for anyone.
I go back and forth on which is more dangerous.
trump is pathologically incapable of not backstabbing everyone around him and people telling him what to do is going to accelerate that. So we might get lucky and go back to the largely ineffectual screaming of the last round rather than focused efforts.
But vance actually has ambitions and might want to be his own person. And vance is REAL stupid.
I think we are horribly fucked either way but I think I am still leaning toward trump surviving until late 2028.
I firmly believe that Trump will be removed before his term is done. One because Republicans kind of need someone after Trump. But the bigger reason is he is such a narcissist that he is almost certain to step on a few billionaires toes. I think if he accidentally fucks with big money with some short sighted policy he will be swiftly removed.
I think this is unlikely but is still the most likely way he could be contained or even removed
Removed by who?
trump controls the military. And as much people think the evil space lizards control the universe, that really isn’t the way. And there is zero cahnce that the secret service or even the CIA are going to allow trump to put two in the back of his head and then commit suicide by hanging himself off the roof of the white house.
Vance and or the apparatus enabling Trump.
Elon can’t take his place… but him, and a few other billionaires can easily put enough pressure for him to be replaced if/when he betrays one of them. Probably because something they were involved with goes bad and he tries to throw them under the bus.
There may exist a scenario where north korea is trying to build something that looks suspiciously like an Ohio class submarine and he has a strange golf bar appear on his desk.
Zelensky probably spent the whole call wondering if it would be faster to just hand deliver everything they talked about directly to Putin.
I’m sure they will help, “Just give Russia what they want, war over, problem solved”
Remember when they used to try to keep corruption somewhat hidden and deniable? Now the richest man in the world is just going to be walking around the White House, tugging the government’s leash on full display.
Love watching the oligarchs take over…it’s nowhere near as subtle as I thought it was going to be.
Fucker will disable Starlink in Ukraine and allow it in Russia
He’s already done so, actually. Under the guise of “blackouts”.
Nah, he’ll use the location services from the dish to pinpoint the Ukrainian troop locations. If they’re smart they’ll start smashing them immediately.
He’s going to be on the cabinet while getting billions in government contracts. The richest man in the world just got a job where he gets to to shovel more government money to himself. And that’s what Trump calls ‘draining the swamp’ and ‘sticking it to the elites’.
And somehow, instead of democrats calling that out, they decided to find their own elites to trot out.
Worst of it, government money is your tax dollar… You will pay more and more taxes to funnel the money to Trump’s friends. Trump is the swamp thing!
They’ll finance it with debt, sale of assets and cutting of services. Which is probably even worse
Biggest case of conflict of interest and quid pro quo in government and its just being allowed to happen…
Didn’t he do that already?
It wasn’t enabled in Crimea in the first place. The author misspoke/lied about in the book and has later admitted it.
U.S. sanctions to Russia forbid the use of Starlink. This includes crimea and the occupied territories. That’s why it wasn’t enabled.
To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.
And before someone points out the ‘cause major war’ things, those are Walters words, not Elon’s. Musk said “It would make SpaceX explicitly complicit in a marjor act of war and conflict escalation” He later also added that had he been contacted by the US officials and asked to enable it he would, but they didn’t.
US sanctions may try to stop Russia from using statlink, but they’re using it anyway.
Plus the fact that Musk regularly talks with Putin really makes this whole thing quack and waddle.
The front lines are not static so you can only imagine the difficulty SpaceX has trying to determine which terminal is in Ukranian use and which ones are Russian. For all we know, they may have disabled hundreds if not thousands of terminals they’ve found out to be used by the Russians and are getting no credit for it. I don’t buy into this narrative that Elon is personally invested into Russia winning. I’ve seen no evidence for it but plenty against it which everyone just seems to conveniently ignore because Musk bad.
Musk’s whole “slash government spending” schtick is such a farce. Tesla wouldn’t have domestic manufacturing facilities without a DOE loan. SpaceX survives off of government contracts.
The NPR article goes into this. Elon likely will award himself money without oversight while cutting programs like NPR and the SEC and other regulatory bodies etc.
Oh that never includes the donor class.
Slash government funding for everything except the socialism for the rich.
Slash Social Security, add EV subsidies, make them so that only Tesla qualifies in practice.
Hilarious that his administration is already leaking worse than a Russian submarine.
Zelensky deserves better than these hosers
Maybe Germany France Italy Spain Sweden Finland Poland … and the UK could step up?
I mean let me dream a little.
If others followed UK donations, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Germany, LMAO. Didn’t they have their lips around putin’s pipe that got blown up?
I bet the “russia is a trade partner” shtick will come back real soon.
What a dilema for Ukraine! I feel their abandonment will be a microcosm for our leaving to the wolves.
I think a lot of Americans don’t understand that the USA hedgemony isn’t a divine right, it was a deliberate construction with tacit agreement of convenience from the western world.
Much like an economy, belief makes it so.
Much like the UK’s arrogance has driven them into geopolitical obscurity, so will the USA’s.
In 15 years, Americans are going to wake up and realize that their voices are irrelevant in the world. I don’t know how y’all are going to handle it.
The USA became dominant by letting the world fight itself to ruins, then entering into the war late and declaring victory. TWICE.
Being the only mostly undestroyed nation after a world war is immensely profitable.
This is true.
I deeply, desperately hope you’re right. In the best case, the military (including the nuclear arsenal) gets as hollowed out as russias before that realization comes.
Hedge money
I’m going to be bummed, but it’ll be deserved. Maybe future generations will stop being entitled assholes. Idk. Don’t want to live in a disintegrating country. Really don’t want my kids to. But I guess we don’t always get to pick.
Maybe future generations will stop being entitled assholes.
Look what’s happening with Gen Z right now. They showed a lot of promise, then showed up to vote and turns out they have just as many nazis as the rest of us. We’re going ride this death spiral all the way to extinction.
Not Gen Z girls
Wheeeeee…
Look at all this fun I’m having.
