Donald Trump and Elon Musk are licking their wounds – and they just gave something away
Donald Trump and Elon Musk took it on the chin on Tuesday night in broad, overwhelming, and devastating fashion. They lost what was supposed to be an evenly matched Wisconsin race by ten points, even after Musk poured a historic amount of his own money into the race. They even essentially came away with a loss in Florida, after they won a pair of blowout special elections by fifteen points less than they were supposed to – making clear that they will lose any upcoming special elections that are just a little bit more competitive.
So after Trump learned that his brand is so toxic that his party is now getting slaughtered by voters, and after Musk learned that he can’t buy elections anymore, what did they take away from it? We don’t know what’s going on in the minds of these two highly broken people. But outwardly, their reaction is a rather telling one.
Trump spent Tuesday night and Wednesday insisting that the elections went really well for him. He falsely claimed that the two Republican candidates in Florida outperformed expectations, and then he took credit for putting them over the top. He didn’t even mention his ten point loss in Wisconsin, as if it never happened. Instead he focused solely on the one ballot initiative he won in Wisconsin, which was largely symbolic anyway.
Musk came a little closer to admitting defeat, vaguely tweeting that “The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary.” But he too pivoted to the Wisconsin ballot initiative, claiming it was all that really mattered. If that’s the case, why did he pour so much of his own money into a Wisconsin Supreme Court election that he now claims wasn’t important?
Trump and Musk are, essentially, pretending that Tuesday night didn’t happen. Or more accurately they’re pretending that a different, imaginary version of Tuesday night happened. It’s not clear how much of this is simply an attempt at putting on a brave face after such a bodyblow of a loss, or how much of it might simply be oblivious delusion. After all, Trump appears to be at a point of cognitive decline where he has no idea what’s going on, and simply goes along with whatever his babysitters tell him is going on. So maybe he thinks he did win big. And with Musk getting closer to rubber room crazy by the day, he may well have convinced himself that this somehow went well for him.
But the real story came in the days before Tuesday’s election. Even before the results came in, Trump’s people pulled Elise Stefanik’s cabinet nomination for fear that the Republicans would lose the resulting special election. Her district is only incrementally more competitive than the ones we just saw in Florida. But at this rate, with the Democrats outperforming by ten and fifteen points, incrementally more competitive is all we need.
Then there’s Musk, who announced days ago that his work with DOGE will wrap up in May. Whether he really means this or not, it’s something of an admission of defeat in its own right. He keeps getting overturned in court, his moves are massively unpopular, and he isn’t getting anywhere close to his stated goals. Now Trump has reportedly informed his cabinet that Musk is indeed on his way out. So the fallout is apparently underway.
In any case, whether or not Trump and Musk know that they’re losing, what’s important is that we know we’re winning. We’ve been seeing signs of this along the way for the past month. But this week has delivered absolute proof that we have the momentum and the upper hand. Trump and Musk are left licking their wounds, or perhaps trying to convince themselves that their wounds don’t exist. Either way, we’re now winning this war. Let’s make sure we keep our heads up, keep putting in the work, build on this momentum, and keep winning the good fight.
