Tim Miller Takes On Elon’s Ketamine-Fueled Collapse

Tim Miller Takes On Elon’s Ketamine-Fueled Collapse

Hey y’all, Tim Miller from the Bull Work here. Uh, I just got off with Nicole Wallace. Um, and we were talking about this New York Times story from this morning. Uh, that is just unbelievable and the details about what has been going on in Elon Musk’s personal life as he has been the deputy shadow president. I mean, if even an iota of what is in the New York Times is true. Um, it is just really alarming um about the mindset of the person who was as powerful and influential as anyone in the world over the first three months of this year. The idea that it’s possible that he was taking so much ketamine that he lost control of his bladder. I mean, that’s got to be a wakeup call. You know, anytime you’re doing enough drugs that you pee your pants, okay, that should be the moment that you start to think, maybe I should dial it back a little bit. We also talk about Taco and the tariff regime. Uh, and uh, it was good. It’s a long hour I got to spend with her over on MSNBC uh, here in my hotel in Nashville. It’s great to see many people out uh here in Nashville supporting the bull work. We appreciate you all very much. Subscribe to us right uh here on this feed on YouTube and hopefully I’ll get to come see you in your city sometime soon. Stick around for me and Nicole and some Elon talk. Tim, I’m going to start with you because I know this is economic in nature and is is about trade, but it’s really about Donald Trump and the absolute tsunami of baloney that comes from his mouth. 90 deals in 90 days is in the same vein as Mexico is going to pay for the wall. There are no deals. There is one framework and in the words of Scott Bessant, one stalled conversation that has commenced with China. That is it. Yeah. Can you have a baloney taco? That doesn’t sound very good. I was trying to mix our food metaphors with the Trump trade deals. Uh look, here’s the thing about all this. It’s it’s all been bluster and fake from the start, right? And like the question was how much of this was he going to be allowed to do by the courts? How crazy was the advisers around him going to let him get? How how bad were they going to let the, you know, bond market get? Um, but it is, you know, the whole Trump MO, you know, on this. It’s the, as you mentioned, it is how he was as a businessman. It’s exactly the same thing that we’re seeing in the Russia Ukraine negotiations. I I was just kind of listening to you talk about how we 90 nails in 90 days and then it’s going to be a few days and a few more days. It’s the same thing as the Russia Ukraine thing. I think he keeps saying it’s going to be two weeks. We’re going to solve it in two weeks and two weeks. He’s been saying two weeks for for 3 months. So like that is just the reality of this. It’s it’s chaotic leadership. um he has a direction that he wants to go which is he wants people to come in and ask for him for favors and he wants to feel powerful and and the tariff uh card allows him to do that. Uh but there’s no actual plan here and I was mostly struck by listening to Bessant over on Fox and it’s like the Chinese will come to the table. He said I think when Trump lets his priorities be known. It’s like what what have we been doing so far? Like they the Chinese don’t know what Trump’s priorities are. I thought we had a deal with the Chinese. Like, it’s all smoke and mirrors because they can’t make any deals because the courts may not allow it and they don’t know what the boss wants dayto day. I mean, Tim, I’m not good at, you know, the acronyms or the letters, but we need something for so dumb it hurts. I mean, what is the point at this point? Trump’s base will go along with anything if he came out and said, “Never mind. I love tariffs so much, but I don’t know. Everyone’s too dumb to do what I’m so smart to know is the right thing. We’ll try something else. What keeps him on this road, which which will only further erode his approval ratings, putting him farther and farther away from his own electorate, which will make it increasingly easier for Republicans as their own elections near and they contemplate losing their seats to speak out and tell the truth about a whole host of things and which distances him from the people that he used to at one point care about and that the people like Jaime Diamond. plan. Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it’s a combination of things. One of them is stubbornness, right? This is he doesn’t want to have to admit failure or defeat. I mean, he could try to spin it, right? Is not that this is something we’ve seen in the past from him. So, I don’t think that’s the only thing, but but I think it’s certainly part of it. Um uh you know, I think his second part is what I mentioned earlier. I I think he likes the power of the tariffs, right? He likes that Tim Cook has to come to the White House and ask him to like grant him an exception when it comes to cell phones, right? Like he he likes that element of of the tariff regime. I think for sure. Uh and I I do think that this is a you you used uh you referenced Art of the Deal earlier. I didn’t know you were a reader of that of that book, Nicole, but this is one of the issues this is one of the issues that he’s been consistent on. Very few since way back then in the 80s, right? like the foreigners are screwing us, right? Back then it was Japan, right? Japan is screwing us. That didn’t really bear out in the ensuing 20 years that Japan had a great economic advantage over us. But but somehow he just kind of transitioned that into China being the boogeyman that is taking advantage of us. So I I think that confluence of things is why, you know, he is still um kind of stubbornly sticking with this at least to a degree, maybe a little less than he was a month ago. Tim, just quickly before we go to break, I mean the the power of the small business owner and um you know the the anxieties of the small business owner is one of the most powerful and potent forces in our politics and it especially is the case with independent and swing voters because for all the reasons Maria is articulating, they are the most sensitive to economic dips. You don’t have to be in a recession for a small business owner to get wiped out. It can just be a dip that affects whatever product or products or whatever distribution they have. Why isn’t there more political alarm for Republicans who represent small business owners? Um, you know, this is a good question. I think I’ve mentioned on the show before, um, I talked to somebody in New Orleans who owns this kind of a chachki shop for tourists, right? And and a lot of the materials there is from China, not all of it. And when the tariffs were at 145, um she was telling me that, you know, this her business is going to go under. Like the business can’t uh continue. Uh now that it’s at 30, I checked back in with her and and basically the feedback is I I still don’t know what to do, right? Like it takes a long time to get this stuff across the ocean. Um and what happens if he has a tantrum and it goes back up to 80 by the time it comes to the port? Then I have to pay it. Then we’re going to go under again. And so, you know, I think there are a lot of individual small businesses that are going through situations like that. Um, and I I think that part of the reason why there isn’t more political alarm is like that all just takes time to filter through. And I think that right now Republicans are still caught in this place where the thing they’re the most scared of is getting on the wrong side of their own voters who want them to be loyal to Trump. Polls continue to show that right now. And so, that is their highest and best purpose. It’s I’m not excusing it, obviously. I find it gross. But I think that’s just the political reality of Republicans on the Hill. And I I think until you know the P I think the pain has to be ratcheted up more, I guess is my point on the small businesses before that calculation starts to change. But I think it’s a real real risk um as as we you know get look to the months ahead. The president is the sole head of the executive branch. She’s the only officer in the entire government that’s elected by the entire American people. Democracy cannot function. In fact, democracy does not exist at all. If each action the president takes, foreign policy, diplomatic, military, national security, has to be individually approved by 700 district court judges, that’s democracy. So, if there’s 15 communist crazy judges on the court that each of them as a team working together can block and freeze each and every executive action. Joe Biden was allowed by that same court system, some of them are judges, 20 million illegal foreigners. Why did Trump put these crazy communist judges, as you call them, on the You heard You heard You heard President Trump himself say that the Federal Society and Leonard Leo has created a broken system for judicial vetting to be a fly on Leonard Leo’s wall today. Who’s going to auction that off and put that money toward all the programs killed by US ID Tim Miller? Let’s unpack this for a second. Um, there’s a point where where Stephen Miller says that’s democracy and he means it with a question mark, but it’s actually that’s democracy with a period. And the judges include a lot of judges appointed by Republicans. I mean, as many Republicanapp appointed judges have deemed illegal Trump’s moves as judges appointed by anybody else. This is a serious escalation in their attack and their war on the judges. What does it say to you? It is. I’m I’m happy you mentioned that because I was going to say it too. At some level it’s like do you even have do should we even take seriously this administration’s comments on democracy and and uh the uh you know they’re they’re pretending to care about democracy when they literally tried to overturn the election in 2020. Uh we shouldn’t. But I I think it’s an important exercise though to just say specifically what we are talking about because liberal democracy not liberal like left versus right but liberal democracy the system of of government uh that has governed the west that has governed America uh since our founding is based on yes votes of the people but also the rule of law also checks and balances. I mean, Stephen Miller knows this, but it’s just important to say it clearly like this is this is the system that undergurs the Constitution uh that has allowed America to thrive um over, you know, uh uh since its founding. So, I I do think that’s important. They’re trying to cheat and do this thing where they’re like, “Oh, democracy means that since Donald Trump got elected president, he can do whatever he wants because the people elected him.” A and you know for folks who aren’t that schooled in it um or who you know have an interest in that being the case I I can think that could be a compelling argument that that isn’t true and they’re doing it in a very pernicious way in order to um do things illegally attack the judiciary and essentially try to turn Donald Trump into kind of a soft autocrat in the model of what we see from you know Orban or Erdogan or or some in other other countries around the world. We’re back with Tim Miller. I mean, Megan’s an incredible reporter, and I feel like I was hearing for the first time that SpaceX gave him advanced warning before they were doing drug testing. Um, this feels like a a tip above the water with a whole lot more story underneath the surface. Yeah, it was truly a remarkable story uh that I devoured immediately this morning and uh it was interesting uh to hear, you know, a couple of layer additional layers there um uh from Megan. So, kudos to her on the reporting. I I you know I I I guess I have two thoughts about this. One is kind of comedy and one is is pretty tragedy. Uh uh more like tragedy. The comedy is like you know I I have pretty libertine views when it comes to people’s personal lives and what they want to do. Um if you’re using so much ketamine that you have bladder control issues like it might be time for a lifestyle change, you know, might be time to consider yoga or something else. So that is true what she’s reporting. I mean that is that’s way too much ketamine. I think we can just leave it at that. Um the sad the tragedy part of this is this is that this guy whatever the the details are true is a is a total megalomaniac. He’s the richest man in the world. You’ve seen his power and influence. He could have used it for anything. He could use it for good. There obviously areas where he has real expertise. You know um you know particularly when it comes to some of the stuff around what SpaceX has done that other companies been unable able to do. the fact that he used all of this power and influence to be the tip of the spear on on a just horrific gutting of aid for the poorest and most vulnerable people from throughout the world. A type of aid that that we that at a bipartisan level, both Republican and Democratic administrations for our whole lives have been committed to. And and the fact that this guy gets in there with his pill box allegedly and decides that like the thing to do is, you know, is slash and gut and eliminate, you know, this this critical medical aid, uh, this critical food aid and and support for the the least the most vulnerable people all the way throughout the world. I that is the thing that just really makes you sad and angry at the same time. What’s interesting um is that a lot of the reporting and Megan described it sitting here comes from people who were who are not his critics, people not like you and me, but people who who were his friends. Let me read that to you. As Musk jumped into the political arena, some people who knew him worried about his frequent drug use, mood swings, and fixation on having more children. This account of his behavior is based on private messages obtained by the New York Times as well as interviews with more than a dozen people who’ve known or worked with him. Quote, Elon has pushed the boundaries of his bad behavior more and more said Philip Low, a neuroscientist and one-time friend of Musk’s who criticized him for his Nazilike gesture at a rally. In a January newsletter explaining where their friendship ended, Sam Harris, a public intellectual, wrote that Musk had used his social media platform to defame people and promote lies. quote, “There’s something seriously wrong with his moral compass, if not his perception of reality,” Dr. Harris wrote. Tim, you get the last word. Uh, well, before the break, you quote, it’s from Sam Harris and and I had him on the podcast after he wrote that Substack post about his friendship with Elon and how it fell apart and and his main point is something that we can all see. It’s just like regardless of what he’s doing recreationally, like the posts that he’s putting out there on his social media feed that he’s forcing everybody to see through their for you page are totally unhinged. And so he either is knowingly spreading all of these lies or he has lost touch with reality to such a degree that that he can’t tell truth from fiction. I I mean he is reposting the craziest people on the internet, the most malicious. And so that behavior is unacceptable regardless of what is underlying it. And and we were able to all see that, you know, without the really impressive reporting for the New York Times. And and I think that like goes to show you just how irresponsible he was during his short tenure um in the White House. Yeah, it’s it’s what’s public facing that’s the story. The reporting is just some something that we we we now have learned underneath. Um Tim Miller, thank you so much for spending the whole hour with us. They love it when you do that.

Tim Miller joins Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to react to the bombshell New York Times report on Elon Musk’s alleged drug use, erratic behavior, and alarming influence over U.S. policy.

They also discuss Trump’s dangerous push to dismantle legal checks on executive power and how his tariff chaos is affecting small businesses.

Watch Deadline: White House — https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house

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