Politics

Tim Walz has figured out how to handle Elon Musk

Published

1 year ago

November 11, 2024

Tim Walz has figured out how to handle Elon Musk

Behind his generally genial persona, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has got a sharp tongue on him. He was particularly cutting toward former President Donald Trump on Tuesday when he appeared alongside former President Barack Obama to herald the start of early voting in Wisconsin. But the Democratic vice presidential nominee also had a new target in his sights: chaotic billionaire turned GOP megadonor Elon Musk.

Specifically, Walz took aim at Trump’s promise to appoint Musk to lead a new “government efficiency commission” if he wins. “[Musk] could spend millions to make more than $10 billion on the back end,” Walz told the crowd. “Donald Trump, in front of the eyes of the public, is promising corruption.”

In funneling his fortune into trying to get Trump elected, it is all too clear that the owner of Tesla and SpaceX is hoping to profit handsomely as a result.

It’s a sharp elbow from Walz — and one that Musk deserves to catch. In funneling his fortune into trying to get Trump elected, it is all too clear that the owner of Tesla and SpaceX is hoping to profit handsomely as a result. But in doing so, he’s also made himself a ready-made plutocratic villain for Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris in the closing days of the campaign.

Musk is one of the richest people in the world in no small part thanks to the extremely lucrative government contracts that he holds. Over the last decade, NASA has depended more and more on his SpaceX company to launch rockets into space. Likewise, the Department of Defense has agreements with Musk to launch satellites into orbit. Altogether, according to a New York Times analysis, those contracts are worth more than $15 billion over the last 10 years — and that’s just one of the companies he owns alongside Tesla and X.

Those defense ties have held in place even as Musk has gone off the deep end politically, posting approvingly about racist memes and giving credence to conspiracy theories about election fraud. As part of his ideological transformation from moderate to reactionary, he’s also opted to yoke his cart to Trump in a big way. He hosted an extremely flattering, borderline simpering conversation with the former president on X’s audio platform. And as he’s moved to the right, so too has the clientele of the social media platform, which has helped boost Musk’s most toxic tweets to a captivated audience.

Musk has also already channeled more than $75 million into his America PAC, which has been tapped to handle a large chunk of voter outreach for the GOP ahead of Election Day. (Just how effective that strategy has been will become apparent soon, but the signs aren’t particularly encouraging for longtime Republican strategists.) He appeared at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania last month (spawning one of the most memeable images of this election) and will likely do so again at Madison Square Garden this weekend.

Trump in return has praised Musk during speeches and appearances on Fox News, even as he’s reportedly disparaged the tech titan behind closed doors. Moreover, Trump has taken a shine to Musk’s proposal to essentially audit the federal government looking for programs to cut. But Musk’s statements show that the main goal would be cutting government regulations — the exact kinds of regulations that have made SpaceX, X and Tesla the subject of federal investigations, major recalls, lawsuits and fines. As The New York Times put it: “Instead of entering this new role as a neutral observer, Mr. Musk would be passing judgment on his own customers and regulators.”

It’s a level of self-policing that would put even the robber barons of the Gilded Age to shame.

It’s a level of self-policing that would put even the robber barons of the Gilded Age to shame. In just one example, Musk has complained about the Environmental Protection Agency telling him he can’t dump polluted water from rocket launches in Texas. If given official power, it would be simple for him to advise Trump to shutter entirely that section of the EPA, in support of his fantasy of going to Mars. The best-case scenario is that any commission Musk heads is only able to provide recommendations without the power to carry them out. But with Trump at the helm again, it would be foolish to assume that anything will be business as usual, especially if it comes with a GOP-controlled Congress and a Supreme Court willing to back him up.

This has all lined up perfectly for Walz and Harris to hammer Musk in the closing days of the race. It was Walz’s willingness to label Trump and other Republicans as “weird” that helped boost his national profile this summer. Since Harris tapped him as her running mate, he’s brought his plainspoken, yet devastating, attack lines to the campaign trail. And when a recent poll shows that the young men Trump is courting are less likely to support him after learning about Musk’s endorsement, it’s clear that Walz is on to something.

Over the next few days, along with their broader closing message that Trump is unfit for office, there is an opportunity for Harris and Walz to call out Trump for his subservience toward the top 1% of wealthy Americans. Where Democrats have been surging in small-dollar donations, Trump is essentially tapped out, forcing him to rely more heavily on megadonors like Musk. Where the Harris-Walz ticket has offered up plans to help the middle class, Trump wants to hand over the government to people who want to make themselves even richer.

It’s a message that Musk himself can’t help but drive home, just by being himself. He’s also showing no signs of slowing down his decision to put himself front and center in the waning days of the campaign. As such, Musk has got nobody to blame but himself for Walz bringing the full brunt of Minnesota nice to bear against him.

Hayes Brown

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for BLN Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.

Politics

2028 Dem veteran? Uncle Sam wants you.

Published

12 hours ago

March 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In the 15 days since President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on Iran, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is approaching nearly a dozen media appearances, offering his often visceral reaction to the conflict.

Gallego, a 46-year-old combat veteran who deployed to Iraq as an infantryman in 2005, has emerged as a blunt, clear voice for the Democratic Party on foreign policy, speaking as someone whose own generation experienced the forever wars.

There he was on BLN’s “The Source with Kaitlin Collins” saying Secretary of State Marco Rubio was doing “CYA” and noting that the “MAGA base is pissed.” There he was sitting down with the AP speaking “as someone who lives with PTSD,” adding “it’s not been an easy week.” And there he was on Derek Thompson’s podcast, speaking about “going town to town searching for insurgents” 21 years ago, “but there was no clear direction of what victory looked like, what the end goal was, what was going to be the after-action report on Iraq.”

Gallego isn’t alone. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a Navy captain who flew combat missions during Operation Desert Storm in 1990, has also racked up a run of high-profile media appearances, as has former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a U.S. Navy Reserve intelligence officer who deployed to Afghanistan. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who served in Afghanistan in the Army’s 82nd Airborne, went on local radio this week to link Americans’ affordability woes to the war.

In a year after many Democrats pined for a metaphorical fighter, the party is now having a conversation with itself about whether it needs a literal fighter — a veteran who can speak with credibility on issues of war and national security.

In an interview with Blue Light News, Gallego spoke of “dodging bullets, IEDs, RPGs, clearing towns and then coming back to the same towns with insurgents” and of “losing friends and still not understanding what the end goal was the whole time.”

“It leaves a mark on you, and you start seeing it happening again, you know, you don’t really think about the politics,” Gallego said. “You think about the people who are going to be potentially dying. And that’s why I think I was not hesitant to speak my mind on that.”

Later this month in San Antonio, Texas, Gallego will join VoteVets Action for its third town hall featuring potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates, promising “fresh voices to the national conversation — those who have worn the uniform and served alongside us, who connect with everyday Americans others can’t,” according to a promotional video. (They’ve also done town halls with Buttigieg and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin.)

“On foreign policy, the Dems need a candidate who is seen as strong/tough — not in rhetoric or bravado political platitudes but who conveys a sense of judgement and resolve with which voters connect instinctively,” said Doug Wilson, the former assistant secretary of Defense for Public Affairs during the Obama administration and co-lead of Buttigieg’s 2020 foreign policy team.

The “Iran war underscores the need” for such a candidate, Wilson added.

Whomever the Democrats select as their nominee could potentially face a Situation Room-steeped ticket deep with national security credentials, including a Marine Iraq war veteran in Vice President JD Vance or Rubio, with his secretary of State experience.

Depending on how the many conflicts the U.S. is engaged in at the moment resolve, that experience could cut against them.

But right now, Democrats who can match those bona fides have some currency others without them can’t.

“That’s obviously going to be helpful to them,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way. “It’s gonna be a big part of what they’re talking about for the next little while. But you know, how long does it last? We just don’t know, right? In my professional lifetime, foreign policy stuff and national security has mattered in a presidential race once — in 2004. That’s it. Otherwise, it comes up, but it’s not driving the conversation.”

Some potential Democratic candidates without such credentials have still managed to break through amid the Iran news cycle. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) has said the White House has treated aspects of the war “as a video game,” in a clip gaining traction on X. “When American service members killed in action are returning to the United States in flagged-draped coffins, and even more Americans have lost limbs or suffered terrible brain injuries or are fighting for their lives, this White House treats war like a game, and it’s a disgrace,” Ossoff said.

When asked whether military service is an essential for the party’s eventual nominee, Gallego acknowledged there is a benefit for someone who can “speak with that type of credibility.”

“I’m not the type of person that’s like, ‘you have to be a veteran — Iraq War veteran,’” Gallego said. “This is a democracy. We’re still one, and there’s a lot of people that can bring valuable experience and knowledge. But you know, someone that actually has a nuanced understanding of foreign policy; that doesn’t go to the total knee-jerk reactionism that sometimes we see where we go to the point of, you know, isolationism; or the other way, where we go to full neocon. There needs to be a very balanced way to how we approach the world.”

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