How We Triggered Elon
What The Bulwark will never do
Hey guys,
Elon Musk, our new unelected overlord, is mad at my friend Bill Kristol.
Very, very mad.
And because this is the world we live in now, his hordes of online minions are mad, too.
Let me explain. Elon has been amplifying several tweets alleging (falsely) that a group Bill and I run received funding from USAID, the government agency he took a chainsaw to during Trump’s second week in office.
I can’t possibly say this in simpler terms: They’re just making it all up. The conspiracy theory is obviously silly—but that isn’t what’s important here. What’s important is this:
Elon thinks that by siccing an online mob on us, he can intimidate us into silence. Into just going away.
It doesn’t stop with online harassment. Implicit in all of this is the threat of real-world violence, which hangs over anyone on whom these goons decide to turn their ire. Today it’s us; tomorrow it’ll be somebody else.
This is a first for us as Americans. Never before has a presidential administration so openly wielded the power of the federal government as a blunt-force instrument to be used against fellow Americans.
They do this because it works. Just look at Mark Zuckerberg and other tech oligarchs who bent the knee. Look at Jeff Bezos, who prohibited the Washington Post from issuing an endorsement against Trump. Or ABC News, which paid him off in a lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos.
Here’s my promise: The Bulwark will never do this.
We will keep fighting this nonsense, telling the truth, and not caring how many Twitter mobs Elon sends our way. Because the authoritarians only win if you let them. So unlike the Big Tech lickspittles, we’re going to keep doing our thing and calling out Trump’s and Elon’s BS.
At The Bulwark, we have dozens of newsletters, podcasts, and more YouTube content than you know what to do with. We can only offer all this—most of it completely free—thanks to our paying subscribers.
If you’re with us, now’s the time to subscribe. We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines, hoping it all passes. It’s time to get in the game. Are you with us?
Sarah Longwell
Publisher, The Bulwark