Comment by lukan
3 days ago
Words have meaning. He said he does not hate him. That does not mean he likes him. Hate is a very strong emotion. Dislike is a much less stronger emotion. That is not all the same.
(I also don't hate Elon, but I still don't like him or consider doing buisness with him in any way)
USAID was a highly effective and efficient operation. Musk dismembered it, leading to untold misery, death, and the spread of infectious diseases. I think this is reason enough to hate Musk.
Also, keep in mind that what Musk did was a violation of the separation of powers in the Constitution, so he simultaneously killed a program which saved lives while he also started the U.S. on the road to authoritarianism.
https://www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2025/tracking-anticipat...
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/07/01/nx-s1...
The race to the highest body count looks like Elon in first, RFK jr. second, and Stephen Miller a distant third but looking like he'll finish strong once the camps are fully operating.
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I would argue without Musk and his Twitter/richest man of the world power, Trump would have never been elected in the first place, which would have prevented this and a lot of other bad things. Still, I don't hate him. (Hate is not a condition I think is healthy or constructive or something I should explain myself not feeling it)
> Hate is not a condition I think is healthy or constructive
I agree with you on this. Strong emotions impede our ability to be creative and problem-solve.
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This administration has added more debt than any previous. So this talk about lowering debt is pure bullshit.
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> Musk did nothing except make recommendations. The executive branch took concrete action.
The bullshit is strong in this one. Yes, Musk & DOGE acted: https://www.epi.org/policywatch/doge-shuts-down-usaid
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> Musk did nothing except make recommendations. The executive branch took concrete action.
Can you think of a “recommendation” that wasn’t acted upon?
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Yeah, if it weren't for USAID then the CIA wouldn't have had any cover for smuggling those weapons and would have just given up.
The argument is like saying "criminals used this bank to transfer stolen money so the bank is bad and I'm glad they were shut down." USAID has done far more good than the harm they were exploited to enable.
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Not sure if this is intended to be critical or supportive. A lot of Americans supported these types of efforts to oppose the Soviet Union. There’s a Tom Hanks movie about it, for example.
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And a vaccination programme was used as a front when searching for Bin Ladin. That doesn’t mean that vaccine programs are bad. Anything can be used as a front
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