r/politics • u/Hafiz_TNR ✔ Verified • 8h ago
Possible Paywall Elon Musk and Trump Were Both in on Ukraine Starlink Shut-Off
https://newrepublic.com/post/216758/elon-musk-trump-ukraine-starlink-restrictions858
u/M4hkn0 Illinois 8h ago
That a single unaccountable man can control the direction of war in the way that Musk can should be cause for great concern.
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u/Throwawaylikeme90 8h ago
Forget AI, Starlink should be immediately nationalized whoever is next in office.
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u/mister_buddha 7h ago
Since she's here illegally, we should seize and nationalize Tesla, Space-X, and Twitter, too.
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u/Throwawaylikeme90 7h ago
I’m fine with forced selloffs of those things and robust investigation into any illegal activities therein, and probably forced breakup kinda like they did with the telephone companies when I was a kid.
Maybe keep spacex and give it to nasa though. Having it led by an actually functional agency would prevent a metric fucktons of waste and pollution because they don’t just facefuck billions of dollars worth of spacecraft so a narcissist can get a scoop for the media and an ego boost when something exploded.
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u/afriendincanada 8h ago
Can we just regulate it? As a common carrier?
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u/hackingdreams 5h ago
Can we just regulate it? As a common carrier?
That's really worked for reining in Comcast and AT&T.
Starlink needs to be taken out of Elmo's hands, period. If we're using it for defense purposes, we can't let a single billionaire choose the nation's defense priorities.
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u/PoliticsLeftist 7h ago
Because billion dollar companies never get around regulations or buy politicians who are willing to get rid of existing regulations.
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u/LaughingJackStudio 6h ago
There is no perfect endpoint where vigilance against corruption gets to go away.
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u/PoliticsLeftist 6h ago
Then I'd rather the starting point be a democratically elected government that isn't a bunch of assholes running these important things instead of the starting point being an oligarchy where wealthy assholes buy off rich assholes to make them all more money they don't know what to do with.
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u/LaughingJackStudio 5h ago
The starting point was 250 years ago. Fighting corruption is a never ending battle.
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u/UngodlyPain 5h ago
Honestly it should be internationalized. Give control of it to the UN, with strict rules around it to ensure its openly available to those who need it.
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u/NextDoctorWho12 7h ago
So trump would be in charge of it? That is not good either.
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u/Throwawaylikeme90 6h ago
Did you not read “next in office?” It’s a short sentence, I believe in you bro.
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u/nathism 2h ago
Nationalizing it would still give whoever is in charge the authority to do what they will with it. I seem to recall the discussion years ago about Obama getting access to the internet kill switch.
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u/TemporarySun314 Europe 8h ago
Because the US government is totally in favor of ukraine?
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u/Throwawaylikeme90 8h ago
No, because it’s a technology that shouldn’t be in private hands. Any tech that can singlehandedly shift war tides in other hemispheres belongs in under tighter control than personal whims and market forces, let alone that fucks.
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u/TheMightyTywin 8h ago
I mean market forces wouldn’t have shut this down. This is 100% because trump and musk are in the Epstein files and compromised by russia
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u/Throwawaylikeme90 8h ago
you lack imagination if you can’t see it being used in other theaters of war by people who stand to profit from one side or another losing. That is most likely happening here already, as trump decided he needed to make a deal for diesel with Russia and Ukraine having starlink helps them operate against Russian refineries. This whole thing literally could be as simple as “gas go up.” Which is in fact a market force.
We don’t know that’s the totality of it, but it’s absolutely a significant portion of it.
Your analysis is simplistic, you’re gonna run into trouble trying to parse information if you can’t keep your eyes open in the wind dude.
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u/midwest_riverman 8h ago
No because it’s an obvious threat to national security regardless of what nation you are talking about. If I was France I would never depend on starlink for anything critical. If I were Japan same thing. And if I’m the Us obviously I wouldn’t either.
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u/here_forthe_lore 8h ago
Billionaires and politicians playing games with battlefield communications costs real lives in real time.
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u/MyDadsGlassesCase 8h ago
It's ironic that the Ukraine war has probably globally been the best advert for Starlinks functionality while, at the same time, has been a massive red flag for the whim of a petulant man child
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u/ShitBirdingAround 8h ago
Trump and Musk are evil. And they're apparently working on Russia's behalf, and it's making America weaker and less safe. Treason?
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u/otherwisepandemonium Wisconsin 8h ago
Trump loves Russia, China, Israel, and North Korea, but will tell you in the same breath that Canada and the EU are evil. To me, that's all I need to know, but Republican voters would still line up pretending Trump is "America First" though.
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u/coconutpiecrust 8h ago
The US at some point started glorifying the worst of the worst, just because they are good at hoarding wealth. Hoarding wealth is just that - hoarding, it’s a mental illness like any other hoarding. Stop glorifying these people, stop worshipping them and giving them power.
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u/rat_penis 7h ago
He money gives them the power, the worship is just trying to cozy up to power.
Take away his money and he's just another douche. His fortune is a fluke, not an a assessment of his acumen.
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u/coconutpiecrust 6h ago
I still think that it’s people enabling them. Imagine Musk trying to do this alone. He walks up to ann employee and says “slow down starlink in Ukraine” and they just ignore him because, you know, it’s not the right thing to do. That’s it. That’s all it takes, a lack of enablers. It doesn’t matter how much money he has if no one is willing to do his bidding.
And yes, he’s just a wealthy 4-chan troll.
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u/Bubbles_2025 6h ago
It all has to do with this: U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies
‘The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.
The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.’
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u/peetnice 6h ago
I agree that's their longer term playbook, but it's usually at least a little more subtle. I guess when Ukraine knocked out all their Twitter and Truth Social traffic from the Russian bot farm, they took it personally and made a much more obvious play.
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u/2ndprize Florida 8h ago
Trump is a narcissist who evaluates every decision based on how it works for him. Musk is some sort of autistic who doesn't value human life and sees everything as transactional.
It's a horrible combination. If some decent person had balanced the equation for musk he might not be so awful
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u/BlueFlob 8h ago
He's a president for sale to the highest bidder.
Turns out bad people have a lot of money and no scruples
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u/Blackthorn79 7h ago
I believe Musk is getting high on his own farts and listening to Gork in an attempt to gain as much power as possible.
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u/eskimospy212 8h ago
Haha of course the answer is they are both liars.
This makes the most sense though. Trump is too stupid to know that’s something that can be done, after all.
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u/Hafiz_TNR ✔ Verified 8h ago
Tech CEO Elon Musk reportedly approached President Trump on slowing down his Starlink communications service in Ukraine earlier this week, contradicting both Musk’s statement that it was Trump’s idea and Trump’s statement that he has no idea who did it.
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u/Masterhorus 8h ago
Arguably, Trump's dementia addled brain may have actually caused him to not know
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u/wheatgivesmeshits Texas 8h ago
A narcissist doesn't need dementia to reshape their memory, the narcissism does it for them. It's why it's impossible to convince a narcissist they can do anything wrong. Their ego will literally make them believe the lie is the truth. It's also why it's so easy for them to gaslight others.
I don't know how much of it is voluntary, but the only real way to deal with a narcissist is not to deal with them at all. Sadly that's harder to do when they are the president of the damn country.
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u/SanchoPandas Oregon 8h ago
Or, if you're cunning, you can feed the narcissism and profit from it. Give this particular narcissist a trophy and he'll do anything for you.
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u/wheatgivesmeshits Texas 8h ago
You run the risk of becoming their supply, which is the absolute worst place to be.
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u/Dense_Pasttime_3114 8h ago
Remember muskrat and his DOGE goons dismantled USAID, they cut off food aid to some of the worlds poorest people without a second thought
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u/GanjasTriforce 8h ago
Those fresh college grad chucklefucks who casually stole Social Security data? Those DOGE goons?
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u/GanjasTriforce 8h ago
Why do billionaires love Putin so much lmfao
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u/queezzeenart 8h ago
They're all on the pee tape.
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u/Comfortable-Hat8162 4h ago
Pretty sure the pee tape and child rape are to distract that they actually eat babies.
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u/justherefor23andme 8h ago
Because they wanna be like him. They don't want to be accountable to anybody.
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u/Kevundoe 8h ago
Usually, in movies, they have very charismatic dystopian leaders… why are we stuck with those two?
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u/calgeorge 7h ago
Constantly thinking about that article titled something like, "I always knew the world would fall to techno-fascists, I just didn't expect them to be such losers."
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u/OriginalChildBomb 7h ago
Because those things are written by creatives, and also works of fiction that provide rosier views of reality than we tend to actually get.
It's just like how we don't tend to have many witty, charming, well-spoken but ultimately flawed killers... in the real world, they're mostly just stupid, violent assholes with a lack of self-control. They don't have intelligent schemes or play mind games or have nemeses or something. They just hurt and kill folks.
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u/Thias_Thias 2h ago
Because movies are fictional fantasies and this is the real world. Where fascists are always whiny losers.
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u/HMTMKMKM95 Canada 8h ago
This whole thing makes the notion of buying F-35s or any US-controlled hardware of importance a non-starter for me. I don't want the defence of my country undercut because y'all elected the wrong monkey to office. Fuck that.
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u/Literally_Laura 7h ago
“Musk was reportedly scared that he would face a backlash from consumers in Europe.”
Anyone giving Musk money… You know what you are doing.
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u/scruffmonkey 7h ago
Consumer backlash should be the least of the fuckers worries, he's intervened in an active war for the aggressor on multiple occasions. He needs to consider that the backlash he will face at some point will be highly kinetic.
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u/Literally_Laura 6h ago
From your typing fingers to the ears of whichever deity will finally fucking intervene…
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u/scruffmonkey 6h ago
it really is that old attributed to Mark Twain quote, paraphrasing it "I don't wish the man dead, but I'll happily read his obituary"
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u/PinkCupcke007 4h ago
Trump is a Russian asset
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u/Unlikely-Star-2696 3h ago
Russian asset Trump and Musk the Nazi saluter hates the Jewish President of Ucraine, so easy to collude against the Ucrainian people. Probably Hegseth was included too. They don't care Putin is bombing markets, civil buildings, hospitals. They are like Netanyahu.
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u/chrispy_fried 2h ago
US media is owned by Trump sycophants. They simply won’t report this and most of the country won’t realise the significance of this story. Both Musk and Trump work for Russia, which in Trump’s case is treason.
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u/Capitalclysm 8h ago
Providing aid and comfort to an adversary as well as betraying an allied nation and the whole of NATO sure seems like a treasonous thing to do.
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u/tenebre 8h ago
Musk genuinely doesn't understand that Trump won't always be there to protect him and that a very large percentage of Americans are tired of his bullshit.
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u/Present_Influence315 7h ago
Sure but what are those Americans going to do to him? Nothing. And he knows that. You have students in the EU rioting for better education - and here it's *crickets* for matters far, far worse.
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u/YourVirgil Washington 7h ago
Nah, Musk totally gets that Trump is transient. Musk's goal is for the American state that Trump currently helms to be steered as far as possible into all of the techno-feudalist solutions that Musk controls, just like Starshield/Starlink. It's why we can't talk about the fucking space program without getting SpaceX in our mouths, and why the State Department nearly blew $400 million on armored Teslas last year - in fact, this is why you may have noticed the weird commingling between the traditionally lefty energy solutions that Tesla represents with what seem like incongruent right-wing sensibilities. This is what it looks like, in real time, as Musk continues to "play both sides." The American electorate has two plays available, a Democrat administration, or a Republican administration, and he has used the former to get to this point with the latter, where so fucking much of the government is built on his platform: defense, science, homeland security, freaky-ass Grok threaded through it all...
What's Trump's successor going to do, the hard work of cutting all the contracts with Musk on ideological lines that make no financial sense, or find some mealy-mouthed excuse to keep Uncle Sam at the teat?
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u/DblGravy 8h ago
For me, this goes beyond being on the wrong side of history. We've become one of the world's bad actors.
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u/LoyalOle 8h ago
This is fucking horrible, a billionaire can sentence a country to death by pressing a button.
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u/Terrible-Time-Travel 5h ago
They both need removing from the world stage.
Put them away and lose the keys.
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u/mtnclimbingotter02 I voted 8h ago
They both should be tried and thrown in jail for aiding our enemies.
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u/3Quondam6extanT9 8h ago
Accountability is coming.
There is going to be a massive reckoning on the way.
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u/moderatenerd 5h ago
Now its confirmed, Trump recently said he and Musk were not involved. So everything Trump says is projection.
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u/imjustnotready 8h ago
Look how they bring people together. For the past 24 hours people have been saying they are both full of shit and it is true.
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u/RamonaQ-JunieB 8h ago
Two of the biggest asshole liars burning down the world together. A match made in the depths of hell.
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u/Unfair_Web_8275 8h ago
I know he’s done a dozen things that would have gotten him impeached like last time, but this feels like he’s deliberately trying to play his “greatest hits”.
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u/HVACdaddy Kansas 8h ago
The real question isn't whether Musk and Trump agree on everything. It's why two people with enormous influence over public opinion and policy can treat a war affecting millions of lives like another political argument. Ukraine deserves serious leadership, not billionaire egos competing for attention.
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u/Patman350 8h ago
Man. This would be a huge scandal for literally any other administration. This could have been the plot to Tom Clancy novel in the 90s. In Trump world it’s just another day…
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u/Ex-maven New York 8h ago
I feel pretty certain the Russians were directly involved in coordinating the service cut-back with those two as well
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u/relion23 7h ago
Wouldn’t surprise me if part of the “deal” to get Russian oil was the slow down of Ukraine starlink
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Both of these people need “bots” to be on the internet too for personal gain.
They are both evil. They both need to be put away.
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u/inalcanzable 7h ago
And Ukraine will keep doing what they’re doing with them server buildings. These two dipshits are losing their bots
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u/neovenator250 6h ago
Treason over and over. Prosecute, jail them, seize their family assets and nationalize them. It's all stolen from us anyway
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u/DirtyDee78 5h ago edited 5h ago
Funny enough, Trump just lied and said neither of them had anything to do with it. Imagine that lol
"On Friday, President Donald Trump denied that he or Elon Musk were responsible for restricted Starlink access in Ukraine, stating, "And from what I understand, it's the same as it's always been.""
They're probably going to say that it was Starshield that was shut down, not Starlink, and people who can't be bothered to do their own research will believe it.
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u/Realistic-Raisin2812 5h ago
These people have to be dealt with. E-loon will be easy. The US justice system will deal with him. Trump will have to be turned over to the ICC.
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u/twodogsonebaggie 6h ago
It’s pathetic the american people as a whole don’t care enough to prosecute these war criminals.
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u/Old-Try117 5h ago
I'm so tired of these ignorant comments. Either a child or a bot, but no human with more than 1 brain cell voted for this moron. The majority of Americans are victims.
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u/bj-blazkowicz-1911 5h ago
My bad, let me go to the local judge and file a lawsuit. Sorry I didn't personally sue these war criminals earlier.
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u/Hootinger 5h ago
Oh man, I know there was something I forgot to do.... I guess I just didn't care enough to call the police on Trump and his cabinet.
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u/bj-blazkowicz-1911 5h ago
What they are doing is ILLEGAL we should have contacted the authorities.
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u/nasorrty346tfrgser America 8h ago
It is 2024 all over again, these two men both knows that if they are out of power and money; they would be instantly in jail. So they would do everything together to keep themselves in the driver seat, including causing tons of death
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u/NecessaryWater5568 7h ago
Vile, pair of evil bastards. History will never forget or forgive this backstabbing act.
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u/diverareyouokay 7h ago
Plus, the government is being deliberately misleading.
Trump disabled StarShield (the special StarLink used by offensive Ukrainian operations and totally controlled by the US government). When asked why they disabled it, Trump and team said “we didn’t disable StarLink for Ukraine”. Which is technically true, as Musk controls that, and it’s used for defensive Ukrainian operations.. but StarShield is totally distinct, and they did shut that down. Only POTUS or his administration can shut down SS.
Although regarding that issue, I also blame large American media orgs, as they seem to conflate StarLink and StarShield, and didn’t question his answer. If a random redditor like me knows the difference, I would fully expect professional journalists covering the topic to also know the distinction. It’s only in comparatively smaller media that the distinction seems to be getting made.
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u/VeterinarianOk582 7h ago
Putin paid them or promised them land or mineral rights. It all comes down to money with them.
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u/Total-Mushroom-9614 6h ago
You know how you can tell they were in on it. Because they keep saying how much they weren’t in on it.
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u/PapasauruaRex 6h ago
I wouldn't be surprised much if the reason musk is helping putin is because he told musk he'd invite him to his parties and circle.
We gotta remember, in high school elon wore a damn trench coat and looked like that typical edgy teenager who thinks he's a bad ass. That mindset still hasn't left him as he's stuck in that moment in life and will not grow up. He most likely thinks being part of a "league of villains" is a dream come true.
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u/Unlikely-Star-2696 3h ago
Keep buying Teslas....and suporting data centers...you are helping them too.
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u/BitsInTheBlood New Jersey 2h ago
Elon dropped how much on the elections? Of course he's pissed the bots have been silenced.
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u/VermicelliHorror2332 5h ago
lol no shit?
Trump and Musk have Putin's hand up their ass, why do we have stupid articles from the NYT or Washington Post casting doubt all the fucking time for the last 10 years?
"Is Trump too friendly with Putin?"
"Could Trump's association with Putin be bad for Ukraine?"
"Elon Musk says he has 'weekly' phone calls with Putin, is Elon a maverick genius or playing hardball?"
On and on and fucking on until we're all in the death camps.
"Are Nazi death camps really a place were people die? Or is it just liberal hysteria?"
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u/Bishopjones2112 5h ago
Because America is a traitor to humanity. Its own citizens, and the world. Fuck you america
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u/dakotanorth8 8h ago
This is so stupidly childish with the back and forth. The richest man in history and the president of the United States going “nah ah!”
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u/Money_Visual_5227 7h ago
Yet again the CEO class playing with people’s lives and taking no responsibility.
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u/ramdom-ink 7h ago
So after Musk getting major blowback and horrendous publicity (rightly so) over DOGE, election interference, possible (most definitely) collusion to cheating and tampering in 2024, that Salute, and ‘taking a break’ from his (unelected) government involvement…Elon is back in the game and doing whatever nefarious and massive destabilizing influence he can get away with. Yeah, this tracks.
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u/racedownhill 7h ago
The bot traffic drop off fucked with both Musk’s and Trump’s disinformation campaigns.
Even before the 2024 election, Musk said “I’ll be sent to prison if Trump doesn’t win” and whatever he did back then is orders of magnitudes worse now.
In Musk’s case there is also the dramatic drop off in Twitter daily active users, which again brings up a question for advertisers on the platform. “Musk, are you actively involved in creating and funding bots to inflate Twitter’s audience numbers?”
In any reasonable world, that’s a major criminal offense. Still, Trump may be able to bully American companies into buying ad space on Twitter regardless, but the US is only 350M out of an 8B global population.
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u/MAVERICK910 7h ago
Interesting how this all happened soon after Ukraine started targeting data centers and the sudden drop in bots
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u/dadbodking 7h ago
I'm as surprised about this as any other person who's had 0 thinking skills until now
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u/fr0z3nf1r3 7h ago
Don't these idiots know the pee pee tapes have no power in a post-ai world?
You can stop appeasing your master now.
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u/ogreofnorth 6h ago
The funny thing that Trump doesnt realize is that there are tons of things only the President can authorize. He can’t hide the fact he “didnt make the decision”. He is the only one who can. So everytime he tries to hide where he has done something stupid, everyone knows whose fault it is. We just have a Congress who doesn’t want to do anything about it
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u/ImaginationToForm2 6h ago edited 6h ago
Thanks, Sherlock. Trump made "deal" for diesel. Musk lost his fanbots.
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