Probably About 600 Days Until Vance Is President Now
It seems far-fetched, but in 18 months, we could be at a federal government ostensibly controlled by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and J.D. as a puppet.
Just to gain some more clarity upfront on this topic, it seems like two notable things are going on here:
Obviously, Elon is not actually the running mate, and from a straight globalist/capitalist perspective, he’s so into Trump because he wants to essentially regulate his regulators (or fire them). Between that and the various percentages and pay packages he negotiates around Tesla stock, he could potentially scale to a trillionaire on paper if he lives to about 70. Which, I mean, I dunno.
The psychological thing that’s going on here is I think Elon has gradually come to the realization that a bunch of money means you don’t have friends so much as people who need or want things from you. Plus, while he’s always been “quirky” or “spectrum,” he probably spent 20–25 years having to walk various lines with investors and stakeholders. He loves the freedom of how Trump says and does what he wants. When you combine that with the ability to oversee his own regulatory environment, it’s a masculine fever dream: control things, make money, have adoring fans (red meat to online incels), and feel “part of something.”
It must be an interesting little dance where Trump probably barely acknowledges either Elon or Vance, but Vance is probably like “Am I №3 now?” and Peter Thiel is in some New Zealand bunker being like, “Ah, my former co-founder and my protege… nice.” I imagine some of the calls among the top Trump elites are intriguing.
In all honesty, I think the most realistic situation for the next 18 months is that we take his increasingly erratic behavior and troublesome history (felonies) and we hit him with the 25th Amendment. Trump will be livid as fuck, shouting like an old man at a cloud on Truth Social and Twitter. We install Vance, and the theo-bros who initially backed him get theirs. Vance does a turn, maybe wins an election too, and the Democrats continue to struggle to define what or who they’re all about. This is a worst-case scenario in a lot of ways, but what’s funny is: to liberals, they’d view it as “a good case,” because it would get Trump out of there by probably late 2025. In many ways, Vance might be worse than Trump, because he’s a smarter version of Trump who conceals his real intentions more adroitly, but hey, what do I know?
The immediate narrative is that Elon will have a massive role in slicing government bureaucracy at some level. I do worry about how capitalist consumption can persist if we slice the salaries of a bunch of bloated bureaucrats to zero, when those guys and their four kids were paying back into the service economy on daddy’s fat but unnecessary salary. The government employs thousands of people. If you just start hacking, that hurts a lot of local bars, restaurants, breakfast spots, etc.
But hey, it’s all about “owning the libs,” right?
Having seen Vance up close on the campaign trail, I can tell you he is not right now as an effective communicator as Trump, particularly to the MAGA base. However he seems to be able to bridge the gap between the blood-and-soil people and the tech bros. With money from his wealthy friends and former employers, that could set him up very nicely for a run at president.
I don’t see how they would invoke the 25th. The cabinet is literally a bunch of unqualified sycophantic kleptocrats, and i doubt the Democrats get enough seats in 26 to create a body sympathetic to declaring him incapacitated. Best bet is that the Mayor McCheese finally does the job. Vance knows what he is doing. He knows Trump is a bastard and said it himself. The question is if he has been corrupted, or if he’s playing possum. My guess is the later, but I don’t think anyone has the same pull that Trump does and don’t expect him to last long.