00:00And for more, we're joined by Tristan Cabello, a historian and lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in New York.
00:05Thank you to you, Tristan. Thank you for coming into Paris Direct.
00:08What did you make of this falling out?
00:10Well, I mean, the idea of a new political party is very appealing.
00:15You know that 70% of Americans actually said that they are not represented neither by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
00:2360% of Americans are saying we need another party.
00:27But what most Americans are saying, too, is that we need a party that's left of the Democratic Party, that is a new center-left or a new leftist party, not a centrist one, because we already have one in the name of the Democratic Party.
00:41But the problem here is that Elon Musk may not even be the right person to lead that kind of adventure.
00:49Elon Musk is somebody who's not very much liked by the Americans.
00:5380% of Americans do not like him.
00:57This is the reason why, for example, he lost the battle of the Supreme Court in Wisconsin.
01:04You know that he had put a lot of money in this election.
01:07They actually lost in Wisconsin.
01:10Elon Musk is not a person that Americans like very much, especially in light of what he has done in the first three months of the administration.
01:18So on paper, that's a very good idea.
01:22I'm not sure that Elon Musk is the person to lead that party.
01:25Yeah, I'm also wondering if the presidents of Ukraine and South Africa might be quietly chuckling to themselves after they see this public dispute.
01:33They were dressed down by Trump at the White House.
01:36Vladimir Zelensky and Cyril Ramaphosa.
01:38What does it say about this administration when we see this sort of public spat?
01:44Yeah, it's very important.
01:46I mean, it's very interesting to talk about ego and to try to psychoanalyze those two men.
01:54What I think is much more interesting is to try to dissect the systems that they represent.
01:59You know, we have two men here who are right-wing ideologists.
02:05We have two men here who believe in capitalism, not the same type of capitalism, but still they believe in capitalism.
02:12And we have two white supremacists, not the same type again, but two white supremacists.
02:18And yet they can't get along.
02:21And that tells you, you know, like how violent those systems are.
02:25What was very surprising to me is that they are using the discourses that they are using to marginalize the most oppressed people in America, for example, immigrants, between themselves.
02:40I mean, right now, what is the Trump administration saying?
02:43Elon Musk may be an illegal immigrant to America.
02:47I mean, they're saying basically that he crossed the border from Canada illegally and then became a citizen.
02:53And Steve Bannon saying, well, we must investigate that.
02:56We must deport him, some of the calls.
02:58Absolutely.
02:59This is exactly what they're saying.
03:00So this is the same discourse that they're using with immigrants from South America, from Central America.
03:08They're not using these discourses among each other.
03:11And that's very telling to me.
03:14Yeah.
03:14And that language is very inflammatory.
03:16And a lot of Trump critics keen to point that out.
03:19I'm curious about what's next for Doge.
03:22The New York Times running a piece this Saturday that says, Musk may be gone, but Doge members are embedded in multiple agencies.
03:30The team's approach to transform government is becoming institutionalized.
03:35Yeah, they're absolutely right.
03:37Two things here.
03:39Doge is now being institutionalized.
03:41We know that they have been given access to a lot of data, a lot of secret data from the IRS, from Social Security, maybe even more.
03:52Who knows?
03:53But they need each other.
03:55Donald Trump and Elon Musk need each other.
03:58Trump needs Musk for SpaceX.
04:01It's very important.
04:03If he wants to do that Golden Dome that he's talking about, he's going to need the engineering of SpaceX to build that.
04:13So is he, sorry to cut you off, is he bluffing when he threatens to cut Musk's federal contracts?
04:19$38 billion worth of federal contracts.
04:22Is that a bluff from Donald Trump?
04:23It's hard to say.
04:24And it's always hard to say with Donald Trump, but bluffing is definitely part of the Trump discourse.
04:34This is what he called the art of the deal, right?
04:37Trying to bluff first and then we'll see what happens.
04:41But again, they need each other.
04:44They have a lot of interests in common, economic interests in common.
04:47And at the same time, this sounds like a summer drama that's just starting here.
04:53I mean, we're going to have several more episodes that's probably all going to drag into the summer.
04:58And who knows how this is going to end?
05:01But again, the American people are tired.
05:04They voted for Trump because they wanted the prices to go down.
05:07They wanted inflation to go down.
05:09Inflation is slightly going down, but prices are still going up.
05:12And so Americans are still waiting for results here.
05:17Could this be useful for Trump in terms of changing the news cycle and distracting the American public's attention?
05:25Well, this is precisely what they are always doing.
05:28And the Democratic Party has an opportunity here to bring to the forefront the failures of the Trump administration.
05:37We've seen Hakeem Giffries who's trying to take advantage of the moment, and they should.
05:41But at the same time, the Democratic Party is in a fight right now between the leftist, more progressive wing of the party and the centrist wing.
05:51And some of the people in the Democratic Party are also arguing about, let's get closer to Musk now that he's available.
05:59And let's collaborate.
06:00Let's work with him.
06:01Just to play up on that point, Hakeem Giffries making that statement in that previous report, as we saw, Senator Bernie Sanders also posting on X that now is a time.
06:11Trump and Musk each have points here, but we should take advantage of the moment.
06:16Is the Democratic Party up to that task?
06:20Well, the Democratic Party is a very disappointing opposition right now.
06:23Again, from repeating what I just said, they are in a fight for the ideology of the party between the left wing, more progressive, AOC type, Bernie Sanders type of democratic politics and the most centrist type.
06:42Of course, what people need here are more progressive and working class oriented politics from the Democratic Party.
06:52I think one of the main reasons why they're lost is because they were too centrist, too close to the Republican Party.
06:59But in the past four months, they have not been up to the moment.
07:03And again, when I see Hakeem Giffries here saying what he has to say, it's pretty empty.
07:10I mean, what kind of solutions is he actually bringing here and bringing to the table?
07:15Still, they do have a good moment here that they should seize.
07:19They could collaborate with Republicans to kill that big, beautiful bill that Donald Trump wants in by the end of the month, I think.
07:27But again, I have high doubts about what they can do.
07:34All right, Tristan. Thank you very much.
07:35Tristan Cabello, lecturer at Johns Hopkins University.
