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What else is there to say except "we shall see"? I would note that everything you quoted before Yarvin is well known to Musk and Trump and has been discussed at length, and was a large part of project 2025 - they do have plans to deal with an entrenched and uncooperative bureaucracy.
As for what Yarvin said, I just think it's premature to laugh off Trump's plans before he's even in office, mainly because he won the election, secured funding for the border, escaped impeachment, pulled out of the Paris accords, met with North Korea, put an embassy in Jerusalem - my most consistent recurring memory of the 2016 cycle is "Hahahaha Trump is such a fucking moron, can you believe this chump? He can't just... Oh holy shit he did it!"
Only sections of the wall were built, most of the Mexico border wasn't secured.
The goal was to get them to give up nukes and that didn't happen. Hanging out with Kim Jong Un isn't a big achievement in and of itself.
Both were claimed entirely impossible. I'm not saying Trump can do no wrong, I'm saying actions that are impossible for the blue tribe are not necessarily impossible for the red tribe and vice versa. Also activist media claim the possible is impossible when it impedes their agenda.
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He didn't escape impeachment, he was impeached twice.
Apologies, please bear with me while I readjust to the motte's language norms. He was acquitted following his first impeachment is what I meant.
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Relatedly, these people also probably said you can’t build a rocket ship company or an electric car company. Doesn’t mean Elon will succeed but…I try not to bet against him.
Hope you didn't lay money on twitter!
I’m not sure the Twitter purchase was always a financial one by Elon. In any event, most people predicted Twitter would fail after Elon cut a bunch of people. It didn’t. Elon was right on the business aspects. Assuming advertisers come back (which it seems they will) it actually wouldn’t surprise me if he makes a little money off of it.
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I don't know if this is what you meant, but there was actually a lot of money to be made by betting against Musk during the Twitter acquisition saga: What seemed like an open-and-case of "you have to buy the company you committed to buying" was trading at a steep discount, seemingly only because "It's Elon, anything can happen".
I'm referring to the entire twitter saga, but probably mainly the additional value lost under Musk's ownership.
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