Tech tycoon Elon Musk joined a call between US President-elect Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the day after the presidential election, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

424 points

God, I feel for Zelensky… Imagine fighting for your existence against Russia and having to talk to these morons for help.

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196 points

Remember when we had a whole impeachment hearing against Trump for withholding aid to Ukraine so he could get a political hit piece on Biden? I’m wondering how long it will take before a quid pro quo scenario pops up again. Either in Ukraine or elsewhere. So ya, we’re all feeling for Zelensky in the next few years.

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87 points

There will be no agreements.

trump is going to change US policy to excluding all intelligence and military support and will “leak” all known military intel to putin.

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26 points

As though nobody considered what he was actually doing with all those confidential documents.

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-1 points

And all those 5* Generals and going to stand by and salute ?

You really don’t understand America .

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4 points

Impeaching him might be on the docket, if the Republicans really want Vance in the puppet seat. I think they’d rather manipulate him than whatever fucking impending shit-splosion Trump will become about 3 minutes in.

I think Vance might at least be convinced to do logical things. We know that isn’t happening with Donny.

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11 points

I think Vance might at least be convinced to do logical things.

He’s more likely to competently implement project 2025. Or at least more competently than Trump.

And that’s not a good thing for anyone.

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3 points

There may exist a scenario where north korea is trying to build something that looks suspiciously like an Ohio class submarine and he has a strange golf bar appear on his desk.

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29 points

Zelensky probably spent the whole call wondering if it would be faster to just hand deliver everything they talked about directly to Putin.

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15 points

I’m sure his conclusion at the end was “We need to build nukes immediately”.

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8 points

I’m sure they will help, “Just give Russia what they want, war over, problem solved”

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2 points

My guess is Trump essentially extorted him in the namel of “making a deal” in exchange for American aid.

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98 points

Since when do we allow regular civilians to participate in diplomatic calls?

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35 points

Since they have over $200 billion dollars

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6 points

So pay to play is back.

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7 points

It left?

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18 points

Since the US bacame an oligarchy.

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8 points
*

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11 points
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It’s almost like a member of Trump’s cabinet was sentenced to prison for doing that exact thing between Trump’s 2016 election and taking office.

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1 point

Yeah but for people to know that would require actually understanding the impeachment proceeding and prior/subsequent investigations.

I think we all know how that went.

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8 points

When you have a president that dgaf about anything saying otherwise.

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-15 points

It’s beyond naive to call Elon a regular civilian

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14 points

My point was to point out he’s not part of the government

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2 points

Neither is Trump. However Elon can still become part of Trump’s future cabinet.

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9 points

Yeah, he’s an illegal immigrant, get it right.

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145 points

Remember when they used to try to keep corruption somewhat hidden and deniable? Now the richest man in the world is just going to be walking around the White House, tugging the government’s leash on full display.

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6 points

Love watching the oligarchs take over…it’s nowhere near as subtle as I thought it was going to be.

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109 points

Fucker will disable Starlink in Ukraine and allow it in Russia

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93 points

He’s going to be on the cabinet while getting billions in government contracts. The richest man in the world just got a job where he gets to to shovel more government money to himself. And that’s what Trump calls ‘draining the swamp’ and ‘sticking it to the elites’.

And somehow, instead of democrats calling that out, they decided to find their own elites to trot out.

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20 points

Worst of it, government money is your tax dollar… You will pay more and more taxes to funnel the money to Trump’s friends. Trump is the swamp thing!

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9 points

They’ll finance it with debt, sale of assets and cutting of services. Which is probably even worse

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12 points

Biggest case of conflict of interest and quid pro quo in government and its just being allowed to happen…

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3 points

He’s already done so, actually. Under the guise of “blackouts”.

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3 points

Nah, he’ll use the location services from the dish to pinpoint the Ukrainian troop locations. If they’re smart they’ll start smashing them immediately.

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4 points

Didn’t he do that already?

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-1 points
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It wasn’t enabled in Crimea in the first place. The author misspoke/lied about in the book and has later admitted it.

U.S. sanctions to Russia forbid the use of Starlink. This includes crimea and the occupied territories. That’s why it wasn’t enabled.

To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.

And before someone points out the ‘cause major war’ things, those are Walters words, not Elon’s. Musk said “It would make SpaceX explicitly complicit in a marjor act of war and conflict escalation” He later also added that had he been contacted by the US officials and asked to enable it he would, but they didn’t.

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3 points

US sanctions may try to stop Russia from using statlink, but they’re using it anyway.

Plus the fact that Musk regularly talks with Putin really makes this whole thing quack and waddle.

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79 points

Hilarious that his administration is already leaking worse than a Russian submarine.

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