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MAGA

Elon Musk Has a New Plan to Win Back MAGA

by admin June 21, 2025

Elon Musk is in comeback mode. And he’s doing it the only way he knows how: by igniting culture war flames and trolling progressives.

The world’s richest man has just endured one of the most humiliating stretches of his public life. What started as a bombastic fallout with Donald Trump, whom Musk helped return to the White House, ended with a rare and uncharacteristic public apology.

“I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week,” Musk tweeted on June 11. “They went too far.”

I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 11, 2025

This moment of contrition signaled just how much damage the feud had done, not only to Musk’s reputation with Make America Great Again conservatives, but also to his companies. Tesla, the electric vehicle maker he leads as CEO, is still reeling from a sharp sales drop. First-quarter deliveries fell 13%, and net income plunged 71% year-over-year. The company’s stock has dropped more than 20% since January.

Behind the scenes, Musk has attempted to re-focus on business. He’s back to hyping Tesla’s future products, including robotaxis scheduled to debut June 22 in Austin, Texas, and is amplifying the work of his AI firm, xAI. But politics remains his drug of choice.

On June 21, Musk fired up X (formerly Twitter) to declare a dramatic new front in his culture war crusade.

“‘Baby, what happened to Woke?’” he posted, mimicking a conversation. Then answered himself: “Dead, my darling, Woke is dead.”

“Baby, what happened to Woke?”

Dead, my darling, Woke is dead.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2025

The post racked up over 35 million views. Conservative users celebrated:

“Woke tried to replace Faith, family, and facts—and lost.”

Woke tried to replace faith, family, and facts and lost.

— Barefoot Pregnant (@usuallypregnant) June 21, 2025

“It can only be overcome by a return to Judeo-Christian values.”

Others were more skeptical:

“Woke is not dead – It’s regrouping.”

❗️Wokeness is not dead — it’s regrouping, seeking new disguises. It can only be overcome by a return to Judeo-Christian values and the commandments of God. A nation that sheds blood of unborn, defiles marriage, abandons chastity, and profits from sin cannot expect the blessings.

— Karol Wilkosz (@WilkoszKarol) June 21, 2025

“You overused the word and now woke isn’t used anymore.”

You overused the word and now Woke isn’t used anymore. People are still as aware and awake as ever-more so! Free Palestine.

— Robin Sneed (@RobinSneed5) June 21, 2025

One X user, who identified as bisexual, challenged Musk directly:

“Why does Elon hate LGBT? I know it’s cause of his son but don’t take it out on everyone else.”

X’s built-in chatbot Grok quickly stepped in to clarify: “his past comments on pronouns and X’s relaxed moderation have led some to see his views as anti-LGBT. [But]There’s no clear evidence his stance stems from personal issues. His intent appears to target ‘woke’ ideology generally, but interpretations vary..”

I’m sorry you feel insulted. Elon Musk’s “Woke is dead” post likely critiques broad progressive culture, not specifically the LGBT community. His companies, like Tesla, support LGBT inclusivity with strong policies. However, his past comments on pronouns and X’s relaxed…

— Grok (@grok) June 21, 2025

Musk’s war on “woke” is both ideological and deeply personal. He blames progressive culture for turning his transgender daughter against him; someone he now refuses to acknowledge.

“My son, Xavier, died,” he posted in March. “He was killed by the woke mind virus. Now, the woke mind virus will die.”

Exactly.

My son, Xavier, died. He was killed by the woke mind virus.

Now, the woke mind virus will die.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2025

He sees “wokeism” as an existential threat to Western civilization. Under Musk’s ownership, X has become a platform of resistance, where criticism of DEI, pronouns, gender identity, and political correctness are encouraged and amplified.

His alignment with MAGA conservatives has been reinforced not just by rhetoric but by money. Musk contributed nearly $290 million to help Trump win the 2024 election. His support didn’t go unrewarded: Trump named him head of a newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

But the honeymoon didn’t last. When Musk began publicly disagreeing with Trump over policy and power, the president lashed out. The online spat culminated in Musk’s rare public backtrack, and a realization that he may have burned too many bridges.

Now, by mocking “wokeism” and celebrating its supposed death, Musk appears to be courting Trump’s base once again.

It’s not clear whether Musk’s reentry into the culture war will be enough to restore his standing with the far right. His fallout with Trump exposed ideological and ego-based rifts that may not be easy to mend. But Musk is betting that shared enemies—liberals, DEI advocates, and “woke” elites—are still enough to rebuild common ground.

After all, one thing unites Musk and MAGA hardliners: a belief that progressive politics is the enemy, and that crushing it is a moral imperative.

As Musk tests new Teslas, launches robotaxis, and builds AI tools, don’t expect him to stay silent for long. He’s not just fighting for influence. He’s fighting for relevance. And right now, culture war is still his favorite battlefield.

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June 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Splitgate 2 Boss Apologizes For MAGA Meme Hat Dividing Players

by admin June 11, 2025

Image: 1047 Games / Kotaku

An unusual email hit my inbox earlier today. It was from PR for the makers of Splitgate 2, a free-to-play portal shooter that released just a few days ago and stirred up drama with a MAGA-infused meme at Summer Game Fest from studio head Ian Proulx. “The CEO of 1047 Games has issued a video statement and apology to the community and gaming fans for his ‘Make FPS Great Again’ hat during Summer Games Fest,” the email read. It offered interviews.

Ironheart’s New Trailer Delivers A Couple Cool Surprises

To me that screamed “please ask us about our controversy,” in part because in his “apology video,” Proulx admitted the original hat stunt was all about trying to grab attention for his recently-launched multiplayer shooter. “At our biggest stage, coming out of beta, we needed something to grab attention, and the honest truth is we tried to think of something, and this is what we came up with,” he said in his latest video, which arrived just four days after he initially declared “I’m not here to apologize.”

He maintained that the hat was not intended to be political, despite it riffing on the political slogan of an administration currently sending marines to squash protests by citizens in the streets of Los Angeles. Proulx said he also still technically stands by the “intent” of the hat, and his apology for it is not because of the message it conveyed to some viewers but because the controversy around it has led to division in the Splitgate 2 community, some of whom have been arguing about it in comments and Steam reviews ever since.

“We did not intend for this to be taken in any political way whatsoever,” he said. “And I’m not an idiot, like obviously I knew there would be some level of controversy, but we really saw this as a meme that was sort of stating our truth, which is we do want to improve this genre, we are disappointed with the state of the genre, and so we took it as a meme we thought would not be nearly negatively received as the way it was.”

The new video appeared just a day after another one where Pourlx apologized for an $80 cosmetic bundle in the game that players spent the weekend dunking on. He said it “slipped through the cracks” after blaming it on a former head of monetization from Call of Duty who left 1047 earlier this year. Splitgate 2 has reached a few million players since launch, though many are still waiting on a ranked mode. What’s the over/under on how many more videos Pourlx puts out before they get it?

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June 11, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

‘100% Stupid’: MAGA World Is Cautiously Turning on Elon Musk

by admin June 7, 2025

Much of the right-wing media ecosystem appeared unsure how to react to the seeming public implosion of the relationship between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on Thursday and into Friday morning. Outlets and influencers that typically react savagely to criticism of Trump played the spat more or less down the middle. Even much of the criticism of Musk was relatively genteel.

“He’s gotta let Trump be Trump,” former Fox News host Eric Bolling said on Steve Bannon’s broadcast network, Real America’s Voice. “You can be First Bro,” he said of Musk, “but you can’t be de facto president.”

Behind the scenes, they tell WIRED, Republican operatives could not help but be entertained at the torrent of messages flooding their group chats. They tended to take Trump’s side.

One Trumpworld consultant tells WIRED that the entire episode reminded them of a line in a recent Wall Street Journal report, about how Trump had privately described Musk as “50% genius, 50% boy.”

“After today,” the consultant says, “I think he’s just 100% stupid.” (Musk did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)

While Musk had been railing against the Republican budget reconciliation package formally known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for several days on X, things turned ugly once Trump denounced the billionaire during an Oval Office appearance on Thursday with the German chancellor Friedrich Merz. “Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said. “I don’t know if we will anymore.” Musk subsequently agreed with an X user who called for the president’s impeachment.

Still, some presented the conflict as a positive thing, even while calling for it to end.

“I think the great thing about this is we all see it,” said Fox News host Greg Gutfeld. “Would you take a forceful president and a billionaire publicly feuding in public over an invalid president? … At least I know what is going on, and I can somewhat enjoy it, but I want them to stop. I’ve had it. I don’t want to see my parents fighting.”

By Friday morning, Fox & Friends cohost Brian Kilmeade was hoping for an end to the animosity, suggesting there could be a “big, beautiful truce.”

While many in the broader Trump coalition appeared hesitant to commit to one side or the other, this wasn’t true of everyone as Thursday afternoon’s bevy of rude posts bled into the night. After Musk posted “@realDonald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” some MAGA loyalists were shocked. Alex Jones, though—the right-wing talk radio host and conspiracy theorist who called the Sandy Hook school shootings a hoax and was sued for defamation and found liable by default—wrote that Trump “needs to respond asap.”

One of the MAGA-verse’s most prominent accounts, Catturd, then went after Jones. “What a POS Alex Jones turned out to be – what a fucking fraud,” he tweeted. (Jones did not immediately reply to a request for comment sent to InfoWars.)

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June 7, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

At Bitcoin 2025, Crypto Purists and the MAGA Faithful Collide

by admin June 5, 2025

Now that Trump is in office, launching his own crypto ventures and asking for legislation establishing (light) digital asset regulations to appear on his desk by August, his supporters’ voices drown out those of the bitcoiners who warn how abandoning crypto’s principles could endanger their community.

“Trying to [politicize bitcoin] is really dangerous for everybody, because the message of what bitcoin does … gets glossed over [as it becomes] this tool for the Republican Party,” says Erik Cason, author of the book Cryptosovereignty.

In a panel titled “Are Bitcoiners Becoming Sycophants of the State,” he elaborates to a crowd on the conference floor: “The amount of dick-sucking going on towards the political establishment here is shameful and disgusting,” he says. “You can own bitcoin today and exit from this fucked-up establishment that’s designed to steal from you and redistribute that money towards war and horror.”

Among resounding cheers, an older man stands up and pumps his fist in agreement. A man behind him slaps his leg emphatically.

Politicians “need us more than we need them,” Bruce Fenton, founder and CEO of fintech company Chainstone Labs, continues. “We should refuse meetings with them … We’ve invented nerd money that they can’t stop with all their tanks.”

Not only is the state dangerous as a vehicle of war, they say; it’s also risky to align with one political party, because it could provoke a reactionary backlash. Next time Democrats take over, Cason fears, they’ll “go after bitcoin and crypto hard.”

Bitcoiners “need to understand that we’re our own political contingency now, and pandering to either side is a massive disservice,” he tells me after the conference. “Bitcoin isn’t for the right or the left. It’s for the bottom, not the top.”

Bitcoin purists might have hoped for vocal support from Ross Ulbricht, the former operator of the dark-web market Silk Road (where users could use bitcoin to buy drugs). Ulbricht became a symbol for crypto operating unburdened by the state’s rules when he was sentenced to life in prison in 2015. Trump pardoned him earlier this year.

Ulbricht’s freedom has been such a key issue for the bitcoin community that David Bailey, CEO of BTC Inc, which organized Bitcoin 2025, made sure to communicate to Trump during the 2024 campaign how high priority pardoning Ulbricht was for his voting bloc. But Ulbricht’s appearance at the conference is paradoxical: His anti-state sentiment has been sanctioned by the very state he wanted to bypass.

“The impression people have is that bitcoiners just care about money,” Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn, who’s been attending the Bitcoin Conference for years working to free her son, tells me, “but many are idealistic and caring.” A movement of donors and activists large and small in the bitcoin, crypto, and Libertarian communities got her son out of prison, she says.

When Ulbricht walks onto the main stage, lanky and self-assured in a long, red tie, he doesn’t thank Trump directly (he’s “thankful that we elected him”). Nor does he thank Bailey for his advocacy, or even his mother for her tireless efforts. He thanks the audience, whom he urges to “stay true to our principles”—freedom, decentralization, and, he stresses, unity. “It’s more important than ever,” he says, as bitcoin’s popularity spreads.

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June 5, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Hot Farmers, Trad Wives, and an Immigrant Reality Show: Welcome to TV’s MAGA Era

by admin May 26, 2025

Talk shows are also being encouraged to shift their programming. In a recent meeting with the cohosts of The View, the popular morning gabfest with Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, ABC News president Almin Karamehmedovic urged the women to soften their criticisms of Trump, saying “the panel needed to broaden its conversations beyond its predominant focus on politics,” the Daily Beast reported. Disney CEO Bob Iger also suggested that the show “tone down” its political rhetoric.

One former executive at Amazon MGM Studios tells WIRED that Trump’s anti-DEI agenda, whose impact on film and TV only seems to be growing more pronounced, is a part of the administration’s Trojan-horse playbook to roll back civil rights. “It’s just the rhetoric they’re using to articulate what they really believe and who they really are.”

The White House did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

The anti-DEI backlash threatens to make Hollywood even more out of touch than it already is to younger audiences, who increasingly prefer TikTok and YouTube to traditional viewing formats. An estimated 50 percent of Gen Z identifies as non-white, and nearly 30 percent identify as LGBTQ+. “These audiences aren’t just asking for representation—they expect it,” Twigg says. “If the industry starts backing away from inclusive storytelling, it won’t just be regressive—it’ll be a bad business decision.”

Original, inclusive storytelling is trending right now, as Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s vampire drama, proved by becoming the biggest box office success story of the year so far, earning $316 million globally. Hulu’s Paradise, about residents of a postapocalyptic town, and HBO Max’s The Pitt, a medical drama that follows an emergency-room crew over a 15-hour shift, have also felt like watercooler moments at a time when the industry is starved for them.

Beyond the cultural and commercial risks of a less diverse Hollywood, Twigg says there is a strategic one: Film and TV take years to develop and produce.

“Hitching your content strategy to a political moment that may not last through the next election—or the next news cycle—is short-sighted,” she says. “The stories being greenlit today will premiere in a future that may have swung back toward the very audiences currently being sidelined. If anything, the smartest strategy right now would be to build with resilience and relevance in mind—not reactionary politics.”

Whelan says that in over 20 years as a television producer, he has taken the same approach, regardless of the political and social climates of the time: to create shows that “entertain and inspire and maybe teach.”

In 2014, following stints at Syfy and TLC as a network executive, he applied that mindset to New Girls on the Block. It was the first follow-doc reality show with an all-trans cast. The series focused on a group of women in Kansas City, Missouri, who faced changing relationship dynamics in a society struggling to make space for trans women. The reality project he just wrapped probably sounds like a complete 180. It focuses on a Christian family who runs a ranch and takes in at-risk youth. But there’s more to it, he says.

“What’s interesting to me, having done it for so long, is I don’t see a huge difference between a show about a group of all transgender women and a group of ranchers trying to help at-risk youth,” he says. “It’s two groups of really amazing people trying to change their lives for the better, and change the world around them for the better as well.”

Tonality aside, fewer projects overall are moving forward this year, Whelan says, but that hasn’t stopped genuinely good ideas from finding an audience—no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

“Ozark Law would have sold regardless of the administration. The Netflix scripted series is all about breaking the law, so you know someone’s gonna come up with the idea of enforcing it. That’s how we pitch reality shows,” he says, before admitting, “I wish I had thought of that.”

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May 26, 2025 0 comments