Billionaire Elon Musk’s offer to pay TSA personnel during the partial government shutdown poses “great legal challenges,” according to the White House.
The world’s richest man recently shared a social media post offering to pay TSA employees amid the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which began in mid-February after lawmakers failed to reach a deal on funding the agency. TSA employees are working without pay which has led to staffing shortages and long security lines at airports nationwide.
But why would Musk want to in the first place? What’s his angle?
He is the kind of narcissist wants to be seen as helping people in very visible ways. He swoops in when something is big in the news in because that makes you pay attention to him. He doesn’t go where help is most needed, but where its most visible.
Like that time there were kids stuck in a cave. International news, so he very loudly told everyone he was using all his resources to solve it. Pay attention to me I’m doing good!!!
And because its narcissism, next step is rage.
I’m thinking his angle is to show that this isn’t really about the money but is actually just an excuse the whitehouse is using to move their private army into airports.
That presumes Musk would oppose it, which doesn’t make much sense.
Overthinking it. He wants media attention. Just like Trump, he wants to hear his name mentioned.
That’s dumb as Hell (on Musk’s part, not yours), but seems more plausible than any other reason I can think of.
When you have that kind of money and power, you can do really dumb things, including being a huge narcissistic idiot, and not have any consequences worth losing sleep over.
It’s just that Musk isn’t so stupid that I would discount the possibility that he’s got some more nefarious motive in mind. Like, IDK, maybe he’s trying to buy off the loyalty of Trump’s brownshirts, or he’s got another transportation-related grift up his sleeve and wants control of the airports for some reason, or something like that.
He seems to want to be the one who “saves the day” to get attention pretty often (the cave in Thailand, that dumb ventilator thing at the beginning of COVID). I wouldn’t be surprised if he genuinely thinks funding is the issue and that him giving the TSA money makes him the hero.
I think it’s similar to why Bill Gates gives away his wealth. They know they need to do something benevolent with their money to keep up the facade that it’s best for humanity if they have it.
Of course, Elon Musk is conveniently offering to do it for something that is currently impacting rich people.
Maybe he feels guilty about how he made so much of his money by stealing from American taxpayers and how he pays so little in taxes, and he just wants to give back a little bit of what he stole. /s