I am old enough to remember the premiere of the film “Network,” featuring Faye Dunaway in one of her earlier roles and starring Peter Finch as Howard Beale, the anchorman who mouthed the soon-to-be world-famous line: “I’m as mad as hell and not going to take this anymore.”
The 1976 film debuted in a time of economic malaise, characterized by stagflation, and came just two years after Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon as president. Finch was awarded an Oscar for his role but didn’t live long enough to accept it personally. His widow accepted it for him.
I bring up the movie quote because I think it is something Elon Musk should be mouthing daily.
Musk, the most brilliant and inventive man on the planet, spent $250 million of his own money to get Donald Trump elected president, to say nothing of countless days and weeks on the campaign trail getting out the vote.
He then became head of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) when Trump was inaugurated. In his role, Demofiends castigated him as a Nazi.
Lunatic, brainwashed Demofiend supporters then burned Teslas and bombed Tesla dealerships, Tesla being one of Musk’s major enterprises.
Tesla stock plummeted, but Musk forged on, uncovering graft, corruption, and waste in government spending in an effort to salvage the federal budgetary mess.
Now that Musk’s DOGE stint has come to an end because of his employee status, Trump and Congressional Republicans have forged a budgetary reconciliation bill that actually raises the federal deficit.
A week ago when his tenure ended, Musk put on a televised love fest with Trump, but now he is letting his true feelings out. Today he called Trump’s so-called big beautiful bill “a disgusting abomination.”
In a series of posts on X (which he also owns), Musk said that the “outrageous, pork-filled” spending bill will “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America [sic] citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
Trump has been rather silent on Musk’s assessment, but when it comes to criticism of the bill by Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, Trump became typically unhinged, as he often does when someone disagrees with him. On social media posts, Trump accused Paul of having “very little understanding of the bill” and saying that the “people of Kentucky can’t stand him.”
Rand Paul should join Elon Musk in repeating the Finchian on-air tirade as an anchorman: “I’m as mad as hell and not going to take this anymore!”
Musk, however, has much more reason to be so enraged than does Paul, but I stand with both Musk and Senator Paul in this headline-grabbing moment in time.
We all should be “mad as hell and not going to take this anymore!”
Photo shows Peter Finch venting his famous line on TV for the fictional UBS network. (I recommend anyone who has not seen “Network” to do so ASAP.)