Where Things Stand: One Attention Seeker Meets With Another Attention Seeker

This is your TPM evening briefing.
Elon Musk and Kevin McCarthy.
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Would love to be a fly on the wall for this bro-fest.

The one attention-seeker who debased himself on the House floor for an entire week in order to get his new job wanted to show the other attention-seeker, who pretended to want to buy Twitter to own the libs and then actually had to buy it, his new office.

According to several reports from the Hill it seems that Elon Musk met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) today. McCarthy claims that the meeting was just a couple of old pals broing out on his birthday.

“He came to wish me a happy birthday,” said McCarthy, whose birthday is today. “We’ve been friends for years.”

It’s the least believable statement ever, mostly because Musk is too busy ruining Twitter to wish someone happy birthday. When asked if the two had discussed the debt ceiling — a.k.a. McCarthy and his pals’ plans to drive the global economy off a cliff in order to make a lot of noise about unrelated federal spending — McCarthy answered, “no.”

As of right now there are no other details floating around yet about why the two met and what they discussed. As Bloomberg noted, Musk has been a McCarthy donor for some time and he tweeted his support for McCarthy’s messy, dramatic speakership bid earlier this month. Musk has also gotten more political in recent years. He moved to Texas in 2020 from California, has been vocal about his support for Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and, after finally buying Twitter, told his followers to vote Republican in the midterms last year.

If the two did discuss the debt ceiling, there’s little chance McCarthy could have told Musk anything reassuring: His conference seems entirely unclear on what its plan is, or even what the debt ceiling is. There’s a laundry list of other topics that might have been of interest to both men, too, including potential Republican investigations into Twitter, which Musk himself has, weirdly, seemed to invite by playing into conservative conspiracy theories that Twitter’s previous owners went to great lengths to suppress the voices of good American patriots. Maybe Musk felt it was time to walk that invitation back.

The Best Of TPM Today

Here’s what you should read this evening:

NEW from Josh Kovensky: California Bar Moves To Nix Eastman’s Attorney License

National Archives Asks Past Presidents and VPs To Check If They Have Any Classified Documents

Schiff Announces Senate Bid For 2024, Joining Already Crowded Field For Feinstein’s Seat

Today in GOP Weirdos

George Santos Gets Snippy About Those Bizarro Campaign Loans

Yesterday’s Most Read Story

House GOP Hits The Launch Button On Its Most Corrupt Scheme — David Kurtz

What We Are Reading

Virginia Democrats Defeat 15-Week Abortion Ban And Glenn Youngkin’s Anti-Choice Agenda — HuffPost

How Barr’s Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled — New York Times

‘No Labels’ becomes Colorado’s newest political party — The Denver Gazette

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: