“I’d like to also just send a message—like, because, as the president said, like, this—there’s a lot of rich people out there,” Musk said. “They should be caring more about the country because—the reason they should be caring about—more about country is: America falls, what do you think is going to happen to your business?”

“What do—what do you think—do you think you’re be going to be okay if—if the ship of America sinks? Of course not. Like, what—what I’m doing here, what the president is doing is it’s just long-term thinking. The ship of America must be strong. The ship of America cannot sink. If it sinks, we all sink with it.”

Okay, sure. But let me ask this: if Biden had had a second term rather than Trump, would ship America have sunk? I don’t think so. I can maybe see some areas where someone who favors Republican policies would say “American might be weaker”, but it seems pretty wildly unreasonable to get from there to “sunk”. Trying to claim some sort of imminent, existential crisis seems pretty unreasonable for pretty much anyone.

I haven’t paid much attention to Trump’s people speaking to the press recently, but I saw a video the other day from one of his advisor crowd, and he was doing the whole “America has to be saved” thing too, and it was pretty over-the-top.