He questioned on social media why the Pentagon chief would have a Russian email account, though he did not confirm whether it was genuine or fabricated.

So, in short someone alleged that he has an email address at mail.ru but nobody has actually verified if that’s actually true or utter bullshit.

This is such a click bait-y non-story. Like I would not be surprised at all if it was true, and if it was this would be a pretty massive deal that raises a lot of questions (plus even if true there could still be reasonable explanations), but without verification this is nothing at all. I could just as easily claim I have photos of Trump fellating Putin and it would be just as big a story as this

That painting looks a lot better than the actual person. No idea what Trump is complaining about, the artist did him a huge favor.

Well it’s kind of both. While I agree that is a goal it’s ultimately about hoarding wealth to them. Power is wealth and wealth is power. The only reason they care about the peasants is because control over them ensures they can continue to harvest wealth and that nobody can become wealthier. Their goal isn’t any specific amount of wealth but rather they treat it as a game they’re competing in. They don’t care if they have a million dollars or a hundred trillion as long as nobody else has more.

Everything they do is in service to acquiring more wealth for themselves and denying wealth to others including the accumulation of power. They’ll spend money to acquire power but only if that power then allows for the accumulation of more money. That’s their current play with the US government. They’re destroying the US in order to carve it up and add it to their personal hoard of wealth.

Different groups, different motivations, but they’re headed in the same direction more or less so they’re working together. Trump is working to install himself as a dictator under orders from Putin. He wants to be for the US what Lukashenko is for Belarus. Ultimately he’ll be Putin’s puppet but he’ll largely have free reign within the US which is the only thing he cares about. He’s destroying all the US soft power and doing everything he can to turn all the US allies against it. Domestically he’s painting targets on the backs of as many minorities as he can in order to keep the useful idiots that elected him distracted.

Musk meanwhile is working to establish an oligarchy and to steal or destroy as much of the US government as he can manage. Ultimately his goals are fairly transparent as he’s motivated entirely by naked greed. Since his efforts hurt US foreign relations as much as the domestic situation he’s a useful tool to Trump in his efforts to neuter the US for Putin.

Then you’ve got the Christian nationalists in the GOP that don’t really care about what’s going on as long as they’re allowed to trample all over the first amendment and declare Christianity as the official US religion with all the associated bigotry and discrimination. Since that plays to Trump’s efforts to distract his supporters he’s perfectly fine with it, but likely keeping a close eye on that group lest any of them think about usurping his crown, particularly when he still hasn’t really gotten to go full dictator yet.