Russia Offers Elon Musk Asylum as Fight With Trump Intensifies

Russian officials are gleefully offering Elon Musk asylum, a sarcastic gesture meant to sow further discord between the billionaire and President Trump as their alliance implodes.

“Elon @elonmusk, don’t be upset! You are respected in Russia. If you encounter insurmountable problems in the US, come to us and become one of us - a ‘Bars-Sarmat’ fighter. Here you will find reliable comrades and complete freedom of technical creativity,” wrote Dmitry Rogozin, who formerly rivaled Musk as the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. “We will, of course, resolve issues of citizenship and military ID. Please fill out the forms at this link. With respect to you.” Rogozin is now a senator in occupied Ukraine.

“We are ready to facilitate the conclusion of a peace deal between D and E for a reasonable fee and to accept Starlink shares as payment,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on X. “Don’t fight, guys😱!”

Musk responded with a laughing emoji.

Others noted that Musks’s conflict with Trump mirrors the conflicts that President Putin has had with Russian businessmen, particularly Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group founder whose plane mysteriously exploded in mid-air in 2023 after he tried to usurp Putin. Musk has also been deeply anti-Ukraine sinceRussia’s invasion, another point that will further please the Kremlin.

Donald Trump pardoned the Proud Boys for invading the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Now they want compensation.

On Friday, a coalition of the far-right paramilitary group’s leaders filed to sue the federal government for $100 million—plus 6 percent in interest—claiming that, in light of their pardons, their arrest and various charges had actually violated their constitutional rights.

The group, composed of Enrique Tarrio, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Dominic Pezzola, refer to themselves in the filing as “J6 defendants.” In it, they cite the “egregious and systemic abuse” of the legal system to punish Trump’s allies as the basis for their damages.

“Through the use of evidence tampering, witness intimidation, violations of attorney-client privilege, and placing spies to report on trial strategy, the government got its fondest wish of imprisoning the J6 Defendants, the modern equivalent of placing one’s enemies’ heads on a spike outside the town wall as a warning to any who would think to challenge the status quo,” claimed their attorneys.

“Now that the Plaintiffs are vindicated, free, and able to once again exercise their rights as American citizens, they bring this action against their tormentors for violations of their Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment Rights,” the filing continued.

The filing leveraged Trump’s own language to further argue their case, citing the president’s January 20 executive order in which he referred to their prosecution as a “grave national injustice” as means to seek damages.

Grandiose efforts to boost Donald Trump’s ego are costing America a fortune.

Trump’s second term is still shy of the six-month mark, but already, millions have been spent to flatter him.

Just three stunts to fluff the president have already totaled upward of a billion dollars, reported Rolling Stone Friday. They include a Bastille Day–inspired military parade to celebrate Trump’s birthday, the repurposing of an ultraluxury jumbo jet from Qatar for Air Force One (which Trump is setting up so no one else can use it after he leaves the White House), and a TV ad campaign featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem zealously thanking the president (in the background, the Trump campaign’s top vendor is quietly cashing in on the DHS-funded ad spot).

And on Friday, Trump announced that the White House would be undergoing a massive renovation by way of adding a ballroom to the symbol of American democracy. (Trump has previously promised to pay for the $100 million expansion himself, but only time will tell if the convicted fraudster will actually follow through or take the funds from public coffers.)

But the glitz and glam is about more than simply placating the president, according to political scientists. Instead, the whole spectacle is attached to Trump’s authoritarian leanings.

“They have to do with a president who needs to be not only at the center of a media circus, but who needs to be told ritualistically over and over how great he is,” Anthony DiMaggio, author of Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here, told Rolling Stone. “What’s interesting to me about this, as a political scientist, is that it’s not just a personality-based thing or a defect. It’s a broader pattern that has to do with behaviors that are overlapping with authoritarian politics and ideology.”

But the itch doesn’t stop at gift receiving. Trump’s second-term quest to nix Washington’s so-called “deep state” and replace it with an army of MAGA yes-men has so far been successful. At Cabinet meetings and press briefings, officials from across the political landscape are quick to puff up the president. The problem became particularly evident in April, when Trump wheeled out his “Liberation Day” tariff plan using figures that nobody in his vicinity had dared to notify him were founded on bad math.

The result is a Trumpian loyalty more akin to a religion than a political ideology: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has pleaded with Congress to trust the president’s economic will. Cabinet meetings begin with a round-robin of gushing for Trump’s performance. The White House has spent money producing propaganda that does little more than thank Trump for his agenda.

Even congressional Republicans, who are supposed to be detached from Trump’s influence, have repeatedly kowtowed to the president’s will.

The sycophantic displays between Trump and his advisers give off “Dear Leader” vibes, similar to “what you would see with Kim Jong Un or [Vladimir] Putin,” Democracy Defenders Fund’s Virginia Canter told Rolling Stone, noting that the president treats his Cabinet members as his “personal staff.”

“They’re there to stroke his ego,” Canter said.

GOP Representative Mary Miller—who once said that Adolf Hitler was “right about one thing”—wrongly identified a Sikh man as Muslim in a racist X post regarding who was allowed to lead prayer in the House.

“It’s deeply troubling that a Muslim was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning. This should have never been allowed to happen,” she wrote on X over a picture of Giani Singh, a Sikh Granthi from southern New Jersey who was welcomed to give the prayer by Republican Representative Jeff Van Drew. “America was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth, not drift further from it. May God have mercy,” she concluded.

The Illinois representative then edited her post, changing “Muslim” to “Sikh” before just deleting the post entirely.

Miller is a right-wing religious zealot who can’t even get her bigotry right. And the U.S. was not founded as a “Christian nation” but as a country with the right to freedom of religion, which would make a Sikh man leading prayer very appropriate. Miller was quickly condemned for her comments.

“It’s deeply troubling that someone with such contempt for religious freedom is allowed to serve in this body. This should have never been allowed to happen,” Democratic Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman replied. “America was founded as [a] free nation, and I believe the conduct of its legislators should reflect that truth, not drift further from it.”

“I often say that I serve in Congress with some of the greatest minds of the 18th century. With Rep. Miller I may need to take it back a few more centuries,” Democratic Representative Jared Huffman stated.

The intelligence community’s watchdog office has a mole in it.

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard squeezed one of her own advisers into the subagency tasked with monitoring her, potentially compromising the office’s integrity, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with The Washington Post.

That plant is Dennis Kirk, who was installed in the office on May 9. Kirk still reports to the director of national intelligence, one of the officials told the Post.

Kirk is a known player in Trumpworld. He was present during Donald Trump’s first term, serving as an adviser in the Office of Personnel Management. He also co-authored a portion of Project 2025 that focused on the federal workforce.

The watchdog office is currently investigating the Trump administration’s Signalgate scandal, in which several Cabinet members not only relied on Signal to discuss sensitive, real-time war details about bombing Yemen but also mistakenly invited The Atlantic’s editor in chief to bear witness to the shocking national security blunder. Gabbard was included in the text chain.

On Thursday, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Representative Stephen F. Lynch, issued a letter to the inspector general of the intelligence community demanding to know how Kirk had climbed his way into the watchdog entity, and how his installment might influence the office’s Signal investigation.

Writing to acting Inspector General Tamara A. Johnson, Lynch underscored that the matter was of “grave concern” and that Gabbard had “dubious legal authority” to appoint Kirk to the office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, or ICIG, in the first place.

“The appointment of a highly partisan advocate for prioritizing personal loyalty to President Trump above independence and professionalism in the federal government—and one who apparently answers to DNI Gabbard rather than to you—in a senior role within IC IG raises troubling questions about the independence of the IC IG and whether there exists a need for Congress to strengthen protections for the IC IG’s independence,” Lynch wrote.

Lynch further ordered the office to provide a detailed job description for Kirk’s role, the statute that allowed Gabbard to install Kirk into the watchdog office, a list of officials that Kirk reports to, an explanation of where Kirk’s position falls in ICIG’s organizational structure, and whether Kirk is involved in or has any influence over the Signal investigation.