☕️ T-REX WARS ☙ Friday, June 6, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

C&C special: Trump vs. Musk goes Jurassic; AI school stuns with top scores; Karine’s diversity shield drops; Ukraine caught fibbing; tariffs win; youth strokes still “a mystery;” and lots more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! In today’s jam-packed roundup: a C&C special edition commentary on yesterday’s dinosaur-sized story about Musk and Trump battling it out; good news foon the AI scene for a change, as first school to replace live instruction shows strong progress; it’s suddenly not racist to call Karine Jean-Pierre a diversity hire anymore; shocking news as media already admits Ukraine lied about how many planes it blew up; clear evidence Trump tariff plan already working and experts are baffled; and doctors are even more baffled about the latest epidemic of inexplicable disease in young people.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Welp, all the stories and themes I’d penciled in for today went right out the open jet door at 30,000 feet, after President Trump again captured yesterday’s entire news cycle in an iron grip. The New York Times covered the story bigger and broader than they would have advertised the start of World War III. Behold, the top half of the Grey Lady’s website this morning:

As the long day wore on yesterday, the hot takes quickly fanned into an unstoppable social media inferno. My compliments if you were somehow able to ignore this story; if so, you clearly exercise a level of scrolling discipline most of us lack.

For Portland readers: yesterday, a simmering conflict between the World’s Richest Man, Elon Musk, and the World’s Most Powerful Man, Donald J. Trump, erupted like the Yellowstone Megavolcano and spewed vicious social media lava all over the Internet, with a plume rising to somewhere near Saturn. For just a taste, at one point, Trump threatened to cancel all of Musk’s federal contracts. Musk countered by daring him to do it and punched back, claiming “Trump is in the Epstein files.” Touché.

It is a spectacle of gargantuan proportions; the battle of the T-rexes; the ultimate mano-a-mano cage match; Godzilla versus Mecha-Godzilla.

To the delirious corporate media, the contretemps was white-hot opium, an all-hands moment, with mainstream journalists and op-editors hitting the conflict crack pipe and instantly abandoning every other story in the world with their eyes rolling back in their heads in wild ecstasy and sensory overload in drug-addled worship to their defamatory volcano gods.

Spare a moment of sympathy for your author. In these moments, the trick is not in reporting these Earth-shaking stories, but in saying something different and informative that hasn’t already been hashed out a million times on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and in the scores of breathless news stories flowing out of the caldera.

I will do my best.

🔥 First, let’s remain grounded. All we really know is that Trump and Musk have traded a series of spicy tweets, as common (and ugly) a feature on social media these days as kitten videos and arrested drunks acting badly. Everything else is pure speculation. No actual contracts have been canceled; no real insider details have been disclosed.

Taking things at face value, without reading between any tweets, we see evidence only of two men with massive egos having a your-momma-is-so-fat moment. That’s it. The “news,” if you can call it that, merely signals the end of Phase Two. I shall explain.

When he dramatically (and literally) leapt onto the stage with Candidate Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania 2.0, Elon Musk helped elect the President. That isn’t even arguable, it is a fact. But now the election is over and Trump stuck the landing. Call that success “Phase One.”

Next, Musk helped the President’s successful 100-day sprint to gain digital control over the Executive Branch at the speed of business (not bureaucracy). I would argue, and have argued, that the legitimate goal of cost-cutting was only secondary. DOGE’s primary goal was technical and comms supremacy— a critically necessary component for Trump’s re-engineering of the United States government.

Trump now enjoys digital control. It’s done. Check off Phase Two.

The two mens’ ugly public divorce —which I will argue was also critically necessary— is the third phase.

🔥 The intimate entanglement between the President and the World’s Richest Man was always problematic. Democrats enjoyed a strong argument that continued to gain traction: nobody elected Elon Musk. Activist lawyers and woke judges were having a field day with Musk’s involvement, arguing he must be subject to oversight, open records, and every other painful process they could feverishly dream up.

The “peace party” ginned up its blackshirt brigade with a daily two minutes of hate, painting Elon as the new Emmanuel Goldstein (Portlanders: the state’s enemy from 1984). Peaceful protestors were torching Tesla dealerships in ‘mostly peaceful’ riots.

College professors keyed Cybertrucks in swarms. Friends asked me whether it was ‘safe’ to buy a Tesla. Etsy did a brisk business selling “I didn’t vote for him” bumper stickers for Tesla owners to apply to their electric cars, hoping to evade hate crimes against their personal property. Virtue-signaling celebrities ceremoniously sold their Model-S’s for scrap.

Musk was a made-for-TV target. But let’s not pretend the idea of unelected billionaires or backroom whisperers whispering in a president’s ear is some Trumpian novelty. The Democrats never had a problem with it whenever it was their whisperer.

🔥 Take Colonel Edward M. House, the original “man behind the curtain” during the Wilson Administration (D, 1913–1921). Everything about House was phony. He wasn’t even a colonel — the title was invented. He wasn’t elected. He wasn’t confirmed. He was a Texas insider and campaign fixer who helped put Woodrow Wilson into office — and then promptly became the president’s second brain. Literally. House called himself “Wilson’s second personality.”

House wasn’t content just to whisper advice. He published Philip Dru: Administrator, a utopian fantasy novel about a benevolent technocrat ruling America by decree — and then worked tirelessly to make that dystopian fever dream real. Under House’s influence, Wilson became midwife to two permanent pillars of the progressive state: the Federal Reserve and the UN’s precursor, the League of Nations.

Did the 1900’s media fret about oligarchic influence or demand transparency? Nope. Of course not. They toasted House at garden parties and gushed that Wilson was “surrounding himself with brilliant minds,” sipping champagne while mocking Republican “heartlessness.”

Then there was Harry Hopkins, FDR’s shadow president. A political operative turned social worker (the prototype community organizer), Hopkins had more influence than most Cabinet members — and more access than Eleanor. He literally lived in the White House. He ran the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the biggest government employment machine in U.S. history. He funneled billions — trillions in today’s dollars — into New Deal programs with near-total autonomy.

Hopkins wasn’t just Roosevelt’s welfare czar. He ran Lend-Lease, secretly shipping billions in arms and aid to Churchill and Stalin before Congress had approved U.S. entry into WWII. Foreign leaders understood the real chain of command: Hopkins held the purse strings. Churchill famously said, “Harry Hopkins had more power than any man in the war except Roosevelt.”

Years later, the Venona Papers and Soviet archives strongly suggested Hopkins had been compromised by Soviet intelligence — or was at least a deeply sympathetic fellow traveler. But back then, Democrats sainted him. Life Magazine euphorically called him “closer to the President than any other man.” The New York Times editorial board gushed Hopkins was “the most important man in Washington after FDR — and maybe before.”

At the time, Republicans complained bitterly, but New Deal Democrats grinned like sexually aroused chimps and thought Hopkins was terrific.

The truth is, presidential whisperers are a Democrat phenomenon. Republicans have tolerated a few, but never for long. The right prefers chain of command and accountability, not shadow government. So Musk camping out in Trump’s digital war room and standing behind the President during signing ceremonies was always a short-term lease.

🔥 As I see it, in this public spat, everybody wins. It’s win-win-win. Here’s the chessboard behind the T-rex slap-fight:

• Trump wins: He publicly distances himself from a lightning rod billionaire whisperer while retaining all his policy wins.

• Musk wins: He sheds his polarizing “Enemy Number 1” status right as Tesla stock begins its next dance with institutional investors, and he can get back to business, having achieved all his goals by electing Trump and erecting DOGE.

• Corporate Media wins: They’re bathing in the lava of the Trump-Musk implosion, with Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla trending for three straight days, complete with interactive insult timelines and a revived hope for a Trump collapse.

Once the conflict spaceship lands, Musk gets to reset and go back to playing the role he loves best: neutral visionary. A quirky futurist who backs nobody, insults everybody, and keeps his eyes glued on Mars. He can throw jabs at Trump, dunk on journalists, and still wear the “anti-elite” badge like a spacesuit patch. He’s out of the blast radius, but still circling the control room.

Meanwhile, the spat also advantages Trump: it diverts the news cycle for a few precious days from what’s actually happening — the quiet but permanent restructuring of federal IT systems, communications architecture, immigration surveillance, the DEI demolition crew, and his new emergency tariff protocols that will bring foreign markets to heel.

Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter whether the feud is real or rehearsed. Whether this is just cosplay or an actual volcanic ego eruption, the outcome is the same: Either way, everyone wins at the end. Trump doesn’t need Elon anymore. He’s in his final term — he can burn every bridge he wants. Musk, meanwhile, already got everything he came for: access, contracts, power, and narrative redemption.

This isn’t a falling out so much as a scheduled exit.

Stand back beyond minimum safe distance and let them fight. Let the Democrats and corporate media fantasize that Trump can’t govern without Elon standing behind him. Every minute they waste on that hopeless dream is a minute we gain.

🔥🔥🔥

Now let’s hit the education beat, where a quiet revolution is underway — and it’s not coming from Harvard’s Ed School. For a change, it’s some good news from the AI world. Yesterday, Fox ran a story headlined, “Texas private school’s use of new ‘AI tutor’ rockets student test scores to top 2% in the country.” It might say less about A.I. than it does about the woeful state of education in this country and hope for the kids.

And it says a lot that left-wing corporate media ignored the story.

This year, the Alpha School in Austin, Texas began experimenting with an all-AI curriculum. Students get two hours a day with an AI tutor, then spend the rest of the day practicing skills like public speaking, financial literacy, and teamwork. No teachers. The results so far have been spectacular.

Alpha School co-founder Mackenzie Price told Fox & Friends, "We use an AI tutor and adaptive apps to provide a completely personalized learning experience for all of our students, and our students are learning faster, they’re learning way better. In fact, our classes are in the top 2% in the country.”

One Alpha parent tweeted yesterday that his kids are newly excited to go to school. After their two hours of personalized AI instruction, they leave their desks and get to do all kinds of fun, social things with other students:

Like it or not, the future of education is splitting into two camps — one that keeps doubling down on centralized indoctrination —DEI, test scores, and assembly-line bureaucracy— versus another one that’s quietly blowing up the model, and transforming classrooms into something … different, more like life labs.

I’ve predicted — and still believe — that average teachers are the one career most at risk of immediate replacement by the coming AI revolution. Not the good ones. Not the brilliant mentors who awaken young minds and teach with fire in their bones. They’re safe and will always be safe. In fact, they will probably become even more valued — because when A.I. covers the basics, great teachers are freed to do what they do best: inspire.

But here’s the problem: how many truly great teachers are there? Really? Maybe we don’t even know, since they’re all buried under red tape.

Most classrooms in America are run by well-meaning babysitters with lesson plans. Not malicious. Just average. And average isn’t going to cut it anymore. When a student can get an adaptive, errorless, infinitely patient, and totally personalized tutor for free on a tablet, why would anyone tolerate confusion, conflict, boredom, mediocrity, and indifference in a physical classroom?

Don’t blame AI. AI isn’t making routine teaching jobs obsolete. The system did that. AI is just shining a spotlight on it. This isn’t a war between teachers and AI. It’s a sorting process — between instructors who bring real value to the teacher-student relationship, and those who were just holding the keys to the classroom.

Imagine how furiously the teachers’ unions will likely react: litigate, agitate, and regulate— the holy trinity of institutional self-preservation. They’ll scream about equity, invent “AI isolation,” and demand emergency funding for “human-first pedagogy.”

Next, consider how Trump’s “big beautiful bill” blueprint includes a strange 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation. It appears that some folks have already wargamed this whole thing. (It’s not at all clear, by the way, that the moratorium can survive Senate scrutiny, since everything in the reconciliation bill must relate to the budget.)

We’re not only witnessing a technological revolution — we’re also witnessing an accountability revolution, and AI is the delivery mechanism. The old systems — education, media, bureaucracy — aren’t being dismantled by force. They’re just being outperformed. For better or worse, the AI genie isn’t going back in the bottle. The spotlight is on, and the sorting has already begun.

It’s night and day. Parents who can review AI chat logs have much more transparency into what their kids are learning. The technology even exists for parents to monitor the session in real-time. Contrast that with teachers unions’ successful bans on cameras in classrooms.

To me, this seems like undeniably good news for the most mistreated group in America: the kids.

🔥 Yesterday, I briefly mentioned how Biden’s former Press Secretary, super-diverse Karine Jean-Pierre von Claude, announced she’s now an independent. That was fast. Axios reported that the long knives are out for her now: “Bidenworld goes scorched earth on Karine Jean-Pierre.”

Hat-tip to Libs of TikTok, who nailed the moment: when Republicans criticized Jean-Pierre’s obvious lack of skill and labeled her a diversity hire, Democrats screamed “racist!” But now that she’s defected, suddenly it’s okay to call her clueless, witless, and disorganized.

“The amount of time that was spent coddling Jean-Pierre and appeasing her was astronomical compared to our attention on actual matters of substance,” a former Biden staffer told Axios — apparently without irony.

They don’t seem to realize they’re owning themselves. In their rush to punish curly-haired Jean-Pierre’s apostasy, they’re accidentally confirming everything conservatives said two years ago: she wasn’t qualified, and Biden hired her for optics. Now, to spite her for breaking ranks, they’re admitting their brain-damaged fake president had an incompetent press secretary.

If Democrats ever told the truth, you’d almost feel bad for them. But they don’t. Everything is performance. Everything is politics. And Jean-Pierre’s fall from grace is just the latest scene in the crumbling Truman Show.

🚀 I told you so. Reuters, yesterday: “Exclusive: Ukraine hit fewer Russian planes than it estimated, US officials say.” Kiev’s relationship with the truth is, shall we say, strategically flexible.

Scott Adams’ comment: “I’m starting to think I can't believe everything I read about Ukraine.”

Don’t be confused: there’s no new bloom of truth in media. The reason corporate media is admitting this so quickly is that they are beginning to be terrified of the expected Russian response. So this is how they help pressure the Russians: by admitting how long Zelensky’s Pinocchio-like nose is.

Don’t crush him! He was just lying about how much damage his drone strike did!

Stupid media.

📈 I told you so, part II. ABC, yesterday: “US trade deficit narrowed significantly amid Trump's tariff escalation.” Experts were baffled.

CLIP: CNBC describes historic trade deficit improvement (0:47).

The U.S. global trade gap fell by more than half in April, as the U.S. chalked up a trade deficit of only about $61 billion in April, “marking a sharp decline from a $140 billion trade gap a month earlier.” In other words, in just one month, Trump’s tariffs have cut the trade deficit by more than half.

CNBC’s commentator observed that the best news wasn’t even the narrowing trade gap. "The big news,” he said, “is how much it bolsters GDP. Just look at Atlanta Fed GDP now - which is at +4.64%."

ABC’s experts, who predicted the opposite would happen, quickly came up with a new theory: this is bad news. Remind me: What would we do without experts?

💉 Next, more good post-pandemic news. This week, Fox ran another encouraging story headlined, “HHS ends Biden-era COVID-19 testing program that bled taxpayers years after pandemic.”

No more free covid tests! "With COVID-19 behaving more like the seasonal flu — rising and falling through the year — and tests widely available at retail stores nationwide, continued federal distribution is a significant waste of taxpayers’ dollars," HHS told Fox on Tuesday.

What will covid fetishists do now? Pay for their own tests? Are you kidding me?

💉 Finally, there’s an elephant turning cartwheels in the MRI room, but corporate media is keeping its eyes closed. This week, the New York Post ran a story headlined, “Why so many people are having strokes in their 20s, 30s and 40s: ‘We’ve never had patients so young’.”

Doctors are baffled, Part II. “The alarming trend,” the Post explained, confused, “has been stumping medical professionals.” They’re stumped! Clueless. Out of ideas. Dr. Mohammad Anadani, a chief of neuroendovascular services, stroked his beard in bemusement and admitted, “We’ve never had patients so young.”

The shocking rise in young people having strokes developed after 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, strokes among people aged 18 to 44 shot up by +15%. At least.

Two young ladies who’d had strokes interviewed for the story — Ann Fulk, 24, and Aubrey Hasley, 23. Their sudden and unexpected illnesses “came as a huge surprise to, well, everyone — especially since they were both, by all common standards, healthy.” Their doctors diagnosed their strokes as embolic —meaning blood clots— and which means the clots originated somewhere in the body and traveled to the brain (not the heart or clogged arteries).

Somewhere in the body like … the injection site? Just asking.

The paper blamed, and I am particularly furious about this one: caffeine. But nowhere did the article even try to explain how caffeine can cause blood clots to form. Higher blood pressure, maybe after downing the third Monster Energy, but clots?

And … shouldn’t young people, with squeaky-clean veins, be particularly tolerant of high blood pressure? Oh well. It’s science! Shut up!

Of course, the v-word appeared nowhere in the story. They aren’t even checking for jab injuries.

Like the epidemics of youthful, at-home heart attacks, we face another new mystery epidemic of strokes in young people. And the useless experts are stumped again. Just like they were stumped about sudden cardiac deaths, turbo cancers, and autoimmune flare-ups in previously healthy adults.

But they knew everything there was to know about brand-new mRNA shots— safe and effective!

The experts keep asking what else changed, as if the answer weren’t glaring at them from their own needle trays. But they just can’t say it. They won’t say it. Even though everybody else already knows. Because to say it would unravel everything: the mandates, the censorship, the gaslighting, the moral posturing — and worst of all, whatever scraps of institutional trust languish in the fever swamps of BlueSky.

But the Reckoning™ is coming.

Have a terrific Friday! Come back here tomorrow morning for another fresh, mRNA-free installment of C&C style essential news and commentary.

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can: ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid

Twitter: jchilders98.
Truth Social: jchilders98.
MeWe: mewe.com/i/coffee_and_covid.
Telegram: t.me/coffeecovidnews
C&C Swag! www.shopcoffeeandcovid.com