Musk’s Rocket Ship Takes Flight as Do Mnuchin’s TikTok Ambitions

Let’s start with some good news: today’s successful rocket launch by Elon Musk’s SpaceX (cool video here). This was the third flight test of SpaceX’s Starship, the enormous new rocket the company is building to launch second-generation Starlink internet satellites, among other things. The test lasted an hour (for more details, see here). It was a good reminder that for all of Musk’s nutty behavior, as displayed on X, he does have a knack for building electric cars and other real things. And that’s not nothing.

Then there are unreal things. Former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on CNBC today he was putting together a “group to buy TikTok.” Don’t you love his ambition? Maybe we’re wrong, but we thought an asset had to be for sale before someone could buy it—unless the government plans to seize TikTok through eminent domain. And given that the Chinese government will almost certainly use export controls to prevent a foreign company from buying TikTok from its parent, ByteDance, any talk of a purchase is moot, no matter what happens with the ban-or-sell bill now before Congress. Mnuchin surely knows that. Perhaps he just likes being in the mix on a big story.