“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy,”Donald Trumpobservedin the Oval Office on Thursday. “They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart.”
The US president was referring to the war between Russia and Ukraine but could just as easily have been talking about himself. On Thursday, to the surprise of no one, Trump’s bromance with billionaire tech entrepreneurElon Muskexploded in avery public feud.
While the president urged his supporters to “fight, fight, fight” last summer after hesurvived an assassination attempt, now that mantra is evocative of children on a school playground urging Trump and Musk to go at each other. For political nerds this is like Alien v Predator, Batman v Superman and King Kong v Godzilla rolled into one.
It was always going to end this way for two megalomaniacsdevoted to fame, money and the far right, neither of whom is unaccustomed to a messy divorce.
Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill: “I suppose it was in the stars. Everybody was predicting it when it first began. You’ve got two gentlemen with gargantuan egos and both appearing to suffer from malignant narcissistic personality disorder.”
Trump-Musk had begun as the ultimate politicalmarriage of convenience. Their interests converged last year when Musk saw in Trump a hammer against wokeness who could also benefit his businesses and help him reach Mars.
The Tesla and SpaceX supremo leaped on stage with Trump, flooded the zone with Maga propaganda on his X social media platform and threw a record $277m behind his election campaign. The reward came with a seat among the oligarchs at Trump’s inauguration, a seemingly permanent residency at Mar-a-Lagoand a chainsawin the form of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.
“I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,”proclaimed Musk, who lorded it over cabinet meetings and in the Oval Office. Trump returned the compliment by turning the White House south lawn into a showroom for Teslas. The pair were as inseparable – and destructive – as Laurel and Hardy pushing a piano up a flight of stairs.
Then came last Friday’s amicable but peculiar parting, where Musk sported a black eye, brushed off reports oframpant drug taking, praised Trump’s tacky gold decor in the Oval Office and was presented with a commemorative gold key. ComedianJon Stewart quipped: “Doge has finally rooted out one of America’s least efficient government workers and marked him for dismissal.”
On Tuesday, Musk waited until the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was at the podium before unleashing an X barrage. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” he wrote, describing a Trump-based tax and spending bill in Congressas “a disgusting abomination”. He followed up with three days of nonstop posts eviscerating the bill and urging Republicans to reject it.
It was the point of no return. The transactional Trump-Musk relationship was on its way to turning septic, sour and rancourous. There are multiple theories as to why.
The trouble began in March when it emerged that Musk arrangedprivate Pentagon briefingson China policy without White House knowledge, a significant conflict of interest due to Musk’s business ties in China. Trump was especially annoyed to learn about the briefings through the media, and about the perceived notion that Musk was using his position for personal advantage.
Second, when Trump travelled to the Middle East, Musk was reportedly piqued that his arch rival, Sam Altman of OpenAI, won a deal to build one of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence data centres in Abu Dhabi. Musk worked behind the scenes to try to derail the deal if it did not include his own AI startup,according to the Wall Street Journal.
Third, Musk was working at the White House as a “special government employee”, which is limited by law to 130 days; when Musk sought an extension, officials said no, perhaps because he had put so many backs up.
Fourth, last Saturday Trump suddenly announced that he wascancelling the nominationof Musk ally Jared Isaacman to be the administrator of Nasa.
And fifth, there was the “big, beautiful bill”, currently navigating Republicans in the Senate. Musk said in social media posts that it would increase the already massive budget deficit to $2.5tn, undermining his work at Doge. Notably, it would also cut the electric vehicle tax credit that helps carmakers including Tesla.
On Thursday, after days of uncharacteristic self-restraint, Trump struck back. He told reporters he was “surprised” and “very disappointed” by Musk’s critiques of the bill, adding wistfully: “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more.”
Musk returned fire on social media, writing: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51–49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.”
He alsoagreedwith a social media post that called for Trump to be impeached and removed from office.
The president replied on his own platform, Truth Social, that he effectively fired Musk. “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”
The mad men went nuclear. Trump threatened to cancel Musk’s billions of dollars in government contracts, describing it as the easiest way to save money. Musk responded by linking Trump to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein: “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
The economic burden of Musk’s government contracts and the Epstein files allegations were both true before the breakup, but neither man spoke up. Now they seem to have taken a truth serum and discovered a conscience.
Raskin observed: “They basically converged around a common platform of plunder and pillage of the American people and now both of them are telling the truth about the other. It’s a happy moment for America that we can finally get to the bottom of things like the Jeffrey Epstein files and all of the billions of dollars of government contracts thatElon Muskhas.”
Mutually assured destruction? Musk could try to use X to mobilise opinion against Trump and his “big, beautiful bill”. He could also try to exploit the government’s dependence on him. His threat, which he later retracted, to cut off Nasa’s use ofSpaceX’s Dragon spacecraftwould be a huge blow to the space programme. The Pentagon and intelligence agencies have also become reliant on SpaceX.
Trump could follow through on his threat to cancel Musk’s lucrative government contracts. He could reopen investigations into Musk’s companies that were paused when Trump took office. The Trump ally Steve Bannon, whose extremist ideas have a habit of entering the Maga mainstream, called for the South African-born Musk to be deported and SpaceX to be nationalised.
Even as Tesla shares lost $150bn in market value, Musk seems to be betting that he has gathered enough dirt on Trump to survive the information war. Trump, now making plenty of his own money from deals in the Gulf and elsewhere, seems to have decided that Musk has outlived his political usefulness. There is no threat tohis command of the Republican party, where Musk is seen as something of an interloper.
But what of the Democrats? For now they only have to get out of the way and gleefully watch the spectacle unfold. Some suggest an “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” approach to Musk, whose money could swing elections in their favor. Others say a man whogave a Nazi-style saluteon inauguration day, and whose Doge cuts have already caused deaths in the world’s poorest countries, is beyond redemption.
From this perspective, a nihilstic war between the world’s most powerful man and the world’s wealthiest man brings to mind former secretary of stateHenry Kissinger’sremark about the Iran-Iraq war: “It’s a pity they can’t both lose.”