For everyone who always predicted the Musk-Trump bromance would be short-lived and end in flames, well done. Everything you ever imagined has come true. And admit it, you got bonus content that went even further than your own imagination could.
For anyone who insisted the men need each other too much to split. Well, frankly, you may soon be proved right too – I’m writing just a few hours after the very public spat, between two of the world’s most volatile personalities ever. The idea that whatever happened on Thursday will still stand by Monday may be as untethered as the row itself.
And for everyone rolling their eyes about two billionaires brawling like it’s 3am in a nightclub, and wondering why they should ever care, there is a case for why we should. And to make that, you probably need to go back a few steps, for context.
Back in 2020, a political lifetime ago, one Elon Musk threw his support behind the Democratic candidate for President, Joe Biden. It’s unclear if he actually voted for him – his biographer Walter Isaacson suggests he never voted at all (his home state is the bluest of blue democratic states: California – rendering a vote – in Musk’s view – unnecessary). But there is some suggestion that it was pique rather than laziness that got between Musk and his allegiance.
He originally supported Democrats on issues like climate and clean energy. Tesla’s growth famously benefited from Electric Vehicle incentives introduced by Biden. But Musk felt unloved by Biden. Overlooked during key White House events like the EV summit. He felt Tesla had been sidelined, and his own voice in advising the White House went ignored.
By 2023, he’d moved away from Biden, castigating the president for his perceived regulatory hostility and became increasingly vocal against him. He aligned himself with everything Trump and Republicans. The Green Dem recast himself on the libertarian right.
Trump threw Musk the keys to the car. Welcoming him in, not just to the Oval Office, but to the central workings of government.
Musk’s major cuts to the US Aid budget will leave millions of people around the world struggling. But even if you abide by an America First doctrine, very little of what he’s done makes sense – firing federal employees who keep the wheels on, cutting jobs for an estimated 260,000 people, some of which have indeed now been reversed through the courts. He cut grants, public health labs, and research – the monetary impact of what he did at DOGE was way lower than he’d promised. But the social cost was huge, and for a while, his political capital was high.
Whether Trump liked what was happening at DOGE is unclear. One for history. But any impact it would have had was erased by Trump’s reconciliation package. To find out how much Trump loves this piece of legislation, you need only look at its name. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” – which has passed the House vote but still needs to get signed off in the Senate – would make his 2017 tax cuts permanent, massively helping America’s richest. And roll back social programs like Medicaid, hurting America’s working class.
Critically for Musk, it would add somewhere between $3-4 trillion dollars to the deficit. Making any savings DOGE made look like a drop in the ocean. Musk calls this bill “a disgusting abomination”. Criticism that Trump took personally.
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And at this point, it’s worth turning to what happened on Thursday, mainly on two rival social media sites, each spewing their respective bile upwards, like the offerings of an inconsequential snowplough.
Elon Musk went nuclear. He claimed Trump would have lost the election without him, called for him to be impeached, and he posted videos of a younger Trump with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, saying Trump’s failure to publish the Epstein files owes to the fact that he’s in them. For his part, Trump has threatened to cancel all of Musk’s government contracts and subsidies. Bannon, Trump’s Maga henchman, chimed in, saying Musk should be deported as an illegal alien.
There is something of the BIF! POW! HEHEHE! comic book to this bust-up. It is, frankly, hilarious to see the world’s richest man and the world’s most powerful man taking each other on.
But don’t be fooled into taking sides. Because neither of these men has the voter’s best interests at heart. In this world, where Trump wants to decimate social programs and Musk wants to eliminate them entirely, all we are discussing is scale. It’s a battle of the rich, trampling on the rights of everyone else. If you’re trying to work out who the good guy is, or who you really want to triumph, you might well be wasting your time.
Emily Maitlis is a journalist, broadcaster and host of the podcast The News Agents
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