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Trump-Musk Bitter Breakup Isn’t Over Yet: Bigger Fireworks in the Offing?

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The fiery, long-predicted breakup of the Donald Trump Elon Musk bromance has been pitchforked into the headlines, and there is no détente in sight. The breakup between the most powerful man in the world and the richest man in the world quickly has morphed into an online feud that continues to rage and escalate.

The latest: President Donald Trump suggested that he might take a look at some of Musk’s contracts with the federal government. Steve Bannon is reportedly urging Trump to deport Musk. Some predict Trump will find a way to indict Musk. And the news then went out: Trump wants to get rid of the red Tesla he bought from Musk and didn’t accept a Musk phone call.

So will Musk take a chainsaw and cut out all the pent-up anger? Unlikely. Musk, who essentially has accused Trump of being a pedophile, now says he’ll apologize when there is full dump of the Epstein files. He’s also calling for the creation of a new political party – which is likely giving Republican strategists stomach cramps.

What triggered this? There are conflicting reports and theories but many believe when Trump accused Musk of Trump Derangement Syndrome – a phrase often used to try and discredit Trump critics by suggesting their criticisms are based on emotion bias rather than outrage over Trump actions — Musk decided reacted as Bugs Bunny did:


Meanwhile, Musk is believed to have infuriated Trump when he Tweeted that said Trump wouldn’t have been elected President without his help and then proceeded going after Trump on the still-unreleased Epstein files. And so the escalation continues.

Here’s a media and Twitter roundup:

New York Times columnist Michele Goldberg says the battle signals an ominous shift:

At the height of the juvenile flame war on Thursday between the world’s richest man and its most powerful one, Donald Trump posted a barely veiled threat on his website Truth Social. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” he wrote. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

All the tech oligarchs and business titans who’ve thrown in with Trump, apparently deciding that strongman politics are good for business, should think carefully about that post. In it, you can see the transition to a new kind of American regime.

Until approximately six months ago, business leaders did not have to worry that voicing their opposition to an American president could tank their enterprises. Now, it’s widely understood and even tacitly accepted that the president will wield the power of his office to crush his enemies. That’s why stock in Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, plunged while he fought with Trump, losing, astonishingly, about $150 billion in market value on Thursday.

It’s true, of course, that in Joe Biden’s administration, Democrats regulated big tech in ways that industry honchos resented. But Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and Gary Gensler, former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, were motivated by policy goals, not personal vendettas. It’s also true that many of Musk’s customers turned on him over his lurch to the far right, which hurt Tesla’s business. But there is a profound difference between ordinary people rejecting a brand that doesn’t align with their values, and a president using the levers of the state to enforce loyalty.

Musk could say whatever he wanted about Biden without risking the government contracts of his company SpaceX. Perhaps he attributed that freedom to his own power and indispensability. In fact, he owed it to liberal democracy and the very bureaucratic, technocratic structures that he’s spent the last few months trying to destroy.

It’s still too early to know whether Musk’s rift with Trump will be permanent. As I write this, Musk has backed off his online attacks; in response to a social media post by the hedge fund manager Bill Ackman urging a rapprochement late Thursday, Musk wrote, “You’re not wrong.”

Nevertheless, the last 24 hours should be a lesson to both him and all the other billionaires who lined up with Trump. In trying to liberate themselves from regulation, they’ve trapped themselves in a posture of deep, even existential submission. When the rule of law gives way to the cult of the leader, there are lots of opportunities for personal enrichment, but only for those who stay in the leader’s good graces.

Jonathan Lemire, Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, and Russell Berman, writing in the Atlantic, report that Trump tried to give Musk a dignified send-off but it didn’t work. Here’s the beginning of the lengthy article

For once, President Donald Trump was trying to be the adult in the room.

Trump and Elon Musk, two billionaires with massive egos and combustible temperaments, had forged an unlikely friendship over the past year, one built on proximity, political expediency, and, yes, a touch of genuine warmth. Relations between the president and his top benefactor had grown somewhat strained in recent weeks, as Trump began to feel that Musk had overstayed his welcome in the West Wing. Musk had suggested privately that he could stay on at the White House, an offer that Trump gently declined, two people familiar with the situation told us. (They, like others we talked with for this story, spoke anonymously in order to share candid details about a sensitive feud.) But Musk was still given a gracious send-off last Friday—complete with a large golden, albeit ceremonial, key—aimed at keeping the mercurial tech baron more friend than foe.

The peace didn’t last even a week.

On Tuesday, Musk took to X to attack the Republican spending bill being debated in the Senate, trashing Trump’s signature piece of legislation as “a disgusting abomination.” Even as the White House tried to downplay any differences, Musk couldn’t let go of his grievances—the exclusion of electric-vehicle tax credits from the bill, and Trump’s rejection of Musk’s pick to run NASA.

And:

Yesterday, the planet’s richest man attacked its most powerful. Each took aim at the other from their respective social-media platform, forcing rubberneckers into a madcap toggle between Truth Social and X. Trump deemed his former aide “CRAZY,” while Musk went much further, dramatically escalating the feud by calling for Trump’s impeachment, suggesting that the president had been part of Jeffrey Epstein’s notorious sex-trafficking ring, and—likely worst of all in Trump’s mind—taking credit for the president’s election in November.

For one day, Musk made X great again. The spectacle seemed to subside today, as Trump showed—at least by his standards—some restraint. The president insisted that he was not thinking about Musk and wanted only to pass the reconciliation bill that had featured in the brawl. Musk, meanwhile, has far more to lose: his newfound stardom within the MAGA movement, his personal wealth, and government contracts worth billions to his businesses.

Steven Bannon, the influential Trump adviser who has long been critical of Musk, crowed that the tech billionaire’s attacks on Trump were so personal that he won’t be forgiven by the MAGA crowd. “Only the fanboys are going to stick with him—he’s a man without a country,” Bannon told us.

Go to the link and read the article in its entirety.

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