Trump-Musk Big Bro bust-up: Ignore the noise, focus on the signal

When the most powerful and the most wealthy man on Earth fight, what does it say about their country?

Two very rich and very powerful and very big American egos have had a very public and very loud cat fight.

US President Donald Trump, arguably the single most powerful politician in the world, and his now former “buddy-in-chief” Elon Musk, certifiably the single richest oligarch on (for now) this planet, have “torched” (Wall Street Journal) their occasionally exuberant bromance of almost a year in a “stunning” (Bloomberg) and  “spectacular” (New York Times) finale of fiery mutual recrimination. Say what you will about oligarchic techno-capitalism, but it can be entertaining.

Using their own social media platforms, Musk and Trump have gone after each other with brutal reputational attacks, griping of the “You owe me!” – “No, you me!” variant, and high-value threats to do each other economic and political damage.

The key trigger for the blow-up was what Trump calls his “Big Beautiful Bill,” which is currently making its way through Congress. For, Musk – despite his lucrative government contracts a deficit hawk, whose own DOGE cost-cutting effort has just frustratingly failed – the same tax bill is a “disgusting abomination.” Musk claims that he is greatly concerned over America’s exploding and unsustainable national debt. Since Trump’s Republican majority in the Senate is small, Musk’s open support for the bill’s vocal opponents there is a real political embarrassment for the White House at least, if not even a serious threat.

US sovereign debt, moreover, is a real and very serious problem with dire economic and geopolitical implications; and estimates put the costs of Trump’s bill at 3.3 trillion additional debt over the next ten years: Musk has a factual point.

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Yet there also is the fact that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill foresees cutting subsidies for buying Musk’s Tesla cars (among other EVs), amounting to an estimated loss of $1.2 billion for Tesla. It can be complicated in that place between conservative ideology, pure and simple, and the unrelenting will to milk the public for yourself and your shareholders.

Musk also “revealed” – if that is the word – that Donald Trump features on the client list of the sinister financier, pedophile, mass sex criminal, and most likely intelligence-connected elite blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein, who conveniently committed suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019. To make it count, Musk, as if returning to his former Centrist political self, suggested impeaching Trump and founding a new party to contest the great blusterer’s grip on “the 80% in the middle.” Liberal Tesla drivers: Maybe you can love your car again. Even if the share prices of its manufacturer are tanking.

Trump shot back by warning Musk that his “billions” in government contracts could melt away like the snows of yesteryear, which made Musk threaten to stop carrying US astronauts into orbit, that is, in effect – since the volatile oligarch is America’s de facto monopolist – shut down space for the US. That, according to the Washington Post, constituted a “serious threat to NASA and Pentagon programs.” Slow claps, Washington, for letting “the Market” handle national security.

All in all, quite a reality show: noisy, no holds barred, and pretty indecorous. A dignified display of manly self-control and mature gravity at the empire’s top this was not. But, then again, it’s the US late-imperial “elite,” so the bar of the truly sensational is really high – or low, depending on how you look at it.

The whole battle-not-so-royal may or may not blow over. Both Trump and Musk clearly have much to lose from a prolonged war against each other, financially and politically, and both are not only card-carrying egomaniacs but also ruthless, selfish pragmatists. There are already signals that Musk, for one, may want to wind down the confrontation again: he has relented regarding the astronauts and made some semi-conciliatory noises.

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Between the president’s growing reputation for “TACO” (Trump always chickens out) and Musk’s proven ability to knuckle under when the price is right (in Brazil and toward Israel-while-committing-genocide, for instance), the two would-be alpha males might still find a way to share.

Yet things will never be as before. For one thing, by losing their cool, Musk and Trump have ended up showing each other three things that neither of them will forget: Just how volatile they both are (I know: surprise, surprise…); that Elon is no sacrosanct exception for Donald and Donald isn’t one for Elon either: everyone can always end up on the menu; and, finally, that both can think quickly – really as if they had been doing so for quite a while already – of the nastiest way to hurt the other.

If Musk and Trump do make up, think of it as a movie star marriage sticking together after both spouses have badly, publicly cheated and also tried to ruin each other, financially, career-wise, and reputationally.

And now let’s take a step back. For, ultimately, the Big Bro Bust-Up is most interesting if we look at it as if we were historians a few hundred years from now in the future: What does this quarrel tell us more generally about America at this stage?

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First of all, it simply confirms what we all know already: The US is not a democracy by any stretch of the (reasonable) imagination but an oligarchy and plutocracy. Votes count much less than money because money produces the votes. Musk has been commendably explicit about his belief that it was his massive financial support that made Trump win; and one of Trump’s worries in the whole rumble is that Musk might not only withdraw future funds from his camp – already promised but not yet paid out – but also invest them elsewhere.

Second, as of now at least, the American oligarchy/plutocracy is not under pressure “from below.” Objectively – to use a term long beloved by Marxists – Americans have every reason to rebel and shake off both Trump and Musk and then some. But, sadly, tension and conflict are generated inside the elite, not by “the masses.”

And third, the US elite is and remains absolutely, ruthlessly amoral and immoral, indeed quite evil: Here is a major falling out between the biggest oligarch and the president, and it’s about taxes, the deficit, profits, ego, and personal advantages. Not about, for instance, the fact that the US has, according to Israel, by now delivered 90,000 tons of arms and ammunitions to the Israeli apartheid state while the latter has been committing the Gaza genocide. Indeed, Musk has never withdrawn his support for Israel, while Trump has reached the same level of complicit depravity as his predecessor Joe Biden.

America: The world sees your priorities. And it won’t forget.