The Trump/Musk Unraveling

The battle lines were vividly drawn yesterday, but the loser from the beginning is America

Elon Musk’s last visit to the Oval Office a week ago. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)

There’s a reason not to have a private businessman with the singular power to control and break America’s space program. There’s a reason not to allow the world’s richest man—one who’s fueled by drugs, ego and hate—to restructure our government. There’s a reason not to permit unlimited private funding to decide the outcome of elections and the direction of a democratic country.

There’s also a reason we should expect to have a president who’s wise enough not to brazenly dismantle the government in partnership with his largest, Nazi-loving donor. And there’s a reason to have a president who’s not a malignant sociopath, who’s not exploiting near-total criminal immunity to pursue wanton corruption and personal grievance, who’s not pocketing billions, recklessly flouting the Constitution, and causing pain and suffering across the land and around the world.

If all that wasn’t already clear, it became perfectly clear yesterday. I won’t provide a tick-tock of the events or a full laundry list of the public unraveling of the relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. (You can find one here.) There are plenty of sources immersed in a feeding frenzy right now that looks more like entertainment than the tragedy this whole sordid mess is for our beloved country.

I will note that Musk threatened to immediately decommission SpaceX’s Dragon, a spacecraft responsible for delivering NASA astronauts and supplies to and from the International Space Station. Musk complained that Trump showed insufficient gratitude for his role in securing election victory—and that he would have lost without him. Musk also underscored that the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files would showcase Trump’s involvement in that sexual predator’s world—a “really big bomb,” he insisted.

All of this—playing out on his X social media platform—emerged in recent days after Musk called the Trump-motivated legislation that would add trillions to the deficit and include few benefits for his companies a “disgusting abomination.” Oh, Musk also showed support for Trump’s impeachment and removal (to be replaced by JD Vance) and the launching of a new political party.

Trump, in turn, threw water on the necessity of Musk for his election victory, noted that Musk should have put makeup on his black eye when appearing in the Oval Office and threatened to deep-six Musk’s government contracts. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump posted on his Truth Social.

Trump enablers like Steve Bannon chimed in with support for canceling the contracts, seizing control of Space X and begin investigating Musk’s immigration status. “He is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately,” Bannon told The New York Times.

During an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz yesterday, Trump said, “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore.”

However much this nasty and petty feud entertains and amuses many observers—including many who had correctly predicted it was just a matter of months before these two titanic narcissists would end their relationship—we should keep in mind how much unnecessary damage and pain these two have caused.

Musk may be out now, the partnership may be in tatters, the battle lines may harden, the warfare may intensify (or quickly quiet down), the “big beautiful bill” may be killed in the crossfire (let’s hope so), but don’t doubt that Musk’s Trump-sanctioned mission will continue. The so-called DOGE department that pretended to be cutting waste, fraud and abuse will continue to be an ongoing effort to drive more hard-working civil servants out of their jobs. The social safety net of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security will continue to be under attack. Thousands and thousands of children around the world will continue to face starvation, disease and death because of this depraved cancellation of aid by Trump and Musk.

There was no reason for celebration yesterday as this spectacle of sociopathy played out. But there is every reason to do whatever we can to ensure that people like this never again have access to the levers of power.

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