Last weekend a video went viral on Elon Musk’s social media platform. A Chinese Harvard graduate who spoke at the university’s recent commencement was being interviewed. She was poised and thoughtful, unperturbed by the spectacle of two older American men brawling just a few feet away.
Before Thursday that seemed like an apt metaphor for the state of global affairs. After Thursday it feels downright eerie.
I won’t rehash yesterday’s brawl between Musk and Donald Trump at length on the assumption that you already know the basics. How could you not? The media coverage was a supernova, surely the most widely reported political development since Election Day. It was the rare “serious” news story that lands simultaneously on the front page of the New York Times and the front page of TMZ.
Culturally they’re the two biggest men on campus. The whole country rushed to the schoolyard to watch them fight.
We can tick through the details in a paragraph. Musk had grown annoyed at Trump for withdrawing the nomination of the candidate he favored to head NASA; Trump had grown annoyed at Musk for (accurately) calling his One Big Beautiful Bill a fiscal abomination. On Thursday Elon took things public, alleging that the president wouldn’t have won the election without him. Trump responded by threatening to cancel Musk’s many lucrative federal contracts, which tanked the price of Tesla shares. Elon then called for Trump’s impeachment, predicted that his tariffs would cause a recession, proposed the creation of a third party, and alleged that the Justice Department is withholding its files on Jeffrey Epstein because information in them implicates the president. By close of business, MAGA cronies like Steve Bannon were calling for Musk to be investigated and deported.
On Friday word came that Trump is looking to sell or donate the Tesla he bought after cutting an infomercial for Musk’s company on the White House lawn.
This is all immensely enjoyable.
It’s enjoyable seeing two detestable sociopaths wound each other, and it’s more enjoyable seeing the dregs of American populism forced to choose which daddy’s boots to lick. Some “influencers” dutifully took sides but others, unwilling to risk cutting off either of their gravy trains, established neutrality by resorting to homoerotica about the pleasure of watching two strapping alpha males wrestle for dominance.
It was a real-life version of “The Snake” except in this case the woman in the story was also a snake. I can’t think of a bigger hit of schadenfreude for Trump critics since the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden. A Twitter user summed things up superbly: “One thing I’m proud of as an American is that even during our descent into fascism we have some fun days.”
It was a fun day. Are you not entertained?
Bread and circus.
The problem with doing the usual “who won, who lost” analysis in this case is that to approach it that way is to normalize it, which feels too much like condoning it. The lesson of Musk vs. Trump (or “Alien vs. Predator,” as some online jokes had it) shouldn’t be whether one man gained or lost influence by attacking the other. The lesson should be that America has become a tremendously embarrassing freak show whose political culture should make any dignified person want to renounce their citizenship.
That’s been the case throughout populism’s ascendancy, but it’s gotten worse since Trump returned to office. Something about his brawl with Musk that I can’t quite put my finger on feels like a new low in how unserious and unfit the United States has become to lead.
Maybe it’s the coincidence in timing. Surreally, the squabble between the country’s two most powerful people played out on social media interspersed with remembrances of D-Day on the 81st anniversary of the start of the invasion. Nostalgia is a thief, it’s been said, stealing proper appreciation of the present by unrealistically glorifying the past, but there was no way to follow the news yesterday without drawing uncomfortable conclusions about national decline. From America’s finest hour of valor against fascism to two proto-fascist egomaniacs slap-fighting for influence over the American right: How’s that for a character arc?
Or maybe it was the humiliating gap in stature between the cultural positions that Trump and Musk occupy and the battlefield they chose to fight on. There’s nothing new in politics about narcissists clashing, lord knows, but these weren’t any ol’ narcissists. This was the president of the United States and the world’s richest man, the most celebrated entrepreneur since Henry Ford. Traditionally a dispute between two figures as august as that would play out in print or on a debate stage or potentially in a courtroom. Instead we got messy histrionics reminiscent of a romantic break-up on social media, a forum associated with adolescents.
And no wonder: Trump and Musk are the most exalted trolls in the brief history of the internet. Where else would two man-children go to have it out?
“The girls are fighting,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Thursday when asked about their bickering. She was quoting an old meme about people making a public spectacle of their disagreements but the petty drama and impulsive lashing-out did resemble the stereotype of how teenage girls behave when their feathers are ruffled. “And some say women are too emotional for positions of leadership,” Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth tweeted, laughing at the irony of how ultra-alpha males settle their disputes. A country that needs leaders has … posters.
The Trump era clearly represents the “bread and circus” stage of American decline but yesterday’s circus felt especially grotesque. Instead of watching gladiators battle, the mad emperor and the wealthiest man in Rome entered the arena to do battle themselves. And instead of using conventional weapons, they used the right-wing political weapons of the age—threats of government retaliation in one case, casual accusations of pedophilia in the other. The special blend of ruling-class lunacy and populist grandstanding made the stench of imperial collapse overpowering.
All that’s left is for Trump to appoint his horse to the Senate. Although in a way, I suppose that’s already happened too.
Attention whores.
What was the point of all this? What did Trump and Musk get out of their alliance before it imploded?
From what I can see, the main benefit for each was self-promotion. That’s another thing that made yesterday’s spectacle feel unusually undignified even by the wretched standards of the age. Their relationship was essentially a reality show. They received an ungodly amount of attention for it, all the way to the break-up “episode” that inevitably drew blockbuster ratings but not much else.
Yes, I know, the president got a few hundred million dollars directed to his campaign last year, but Elon’s kidding himself if he believes Trump would have lost without him. Spending in politics is overrated, as Musk discovered when he dropped a bundle on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race and went belly up, and it’s hard to believe that his all-out effort in Pennsylvania made the difference there when Trump went on to win every other swing state.
Long-term, the president might have been better off without him. Elon’s enthusiasm for his campaign left Trump owing favors to an allegedly drug-debilitated gazillionaire who stormed into his administration, alienated many members of the Cabinet, made a mess of the federal bureaucracy without meaningfully cutting spending, and departed the administration much less popular than he was before. He became a political albatross. When the president says that Musk was “wearing thin” on his other deputies, I believe him.
What did Musk get from his alliance with Trump?
He got to spend a few months vandalizing federal agencies (perhaps literally!), sure, but he has woefully little to show for the sort of populist libertarianism that he and other tech bros favor. Elon hates tariffs, as most business-savvy people do, yet he’s been subject to lots of those from Trump since January 20. He also likes well-educated immigrants, being one himself, and he’s in line with the conventional business wisdom on that too. That’s going about as well for him as the tariffs are.
When the time came for Trump and the GOP to capitalize on DOGE’s work and get serious about deficit reduction, they turned around instead and made the Big Beautiful Bill into a sinkhole for trillions more in debt. The White House hasn’t even cut Ukraine loose (yet), seemingly against the wishes of Musk and other tech barnacles like David Sacks.
I suspect Elon flipped his lid when his preferred candidate to lead NASA was yanked not so much because that nomination was make-or-break for him but because it was the final straw in a series of disappointments. He and the rest of the Silicon Valley intelligentsia probably thought that by aligning themselves with Trump they would influence him from within and eventually coopt his agenda, making it less nationalist and more libertarian. In reality they’ve gotten next to nothing and Elon has gotten less than nothing given that the global left now despises Tesla and after Thursday the global right might soon too.
What Musk mainly received from his partnership with Trump was attention, just as the president did. That’s why anyone who’s written about their falling out in the past 24 hours has taken care to include a “to be sure” caveat about the likelihood that they’ll reconcile (which may already be in the works). The two have every reason to do it: If you thought their divorce got a lot of coverage, wait until they remarry.
That helps explain why this episode captures the unseriousness of modern American politics more efficiently than anything we’ve seen in a good long while. The priorities of the key players are entirely unserious. The tax-and-spend bill that inspired Elon’s opening shot at Trump is unserious as policy. Musk’s own supposed interest in reducing spending is unserious per his use of DOGE to wage cultural jihad rather than make thoughtful budget cuts. Trump’s interest in the Big Beautiful Bill is unserious because he cares nothing about the substance of it relative to notching a “win.” And congressional Republicans are unserious because their motives are, as always, driven chiefly by the need to demonstrate “loyalty.”
A supposedly great country is about to do more damage to its already precarious finances because no one with influence over policy actually cares about policy. The president and his new frenemy view it as a way to scratch their itch as attention whores, the majorities in the House and Senate are tremulous toadies who’ll do whatever they’re told, and the base of the party treats legislation as nothing more than litmus tests for whether its representatives are or aren’t following Trump’s orders. Aren’t you proud to be American?
A den of vipers.
The last point to be made about Thursday’s squabble is how remarkably vicious it turned in the span of a few hours. Politics is a nasty business but rarely this nasty this quickly.
This wasn’t Musk complaining that Trump needs to do more on spending and Trump complaining that Elon and DOGE had their chance. This was the world’s richest man smearing the president as a child molester and the president threatening to ruin him by tearing up the government’s contracts with his businesses. These two were clowning around together in the Oval Office seven days ago. Trump presented Musk with the presidential equivalent of the key to the city to thank him for his work over the past four months.
If Elon Musk thinks Donald Trump is a pedophile, why did he support him for president and agree to work for him? If Donald Trump thinks doing business with Elon Musk is a problem, why didn’t he resolve the conflict of interest between Musk’s dual role as a government employee and a government contractor sooner?
Neither one took any issue with the other’s supposed corruption until the moment it became politically useful to do so, at which point each went full sleazeball. That’s a perfect illustration of populism’s instrumentalist view of ethics as a cudgel to be wielded against others for one’s own gain, never as a restraint on one’s own actions toward some moral end.
Calling for Musk’s immigration status to be investigated and his American citizenship potentially to be revoked was also an astoundingly rapid escalation by Steve Bannon. Granted, he and Elon have had it out for each other for a while. The nationalist wing of populism that Bannon represents despises the libertarian wing that Musk represents for supporting legal immigration and opposing tariffs, and it fears how those well-heeled libertarians might influence the direction of Trump’s movement.
Even so, leaping to demand that America’s most successful businessman be deported plays like a parody of nationalists’ economic idiocy and theatrical ruthlessness. Many other countries would be happy to host Elon Musk and his future industrial endeavors, I’m sure. Wanting to offload him because he hurt your fee-fees by criticizing your cult leader is the height of self-destructive stupidity, a politics of pure pique.
What we got on Thursday was a den of vipers suddenly thrashing and biting not for any long-term strategic purpose but because that’s simply what vipers do. (Again, remember “The Snake.”) It’s undignified to be led by people who are so fragile that they can’t resist making a spectacle of their own viciousness, but that’s populism to the core. It’s why mainstream media outlets have spent a decade struggling to find MAGA devotees who can articulate the president’s vision honestly, modestly, and effectively. They’re searching for dignified spokesmen for Trumpy populism. What would such a thing even look like?
Voters rarely have dignified options on the ballot anymore—the nominee of the other party last year had to be replaced because he’d lost his marbles—but choosing Trump in November set the country on a foreseeable course for yesterday’s tremendously embarrassing cockfight. That’s the other common thread in the many pieces written about it: Everyone knew it was coming. Voters were offered two unstable amoral rich megalomaniacs for the price of one and leapt at it because they no longer care about being governed by aliens and predators so long as the market does okay. I knew American decadence would be humiliating but, man, I was not ready for this.
