The Musk-Trump Murder-Suicide

Let's seize this beautiful moment

The two monstrosities finally started fighting for real. After weeks of simmering and building tension, the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump exploded out into the open, escalating so rapidly that in what felt like an instant the President was publicly posting about the need to cancel Musk’s billions in government contracts, and the world’s richest man was saying that Trump is in the Epstein files. In short, it was glorious. The two titans, in many ways embodying the two faces of evil running amok in the world today, went for each other’s throats.

Of course, none of this should ever have happened. It shouldn’t be possible. Trump shouldn’t be president and Musk shouldn’t have his billions. The fundamentally and devastatingly flawed system we live under is laid bare in these two egomaniacs who tower over the political landscape of the right, and unfortunately over the country as a whole. Trump has millions of adherents who seemingly will never stop adoring him, and although Musk has a much smaller base (something he may or may not realize) he has his billions, his social media platform, and his outsized influence.

What seems at first like an unexpected implosion has been building for the exact reason you’d suspect – money. Although Musk keeps ranting about the federal deficit, the much bigger issue for him, which he’s loath to admit, is how Trump’s big bill would kill EV subsidies, devastating his primary business. Teslas would become even more unaffordable and the company would tank. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, and filled with a mix of slow-building resentment and misplaced hubris, the world’s richest man chose war.

So now it’s on. There is (hopefully) no moving on after accusing your opponent of being a pedophile. So now we have the biggest possible clash, the two most powerful people on Earth beefing, and the Republican Party looks to be one of the biggest casualties. It’s among the clearest “let the fight” moments of all time, because in this collision the winner could be all of us.

Already there’s talk in the Trump administration of reopening investigations into Elon and his businesses. These probes, initially launched during the Biden administration, were of course shut down once the world’s richest man got such proximity to power. But Trump officials are threating their return as we speak, Trump himself “truth socialed” about the alluring possibility of terminating Musk's federal contracts, which top $22 billion, and Steve Bannon is suggesting Musk’s deportation and other measures.

It’s hard to know what happens next. One or both men might realize that burying the hatchet is smarter than fighting. But you’d hope, of course, that they can’t fully bring themselves to lay down their arms. This is a potential moment of rupture in the conservative coalition, with Musk and his sycophants aligned with those who oppose Trump’s big bill on one side, and the majority of the MAGA coalition on the other. What the left and Democrats need to do is try to drive the wedge, try to further split the right. There is already some temptation among centrist corporate Democrats to woo Musk, to get their hands on some of the billionaire money, regardless of his overt Nazi politics and the immense harm he’s caused:

This path (only promoted by the worst elements of the Democrats’ coalition) must be resisted by everyone with a conscience, and everyone who actually wants to defeat fascism for the long haul. The underlying truth about this feud is not something that can be forgotten if Elon simply pretends to switch sides for a period of time. Musk is deeply fascist, transphobic, racist, you name it, but even more than that he’s a greedy selfish blackhole who hoards money and power and is willing to do anything to grow his fortune, his reach, and his influence. He’s an egomaniac who has been enabled by the fundamentally flawed capitalist system we all should be working against, not upholding. This is the core underlying problem in our society that must be dealt with, and the world’s richest man being welcomed by Democrats who yearn for his money and eagerly turn a blind eye to the harms of billionaires would ultimately be disastrous for the party, and for all of us.

Any calculation around Elon Musk must remember that he is nationally unpopular. It’s hard to know when exactly the rift between him and Trump started, but the signs that a schism was brewing became clear to a wider audience after Musk appeared to cost the GOP a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Numerous Trump voters, and many others, listed the billionaire’s massive spending on that typically low-profile race as one of the deciding factors in voting against the more conservative justice. And if there’s one thing Trump hates, it’s a loser.

But Democrats should also be wary here. People don’t just hate Elon Musk because he’s weird and annoying, we hate him because we see his sickening piles of riches, and we see how uses that wealth to buy more power than any one person should have. Denying what people know to be true, denying what men like Elon Musk tell us about their hundreds of millions in political spending, denying the devastating effects of massive inequality that we see all around us is both terrible politics and terrible for this country. We should acknowledge and confront the disaster that is this billionaire capture of our government and society rather than ever trying to work with two-faced fascists.

Don’t get me wrong, this fight is great entertainment. Witnessing the two worst people you know go for each other's throats is refreshing after seeing them work together to destroy public services and hurt as many people as possible. But they won’t bring about their own downfalls alone. We need to pile on, we need to drive that wedge, we need to teach people about ways of doing politics and of running society that prevent two individuals have such wealth and power in the first place.

The ills of capitalism and the way it bleeds directly into fascism are on display for all to see. Some people might not have the words, yet, but more and more of this country is learning about the realities of oligarchy every day, and it’s because people like you and me reach out deliberately to teach folks and welcome them into a movement to create something better than this mess. Together, we can move toward a world where no one person has as much wealth as Elon Musk, and where no one person has as much power to do evil as Donald Trump. As they destroy each other, let’s build something better in their place. - JP