Musk vs Trump: Did Vivek Ramaswamy 'Doge' a bullet by getting out in time?

Time of India

15 hours ago

In Washington's latest episode of Tech Titans vs MAGA Caesar, D
onald Trump has turned on Elon Musk
—his former bromantic partner-in-disruption, SpaceX messiah, and self-appointed guardian of Western civilisation.
The trigger? Musk labelled Trump's much-hyped One Big Beautiful Bill 'a disgusting abomination' and warned that America was hurtling toward 'debt slavery.
'
Trump, never one to take offence lightly—or privately—responded with a MAGA-flavoured blitzkrieg. Contracts for Musk's companies? At risk. His reputation in conservative circles? Torched. 'Just another whiny billionaire,' Trump sneered, 'who forgot who made him matter.'
As the Trump-Musk bromance dissolves faster than a Tesla on Autopilot in Washington traffic, one man watches the fireworks from a safe, well-lit distance—sipping Perrier, adjusting his campaign blazer, and thanking his stars he got out early, having clearly absorbed Sun Tzu's timeless wisdom: 'The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.'—Vivek Ramaswamy.
Once the philosophical darling of the new right, Ramaswamy was handed a shiny new toy in Trump's second term—DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.
A meme-ified federal Frankenstein, DOGE was Trump's idea of bureaucratic reform through Silicon Valley swagger. Musk was the co-head. Vivek was the 'sane one.' Together, they were meant to revolutionise Washington. Or at least yell at it until it agreed to be disrupted.
But like any startup built on vibes and vague mission statements, DOGE began to implode before it launched. Musk wanted to fire half of Washington via app.
Trump wanted press conferences with golden eagles and fog machines. And Vivek? Vivek quietly disappeared.
Officially, he left to run for Ohio governor. Unofficially,
insiders suggest he saw the writing on the Twitter wall
—that DOGE was less a reform movement and more a digital kamikaze mission, powered by ego, caffeine, and libertarian hallucinations.
And now, in hindsight, his exit looks less like a career pivot and more like a Sun Tzu manoeuvre. Because while Musk is now battling Trump, Congress, and his own booster-fuelled paranoia, Ramaswamy is free to reinvent himself as a centrist tech-whisperer in the Rust Belt.
MAGA enough to get the base. Moderate enough to avoid the madness.
Except MAGA, like any self-devouring revolution, doesn't forget. Or forgive.
Since stepping away from DOGE and softening his Trumpian rhetoric, Ramaswamy has found himself in the crosshairs of the same base that once anointed him their biotech Brahmin. Hardcore influencers have branded him a traitor. Conservative meme accounts now photoshop him next to Liz Cheney.
And in the subterranean rage economy of right-wing internet culture, he's been rebranded from 'America First entrepreneur' to 'globalist plant with a Harvard tongue.
'
The irony? The same mob now grilling Ramaswamy for 'disloyalty' is turning on Musk for 'disrespect.' In MAGAland, loyalty is a zero-sum blood sport, and the only acceptable exit is the one through public execution.
DOGE, predictably, has become a political punchline.
It was doomed from conception—run like a Reddit thread, branded like a crypto coin, and staffed by men who confuse spreadsheets with scripture. The only surprising thing is how quickly it crashed. Musk thought he could out-Trump Trump. But in MAGA-land, there can only be one sun god—and he's orange, not emerald-mined.
Ramaswamy, to his credit, didn't wait around to become collateral damage. He understood what Musk didn't: that proximity to Trump is radioactive.
Stay too long and you mutate. Get out early and you might just survive.
The result? Musk is in political freefall. Trump is in attack mode. And Ramaswamy? He's in Ohio, sipping Perrier and talking about 'innovation in public policy'—while ducking MAGA Twitter grenades and hoping they forget he ever existed.
Call it foresight. Call it cowardice. Or just call it good political hygiene.
Because as Sun Tzu said—he will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
And in the dystopian sitcom that is American politics, that makes
Vivek Ramaswamy
the guy who ghosted the group chat before the firestorm—and lived to run another episode.