‘Mutually assured destruction': Trump's and Musk's quiet day is less détente than Cold War

Politico

a day ago

The White House is billing Friday's relative quiet following a public and fiery clash between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk as a détente.
Trump allies, ill at ease about the possibility of another blowup at any minute, are calling it something else.
'Reminds me of the Cold War: mutual assured destruction,' said one Trump ally, who like others in this story was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamic.
Even as both men appeared to walk away from the edge, some White House officials and allies are privately acknowledging an uncomfortable truth: Trump is the most politically powerful man in the world, Musk is the wealthiest man in the world, and their fates have become inextricably linked.
Musk needs U.S. contracts to support his businesses, and the U.S. needs the services Musk's companies provide. Trump, who overwhelmingly won the popular vote last year and a sizable social media following, has a singular platform he has shown willing to use at any moment to devastate Musk's businesses and send stocks crashing. And Musk, not only as owner of the social media platform X but the top GOP political donor last year, wields immense power to scramble the president's legislative agenda — with vast implications for the country's economic future, Trump's legacy and Republicans' majorities in Congress.
Those factors are, at least in part, why Trump allies say the fight hasn't escalated.
'Of course,' the Trump ally added, 'the MAD deterrence worked — there was no nuclear war.'
By Friday, mutual friends had pulled both back from the brink after a spat over the Trump-backed megabill and who should get credit for Trump winning the 2024 presidential election quickly escalated into a firestorm of personal insults and accusations. Musk on Thursday called for Trump's impeachment and suggested he has more links to a well known sex offender than previously known, while Trump threatened to cancel the billions of dollars in government contracts that form the foundation of Musk's businesses.
Emblematic of Trumpworld's intervention, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman in a post on X urged the men to 'make peace for the benefit of our great country,' adding that 'we are much stronger together than apart,' a point that Musk in a separate post conceded was 'not wrong.' Trump, meanwhile, in multiple telephone interviews with reporters over the last 24 hours, including POLITICO, claimed he 'wasn't even thinking about Elon' and that the two wouldn't speak 'for awhile.'
Amid rampant speculation about whether a call between the two men would happen, one White House official told POLITICO it was 'very possible' the two wouldn't speak on Friday, adding that it was the 'most predictable schism ever.'
Musk on Thursday night was hinting at his desire to call a truce after a dive in Tesla's stock price and Trump's threats to cancel his SpaceX contracts made clear the financial stakes. As for Trump, advisers and Hill leaders are likely to push him to refocus on passing his megabill — an effort that's likely to be far more difficult if he continues to goad Musk and the billions of dollars at his disposal.
Still, allies within Trumpworld hope that Musk and the president will bury the hatchet — even if some tensions simmer beneath the surface.
'[Musk] isn't delusional, he understands what he is and what Trump is and they're going to kiss and make up,' said one longtime Trump friend who has also worked with Musk.
The tentacles of Musk's businesses reach deep into the bowels of the federal government, creating both financial vulnerabilities for Musk and national security risks for the U.S. Slashing Musk's contracts, as Trump threatened, would starve the tech mogul and his companies of billions in government funding — of which they have reportedly received at least $38 billion over two decades — and devastate his business empire.
Russ Vought, Trump's budget director, wouldn't rule out that possibility in a CNN interview Friday, adding that the administration recognizes 'that Elon benefits from, and his companies benefit from, the taxpayer dollars.'
But cutting those contracts also risks crippling significant defense and space programs, including the rapid and low-cost launches the Pentagon contracts out to SpaceX. It's a point Musk used to his advantage Thursday when he threatened to preemptively decommission SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, which could leave NASA relying on Russia to get American astronauts to the International Space Station.
While Musk has since appeared to walk back that threat, he could offer his space services to an adversary like Russia or China, exposing U.S. strategies and imperiling plans to launch commercial space stations under a NASA-funded program.
Musk's satellite-based internet service, Starlink, also has multiple defense contracts with the U.S. government to support military operations in remote areas. It also this spring launched a batch of next-gen spy satellites known as Starshield for the Pentagon.'If for some reason SpaceX was not launching for the U.S. military, you would just have satellites piling up waiting to launch,' said Todd Harrison, a space and defense analyst with the American Enterprise Institute.
SpaceX does so much classified work that it's hard to know how far Musk's reach extends. One example: The National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and operates the U.S. government's most sensitive spy satellites, is relying on SpaceX for a new 'proliferated layer' of surveillance satellites — an effort to get away from concentrated space assets that could be vulnerable to a Russian or Chinese anti-satellite weapon.'They have been using SpaceX to build and launch those,' Harrison said. 'What we don't know is how many more are left to be deployed … It's a black program.'
The U.S.'s dependence on Musk's businesses for many core national security operations is a microcosm of broader vulnerabilities the U.S. faces as a result of its decision to lean on both private companies and foreign governments for key portions of its national defense infrastructure — limiting the leverage it has when it needs to protect itself. Reliance on China for rare earth minerals and magnets has, for instance, weakened the U.S.'s hand on trade negotiations, which are, in part, aimed at reducing American dependence on China.
While many White House allies spent Friday urging the two men to make up, longtime Trump adviser and Musk nemesis Steve Bannon was still calling for all-out war.
Bannon is advocating that the White House use the Defense Production Act to seize control of SpaceX and Starlink, strip Musk of his government security clearances, investigate any links between Musk and China and deport the naturalized South African native. It's unclear whether any of those proposals are resonating within the White House.
'There's no truce. All these people, the Ackmans, and everybody that tried to get him to deescalate, that tried to get the president to take a phone call and let Elon apologize, he just said, it's not happening,' Bannon said in an interview. 'There's not going to be any phone call. What he did — he crossed the rubicon.'
Contracts aren't the only reasons for the men to make peace, though. For as much as Musk has played sidekick to Trump the last few months, he is a cultural personality with an entire social media company at his disposal. And he knows how to wield it to devastating effect.
Musk sent congressional Republicans scrambling this week after his multi-day barrage of posts lambasting the reconciliation package under debate in the Senate, saying it doesn't do enough to cut government spending.
Those comments jeopardized the fragile peace Speaker Mike Johnson brokered among House Republicans and the one Majority Leader John Thune is trying to negotiate in the Senate. The president's so-called 'big beautiful bill' cuts taxes and boosts border and military spending, key priorities the president needs to deliver ahead of the midterm elections or risk losing thin Republican majorities in Congress.
Plus, Musk has immense sums at his disposal that he could use to run ads influencing public opinion on the reconciliation package — or to issue electoral challenges to the Republicans who vote for it. Those stakes have led many in the White House to conclude that the best strategy is for Trump to put his head down and focus on reconciliation and not provoke Musk further.
Musk doesn't have an infinite leash either when it comes to his extracurricular activities, acknowledging before his White House departure that he has spent 'a bit too much time on politics.' Tesla sales plunged during his time in the White House, and its stock price nosedived Thursday following Trump's threat to cut government contracts and, perhaps more important for Tesla, subsidies.
'Bigger picture, Musk has potent tools for politics via social media and financial firepower,' said Steve Cortes, a GOP operative who led Hispanic outreach on Trump's 2020 campaign. 'He's clearly not a populist nationalist, but hopefully he will realize that victories by the Democrats in 2026 and 2028 would be ruinous for America.'
Jake Traylor, Paul McLeary, Sam Skove and Eli Stokols contributed to this report.