Analysis: Who holds the cards in Trump vs. Musk? Trump, but …

CNN

a day ago

It remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump and Elon Musk can patch things up after their ugly break-up this week – as many around them are hoping.
But as their feud devolved into highly personal attacks on Thursday, one of the most interesting facets was this: Musk leaned in on a potential power struggle.
He didn't just criticize Trump or his agenda bill that Republicans are trying to enact; he talked about unseating Republicans who voted for that 'disgusting abomination.' He mused about forming a third party. He suggested Trump needed him – claiming Trump would have lost in 2024 without his support. He repeatedly played up X posts suggesting people would have to choose between him and Trump – and sent a not-subtle warning to those who might choose wrongly.
'Oh and some food for thought as they ponder this question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years,' Musk wrote on his social media platform.
In other words: Make sure you think long and hard about what you do next, because you could live to regret it.
So assuming for the moment that this feud continues, who holds the cards?
There is no question that, if truly forced to choose, the vast majority of Republican powerbrokers would choose Trump. But it's not quite so simple.
Vice President JD Vance, after hours of somewhat conspicuous silence Thursday, eventually came down firmly in Trump's corner (in case there was any doubt) – albeit without criticizing Musk.
Other Trump allies who aren't fond of Musk and his influence seemed to seize on the opportunity to try and excommunicate him – in Steve Bannon's case, somewhat literally, as he suggested Trump should deport the South African-born Musk, who's now a US citizen.
Musk — the wealthiest man in the world — is a relative newcomer to politics, having only really joined the conservative movement less than a year ago (after the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania).
Trump, by contrast, often seems to have an almost cult-like influence over his side of the political divide, transforming the GOP into one that's much more about loyalty to him than any particular set of ideals or principles. The president often flip-flops – Musk on Thursday noted Trump was once a professed deficit hawk just like him – and the base often flips right alongside him. When Trump says something baseless or false (like that the 2020 election was stolen) much of his party internalizes it and rallies around it.
This is Trump's party, full stop.
But when it comes to how much this feud could matter, it's not quite as simple as who picks what side. Musk retains real influence, and that's why we're seeing many Republicans resist that binary choice.
A persistent rift with Musk would force Republicans to reckon with some uneasy dynamics.
Musk's overall popularity has clearly taken a hit as the Department of Government Efficiency has fallen out of favor. And he's definitely not as popular as Trump is on the right. Musk's personal politics and tech-world background always made this a somewhat uneasy marriage with Trump, and the president's agenda bill has unearthed some of those tensions.
But Musk has retained significant Republican support even as the DOGE effort has struggled. In fact, his stature eclipses most Republicans not named Trump or Vance.
An April Reuters/Ipsos poll, for instance, showed 54% of Republicans had a 'very favorable' opinion of Trump, and 50% said the same of Trump's vice president. But Musk wasn't far behind, at 43%.
He was well ahead of other Trump administration figures like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (33%) and then-national security adviser Michael Waltz (18%).
Similarly, a more recent Marquette University Law School poll showed Musk's 'very favorable' number among all Americans (22%) coming up just shy of Trump (25%) and matching Vance. And that's even after the polling decline of DOGE.
Musk's DOGE work has also remained quite popular in GOP circles. An April New York Times/Siena College poll showed 63% of Republicans and 70% of Trump voters said they 'strongly support' the cuts made by Musk and DOGE.
The flip side is that even if Republicans really like Musk – in numbers that aren't that far from Trump's own – that doesn't mean their devotion to him is comparable. It's possible to really like two people but clearly like one of them more.
And there have been signs that Republicans don't necessarily want more of Musk.
Polling from Quinnipiac University in early April, for example, showed while 71% of Republicans said he had about the right amount of power to make decisions in the Trump administration, just 8% thought he had too little.
And all of this is before the rift with Trump. Toss on a few days or weeks of potential missives from the president, and it's likely Musk's numbers among Republicans would crater.
But that's not the same as saying a rift between these two billionaires wouldn't matter.
Musk not only has retained plenty of goodwill from Republicans of late, but he wields immense influence via his personal fortune and ownership of perhaps the preeminent social media platform for politics, X.
We've seen before that Musk can drive support for initiatives he likes and torpedo things he doesn't. He has used his control of X's moderation policies and algorithm to boost his own posts and at times silence his critics, as the Washington Post noted Thursday.
And he's proven plenty willing and able to seed unsubstantiated theories about his political opponents, as he did Thursday with his posts linking Trump to Jeffrey Epstein.
Toss on top of that the wealth that Musk has proven increasingly willing to deploy on politics (i.e. potential primary challengers) and his promise to be a force for decades to come, and it's not an easy call to disown him.
We'll see if Musk and Trump intend to force that choice on the Republican Party.