Russian Officials Delight in Trump-Musk Rift, Offer Mediation, Asylum
Tom Brenner/For The Washington Post
President Donald Trump holds a news conference with Elon Musk to mark the end of the Tesla CEO's tenure as a special government employee May 30.
As President Donald Trump and the world's richest man blew up the internet by detonating their friendship, a key Kremlin point man on White House contacts used a phrase from the L.A. riots, a divisive moment in American history, to get in a dig.
Posting on Elon Musk's platform X, close Putin ally Kirill Dmitriev used the famous Rodney King line to ask 'why can't we all just get along?'
In Russia, as elsewhere, the internet was transfixed as Trump and Musk, the man who claimed he had gotten the president elected, traded threats and insults. Comments both wry and mocking flooded social media.
As the brawl turned nastier, and Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon called for Musk to be deported as an illegal immigrant and for Trump to seize his company SpaceX, some Russian officials ironically suggested that Musk could seek asylum in Russia, joining the likes of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and Wirecard fugitive Jan Marsalek, who according to British prosecutors is a Russian spy.
Dmitriev, the U.S.-sanctioned head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund who traveled to Washington in April to dine with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, even asked Grok, the AI chatbot developed by Musk's xAI, what to do about the fight, seeming as eager as Fox News hosts to repair the rift.
'@grok what needs to happen for @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk to reconcile,' he posted. Grok suggested private talks and public apologies for personal attacks. 'However, their escalating conflict and public barbs suggest reconciliation is unlikely soon.'
Russia's informal troller in chief Dmitry Medvedev, who held the presidency for Putin from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, also chimed in on X with a horrified-face emoji.
'We are ready to facilitate the conclusion of a peace deal between D and E for a reasonable fee and to accept Starlink shares as payment. Don't fight, guys!' he posted Friday, referring to Musk's satellite internet network.
But easily the most provocative offer came from Musk's onetime rival in spaceflight, Dmitry Rogozin, former head of Russia's space agency, Roscosmos. The two sparred publicly for years on Twitter.
On Thursday, Rogozin, now an official in occupied Ukraine who heads a special technical military combat battalion, BARS-Sarmat, invited Musk to flee the United States and join in the war on Russia's side.
'Elon @elonmusk, don't be upset! You are respected in Russia. If you encounter insurmountable problems in the US, come to us and become one of us – a 'Bars-Sarmat' fighter,' he wrote on X. 'Here you will find reliable comrades and complete freedom of technical creativity.'
The offer was echoed by the first deputy chairman of the international affairs committee of the lower house of parliament, Dmitry Novikov, who told the Tass state news agency that Russia could offer asylum to Musk 'if he needs it.'
Beside the tsunami of bawdy memes, the Trump-Musk row exposed the ways in which America's political culture at times resembles aspects of Russia's: There were the open calls by Trump allies to probe a powerful oligarch, arrest and deport or seize his assets merely because he fell out with the president. There was Musk's claim that he was responsible for Trump's reelection, courtesy of his social media platform X and his vast political donations.
Then there were Trump's threats to cut Musk's state contracts, worth billions, amid the dispute, and his comment that 'I've done a lot for him.' These evoke aspects of Putin's autocratic system of personalized patronage, which he uses to curb Russia's oligarchs and ensure total loyalty.
On X, memes appeared comparing Musk to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Putin ally, oligarch and Wagner mercenary group founder who staged an aborted uprising in 2023 and whose plane later fell out of the sky due to an unexplained explosion, killing him and nine others, including top Wagner commanders.
Some compared Musk to other Russian oligarchs who fell out with Putin over the years, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed for 10 years before he was forced to leave Russia, and Boris Berezovsky, a media tycoon who fled Russia in 2000 and was found dead, apparently hanged, in his Berkshire, England, home in 2013, although the coroner returned an open verdict due to several anomalies.
For years Musk, as an immigrant who became the world's richest man, has been a popular figure in Russia, attracting a large fan base and sparking ironic memes about tech-savvy ideas and even inspiring cocktails.
In February 2021, Musk tagged the Kremlin on Twitter to ask for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on the then-popular Clubhouse social media app.
The result of that outreach is unknown, but in March 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk tagged the Kremlin calling for one-on-one combat with Putin to decide the war.
'I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat. Stakes are Ukraine,' wrote Musk. 'Do you agree to this fight?' he added in Russian. There was no known response.
Musk strongly opposed military aid to Ukraine during the war and repeatedly accused Kyiv of corruption, although he did not carry out his 2022 threat to cut off Starlink satellite links that provide Ukraine's internet.
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