Editorial: No winner to declare in Trump-Musk feud
The bitter feud that broke out this past week between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump is more than bravado gone bad. It highlighted the ugly, juvenile tendencies of both as they aired a personal grudge on a global scale.
As bizarre and, admittedly, entertaining in a sort of WWE way, it proved, there were no winners to declare. Not Musk, not Trump, not their supporters, investors nor perhaps even bystanders.
Ego can bring down the powerful — as Shakespeare observed long ago with Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. Achieving common goals and maintaining stability requires unity and collaboration. But that was quickly lost as they traded punches on social media.
For Musk, it only further erodes his current and future customer base for everything from Tesla cars to The Boring Company tunnel contracts to SpaceX rockets and satellites. It also suggests that maybe he isn't cut out for leadership no matter how many billions of dollars he still has. Lost trust is difficult to recapture.
For Trump, the world sees again that if you upset him enough, you can get under his skin. Get close to him, play to his ego and you can win him over without any authenticity. Neither quality is ideal for a global leader at a time when America needs to reassert itself.
Oh, it was quite the bromance for a time. Remember when in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on then-presidential candidate Trump, Musk tweeted unequivocally, 'I fully endorse Trump.' What followed was a prolonged political alliance that saw Musk sporting MAGA hats of nearly every variety, standing beside Trump at rallies across the country, addressing tens of thousands of Republicans at each stop, helping to raise millions for Trump and the GOP, and frequently, if awkwardly, appearing in the background of Oval Office meetings.
Now, we suspect, Musk (and his son) won't be invited back to the Oval Office for some time.
Some of the more prescient among us saw this coming. Cracks were already apparent as Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' was vetted. Claims that it would both jumpstart the economy and reduce the deficit proved too difficult a pill for Musk to swallow.
'Shame on those who voted for (the bill),' Musk now famously observed. Trump and many of his supporters alleged Musk only took issue with the bill because of the loss of electric vehicle subsidies. Musk, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get Trump reelected, then reminded the president of his game-changing political contributions. Oh, and he used the word 'ingratitude.'
Trump then threatened to cut all of Musk's government contracts, to which Musk quickly replied that SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon Spacecraft (a spacecraft that the government heavily relies on for deliveries and trips to the International Space Station). Musk also dropped his 'big bomb,' accusing Trump of being in the government's unreleased Epstein files meaning he was associated with the late Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier convicted of sex offenses.
In a Shakespeare play, this would now be the third act and one or more of the antagonists would express some remorse. They might even recognize their faults. Whatever offers of rapprochement we hear from the world's richest man and the world's most powerful man, we see little chance of such self-awareness. Musk crossed the Rubicon given how Trump values loyalty above all else. Perhaps a marriage of convenience is still possible but trust? Never again.
The takeaway for the rest of us? How embarrassing and truly awful that the president of the United States would engage in this juvenile, public dispute with his most valued supporter simply because they have differing views on deficit spending. And perhaps there's also a lesson in not airing your dirty laundry in front of tens of millions on a social media account.
In a better functioning democracy, disputes among political allies are resolved through negotiation and compromise, not through public accusations and threats. We are better than that.
Whatever comes next, Musk and Trump might try having a private conversation. Without the public tweets and attempts to humiliate the other. It's a lesson most of us pick up in middle school or thereabouts.
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