logo
Why Trump and Musk were stronger together

Why Trump and Musk were stronger together

Sam Hawley: Breaking up can be hard and fascinating to watch from afar. So where is the disintegration of the relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk up to now? Today, Geoff Kabaservice from the centre-right think tank, the Niskanen Center, on the real-world consequences of the split and whether there's any chance of reconciliation between the President and the billionaire. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Donald Trump, US President: I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot. People leave my administration, some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile. I don't know what it is, it's sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it.
News report: Within hours of his Oval Office comments, their once-close relationship had disintegrated. The world's richest man firing back in a barrage of hostile posts on X.
News report: Mr Musk, until recently a major ally of the President, continues to publicly criticise a government spending bill, even agreeing that Mr Trump should be impeached and replaced by Vice President J.D Vance.
News report: Donald Trump also fired off on his truth social platform. He posted, I asked him to leave, I took away his EV mandate and he just went crazy.
News report: Elon Musk then claimed that Trump is in the files about child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein tweeting, that is the real reason they have not been made public.
Sam Hawley: Geoff, talk about a clash of the titans, if we could put it that way. How would you describe the last few days?
Geoff Kabaservice: Well it's good to be with you Sam and of course this feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is causing plenty of amusement for anyone who pays attention to US politics. The memes practically write themselves. Is this alien versus predator? Is this the gayest thing to have happened during the whole of Pride Month so far? You know, it's amusing but it's also quite consequential in the sense that Elon Musk is not just the richest man in the world but somebody whose businesses directly impacts US national security and the fate of global affairs. And of course Donald Trump is the most powerful man possibly in the world. So it's entertaining but it's also disturbing.
Sam Hawley: So there is deeper implications to all of this. One of them of course for Donald Trump is that the richest man in the world could switch his allegiances to the other side of politics. If he really wants to annoy Donald Trump he could back the Democrats, right?
Geoff Kabaservice: You know, Elon Musk is unlike anyone who Trump has ever had in his circle because he's not a creature of Trump. He is independent. He has his own base in the world of business and of course his vast fortunes and the companies that he controls. So it's entirely possible that Musk could say I am flipping over to the Democrats or as he has already tweeted during the course of his epic meltdown that he is going to support a third party. Anything's possible. But of course there are also some people wondering if maybe this is a big put on of some kind, if maybe this was staged, if there's going to be an immediate kiss and make up session - to be determined.
Sam Hawley: Well during an interview on NBC, Donald Trump did warn Elon Musk against that move. He said there'd be serious consequences although he didn't mention what those consequences would be. And even though he kept saying that he doesn't spend any time thinking about Elon Musk, he was happy to keep answering questions about Elon Musk.
Reporter: What's your view on Elon Musk as of today? I mean, have you heard from him at all?
Donald Trump, US President: I've been so busy working on China, working on Russia, working on Iran, working on so many, I'm not thinking about Elon.
Geoff Kabaservice: This is a breakdown that I've been predicting for a while. I can at least say that I was correct in foreseeing that egos this Titanic could not comfortably coexist for long on the same team. But you know, Elon Musk has considerable cards, shall we say, because he is, as we've said, the world's richest man. He actually has a number of businesses that are critical to how government and the world works. Just as an example, SpaceX has under its umbrella Starlink, which does I think 80% of satellite communications launches in this country. It had a material impact on the outcome of the Ukraine war and the conduct of that war. And, you know, Elon Musk also controls a very important social media platform. It is as though he were the head of, let's say, the Washington Post 50 years ago. This is a person with a lot of formidable weapons, should he choose to go to all out war with Donald Trump, as opposed to just flinging insults at each other and calling each other paedophiles.
Sam Hawley: Yes, because of course, Elon, without evidence, accused the US president of being named in the Epstein sex trafficking files, a post which he later deleted. So let's just delve a bit further, though, into what Elon Musk could actually do to harm President Trump. As we said, he also has, of course, this very large social media platform with millions of followers. Could he use that against the president, do you think? Will he want to?
Geoff Kabaservice: Well, Elon Musk has a lot of say over what messages get broadcast on his platform, X, which is his new name for Twitter, of course. And it's entirely possible that he could actually go up against some of Trump's biggest supporters on that platform and simply suppress their messages, as well as putting out his own using one of the world's biggest microphones. But that's an entirely foreseeable outcome.
Sam Hawley: And of course, as we mentioned, he could also set up a new political party, support the Democrats.
Geoff Kabaservice: Well, you know, Elon Musk doesn't really have a lot of followers among Democrats. And in fact, a lot of people on the left have fled his platform for Blue Sky and others. But Elon Musk does have considerable amount of influence over the so-called tech right. Elon Musk is one of the biggest beasts in Silicon Valley, and a lot of people do look up to him and have followed his lead in being willing to support Donald Trump, even despite the fact that Silicon Valley's institutional political perspective, if that makes sense, is really quite different from Trump's populism. So there's a lot of points of stress in politics that if Elon Musk chooses to exacerbate them could widen the divides within the Trumpian coalition such as it is. And that might or might not benefit the Democrats. It's hard to say, but at least would weaken Trump.
Sam Hawley: Mm hmm. All right. Well, there's also, of course, a number of ways that Trump could also make life very difficult for Elon Musk. You mentioned SpaceX. Donald Trump, he's threatened to tear up all of the contracts that Musk companies have with the federal government. And that includes, of course, SpaceX. Can Trump actually do that, do you think?
Geoff Kabaservice: Well, Trump has certainly threatened other institutions with the withdrawal of federal funds, most notably Harvard University, which stands to lose close to $3 billion if Trump's actions are upheld by the courts. So it's certainly not an idle threat to take action against Elon Musk's companies. Certainly, SpaceX would be the most vulnerable to that kind of Trumpian threat because they get something on the order of $20 billion a month from the federal government. And in many ways, Trump's threat, it would really matter, would not just be to withhold funds from SpaceX, but actually to nationalise it. And Steve Bannon, who is in so many ways Elon Musk's antagonist, has actually called for Trump to do just that. And there's a real argument that somebody who does so much of the United States rocketry business, who has such an incredible sway over its Starlink and satellite apparatus, who in many ways is almost a sovereign entity at this point, you could make a real argument that nationalisation of SpaceX should happen. And I'm sure you would actually find a lot of Democrats supporting that motion as well.
Sam Hawley: Trump could also suspend his security clearances, right? Which would make life somewhat difficult.
Geoff Kabaservice: You know, Trump in extremis could even deport Elon Musk, who after all is from another place, shall we say.
Sam Hawley: Yeah. And Steve Bannon, a former advisor to Trump, he's actually raised that, hasn't he?
Geoff Kabaservice: He has indeed.
Sam Hawley: That Donald Trump should investigate the immigration status of Elon Musk, even though, of course, he is an American citizen.
Geoff Kabaservice: Right.
Sam Hawley: Well, of course, the stoush also did send Tesla stocks plummeting, Geoff. So that's another way, I suppose. This could harm Elon's business operations. And also Trump could tighten regulations, couldn't he, to make it harder for Elon to do business?
Geoff Kabaservice: Sure. You know, it's been interesting to see the way the narrative has shifted over the last several months since Elon Musk came aboard. When Elon invested something on the order of $250 million in the 2024 political campaigns, which included not just Trump's election, but also a number of other Republican candidacies in Congress and elsewhere, this seemed like actually a remarkably astute payoff because Elon Musk's personal net worth soared in the first few months. But, you know, there's been incredible pushback, even from some Republicans, against the Doge project of cutting the government that Elon Musk has engaged in. And Elon never quite seemed sure as to what his purpose was in helming that Doge effort. Was it to just help Trump extract political payback against woke enemies and the so-called deep state? Or was it actually to try to genuinely cut the deficit or make government work more efficiently? You know, the blow up between Musk and Trump got its start when Elon started criticising the Republican budget bill, which truly is a fiscally incontinent budget buster, which will add something on the order of over $3 trillion to debt.
News report: Tech billionaire Elon Musk has issued a blistering criticism of US President Donald Trump's spending bill.
News report: He has said that I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it.
Geoff Kabaservice: So, you know, there's a lot of things that are going wrong in the Trump-Musk relationship in the ways that they're not seeing each other eye to eye. And Elon is not very political. So in that sense, Trump could actually have the upper hand on him and could make his life difficult in many ways. And, you know, since you mentioned Tesla, you know, Tesla's stock has really cratered in recent months. People on the left really don't want to be associated with Elon Musk, but the right has never gone in for electric vehicles in the first place. And even Donald Trump's shilling for Teslas on the White House lawn hasn't really done much to encourage people on the right to buy Teslas. And one would imagine that they will be even less willing to do that now.
Sam Hawley: Yeah. And Donald Trump, of course, says he's going to sell his Tesla. I wonder if this might be better for Tesla, then Elon might have somewhat of a recovery when it comes to Tesla if he's not so closely associated with Donald Trump.
Geoff Kabaservice: It's kind of amusing. Like I said, this is this sandbox, quarrel of these two extremely powerful men flinging poo at each other. But, you know, let's not forget that the United States is no longer the world's unquestioned superpower. It no longer, in some sense, has the luxury to actually engage in this kind of infantile behavior.We are facing a serious technological threat from China, which undoubtedly will translate into global mastery of some kind. And frankly, Elon Musk's Tesla is also losing shares not just because of politics, but because it's actually lost the technological edge to some of these other Chinese companies. And the same is true of a number of critical technology areas where the United States is almost visibly falling behind China. And certainly our manufacturing capability, we've now been dwarfed by China, which is why Tesla does so much of its manufacturing in China. So one hopes that cooler heads are going to prevail. And I strongly suspect that both Trump and Musk are looking for ways to back down from this feud. But that doesn't mean that the political alliance that existed between them can be resurrected.
Sam Hawley: Yeah. I was going to say, is there a way back from the brink? And if there isn't, who do you think will be the ultimate winner of this stoush, the billionaire or the president?
Geoff Kabaservice: Oh, that's awfully hard to say because it's not clear what winning would look like here. I mean, at the end of the day, Elon will still have more money than any human being has had in history, as well as however many children he wants to have, however many consorts he wants to have. One suspects Elon will be fine. And at the end of the day, Donald Trump will still be president as well. And it's unlikely that the Republican Party is going to get out from under his brand of populism anytime soon, whether or not he chooses to run for a third term in 2028, despite the constitutional prohibition on that happening. So it's hard to say who is actually going to come out winners, you know, but I think there's a fair case to be made that they were stronger together than they will be apart, and that they will never quite wield the same power and influence or even be able to affect the cultural vibes in quite the same way.
Sam Hawley: Geoff Kabaservice is from the Niskanen Center, a centre right think tank based in Washington DC.This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Adair Sheppard. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley, thanks for listening.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Defecting Greens senator Dorinda Cox pens extraordinary resignation letter
Defecting Greens senator Dorinda Cox pens extraordinary resignation letter

News.com.au

time23 minutes ago

  • News.com.au

Defecting Greens senator Dorinda Cox pens extraordinary resignation letter

Defecting Greens senator Dorinda Cox has launched an extraordinary broadside at her ex-party, accusing it of racism on her way out the door. In a formal resignation letter, reported by the ABC, Ms Cox said the Greens had failed her as the Party's 'last' First Nations MP. 'In my experience, the Greens tolerate a culture that permits violence against First Nations women within its structures,' she wrote in the letter. 'In this respect, the party is deeply racist.' Ms Cox left the Party last week after a failed bid to become its deputy leader, instead defecting to join the Australian Labor Party. In her letter Ms Cox specifically mentioned a 2023 incident at Perth Airport, which reportedly turned into a physical confrontation between Ms Cox and the former leader of the Blak Greens Tjanara Goreng Goreng. At the time both women made reports to police about the incident. 'My reports to the party and parliamentary workplace services range from being assaulted at Perth Airport by a party member, which was ignored (indeed, I was advised not to report it to police), to incidents involving my staff who were isolated by the state and other MPs offices,' Ms Cox's letter reads. She continued to make broad claims about the Party failing in its 'duty of care' to her and her staff, accusing the Greens of being 'solely' focused on winning seats. Tensions have been high since Ms Cox left the party, with South Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young insisting that the 'honourable' move would be for Ms Cox to hand back her seat. At the time of her resignation newly-minted Greens Leader Larissa Waters expressed disappointment in Ms Cox's decision. 'Senator Cox would have had more chance of effecting change by continuing to work with the Greens in the sole balance of power,' Ms Waters said at the time. 'We wish her well.' The Greens have since revoked Ms Cox's party membership. The letter also addressed bullying allegations against Ms Cox, after it was revealed last year that a reported 20 staff had left her office over a three-year period – some over bullying complaints. 'I have faced an unremitting campaign of bullying and dishonest claims over the last 18 months,' Ms Cox wrote. 'I am not, and have never been, a bully. I do not perpetrate it.'

Paterson Province remains underexplored despite its gold and copper riches
Paterson Province remains underexplored despite its gold and copper riches

News.com.au

time35 minutes ago

  • News.com.au

Paterson Province remains underexplored despite its gold and copper riches

Paterson Province is a highly prospective region with big endowments of gold and copper Antipa Minerals has defined a significant resource at its Minyari Dome project and plans a standalone development Greatland Gold is looking to provide toll treatment services at its Telfer processing plant The Paterson Province covers around 30,000km2 to the east of the Hamersley Basin and southwest of the Canning Basin is one of the great mineral provinces in Australia, hosting some truly significant tier one projects such as Telfer and Nifty. Telfer in particular has been a real drawcard with a stupendous pre-mining inventory of 32Moz of gold, a million tonnes of copper and about 25Moz of silver. However, the region's quirks – including a relatively thick layer of cover in many parts – meant that other than Telfer and Nifty, which were discovered between 1972 and 1985 due to outcropping mineralisation, it remained largely neglected since the mid 1980s. Antipa Minerals (ASX:AZY) managing director Roger Mason told Stockhead the company started pegging ground in the region after realising that geophysical and geochemical surface exploration techniques had come a long way since the mid-80s. 'For example, electrical, geophysical survey techniques that they were using in the mid 80s would have been 1970s technology,' he noted. 'So there was an opportunity in the region to apply state of the art geophysical and surface geochemical techniques to see through the cover to discover new ore bodies. And basically that's what happened.' This is clearly highlighted by the discovery of 20Moz of gold, nearly 4Mt of copper and about 60Moz of silver in the last eight years or so under cover as shallow as 10m and up to 430m at the major Havieron project. Mason believes this trend will continue as the Paterson is a very immature province from an exploration perspective, saying that material re-invigoration of exploration has only occurred in the last decade or so. 'The giant deposits will continue to be discovered and then a number of smaller multi-million ounce, but tier two and tier three discoveries will be made over the next several decades,' he added. First mover advantage Antipa itself has benefitted from being one of the first companies to seize on opportunities in the Paterson Province while it was still relatively unloved. Mason said this allowed the company to put together ground in the shallowly covered part of the province. This is important as there are significant parts that are under very deep cover that makes it challenging to explore and develop mines. Its landholding of 4100km2 has proven rich enough for its work to culminate in a recently updated resource of 2.5Moz of gold equivalent – including 84,000t copper, 666,000oz silver and 13,000t cobalt – at its flagship Minyari Dome project. 'It's a significant resource. We had a scoping study out on the previous resource last October which showed very positive economics for a plus 10-year project mining one and a half million ounces of gold and producing 130,000ozpa for the first 10 years of project life,' Mason said. 'The economics were very strong for that project despite using a gold price of A$3000/oz for that study as the base case and it had an NPV at a 7% discount of over $830m pre-tax. 'It was a very positive outcome and so the Antipa board is moving forward with a pre-feasibility study.' The resource is also significant enough that the company is planning a standalone development for Minyari Dome. While the company will have to work through the usual permitting process in terms of environmental and Native Title considerations and stakeholders, it doesn't other have any particular hurdles towards going standalone in the region. Minyari Dome benefits from roads in the area, a gas pipeline running adjacent to the west and a BP-led joint venture building a significant green energy plant near Winu. Mason adds the company is pushing ahead with a very aggressive and multi-pronged strategy which is to complete the PFS and de-risk the Minyari standalone development opportunity. 'Currently, we've got four rigs in the area. We're drilling to expand the existing mineral resource, which will potentially expand the development life,' he said. 'We have an aggressive discovery-focused program in play as well, testing a range of priority gold targets. 'We've got three strings to the strategy bow, all of which are being sort of simultaneously progressed, and we're fully funded to complete all of those programs.' Not music to all ears While Antipa's plans to pursue a standalone development for Minyari Dome certainly make sense for a project of its scale, it does take away one of the potential planks that UK-based Greatland Gold might have been hoping to build its toll treating plans on. Greatland had acquired Newmont's assets in the region – namely the Telfer gold-copper miner and related assets – for US$475m in December 2024, giving it control over Australia's third largest gold-copper processing facility. This has the capacity to process between 20 million and 22 million tonnes of material though the UK producer has flagged that it is planning to use just part of this capacity and has promoted the potential for Telfer to be a processing hub using a hub and spoke strategy. While the removal of Minyari Dome from consideration does put some doubt into the viability of this plan, there are other junior companies operating in the region that might be amendable to a toll treatment strategy. One company is Encounter Resources (ASX:ENR), which regained full control of its Yeneena copper project in late May 2025 after IGO (ASX:IGO) withdrew from their joint venture. Yeneena is a large-scale copper-cobalt project covering +1450km2 of ground in the Paterson Province about 60km southwest of Telfer. It benefitted from some $15m in exploration expenditure – including diamond and aircore drilling, and regional-scale geological, geochemical and geophysical surveys from IGO over the six-year farm-in that generated an extensive dataset. The company plans to assess this dataset to refine and prioritise the next phase of exploration, which could include the potential for depth extensions to the BM1 high-grade copper oxide discovery and testing the large copper leakage anomaly identified at BM5. Previous drilling at BM1 had returned assays such as 20m grading 2% copper from a down-hole depth of 22m, 10m at 6.8% copper from 32m, and 18m at 3.2% copper from 32m. St George Mining (ASX:SGQ) also holds ground in the Paterson Province with its project covering more than 35km of prospective stratigraphy, with potential similarities to the stratigraphy that hosts the mineralisation at Winu, Nifty and Telfer. Drilling by the company has confirmed the presence of chalcopyrite and metasediments, the lithology known to host base metal mineralisation in the Paterson region.

Mystery Aussie snaps up $1m Cadillac Celestiq EV
Mystery Aussie snaps up $1m Cadillac Celestiq EV

News.com.au

timean hour ago

  • News.com.au

Mystery Aussie snaps up $1m Cadillac Celestiq EV

A mystery Aussie has spent as much as $1 million on an opulent electric Cadillac they can never drive on Australian roads. The wealthy enthusiast splashed out on an exotic Cadillac Celestiq that starts from $US358,000 ($549,000), but can double in price with optional extras. Crafted as an American alternative to Rolls-Royce, the Celestiq employs staggering attention to detail to make American luxury cars great again. Cadillac can customise just about every part of the Celestiq – but it can't build the vehicle in right-hand-drive. Aletha Israels, a Celestiq Concierge employed by Cadillac to keep its wealthiest customers happy, said a determined collector flew from Australia to Detroit to customise their dream Caddy. 'The intention was for the vehicle to be delivered to the States for him, not to Australia,' she said. 'A lot of our clients fly in and out in the same day in private jets. 'You're going to start hearing a lot more from our clients this summer, after they start taking delivery of the car.' The manufacturer's most expensive and exclusive machine attracts ultra-wealthy folk who personalise their vehicle at a special 'Cadillac House' in Michigan. Israel said customers can 'easily' double the price of the car with intricate touches fine-tuning its colour and trim. You can match the paint to a favourite nail polish, use timber from the family farm as interior trim, and engrave personal messages on metal elements such as the door sills. The default message on cabin elements is 'standard of the world', a message that reflects Cadillac's ambition to make the world's best cars. Israel said customers can tweak that to their own tastes. 'They could put their own motto, or live laugh love, whatever they want to do,' she said. 'The more bespoke you make it, the more the price point can increase … especially if you want customisations that explore some of the areas that may need some additional testing,' she said. 'Seat belts and steering wheels are the most expensive area of the car to touch. 'One of the requests that we had that was quite pricey was to change the perforation detail on the seats, and because this is the most technologically advanced Cadillac, to change the perforation detail on these seats with heating, cooling and massage, a lot of testing is required.' Israel's team works closely with the millionaire – or billionaire – clients, even working with their staff to make sure the customer's favourite snacks, drinks and flowers are on hand when they come to visit. Cadillac rarely says no to special requests from customers, but occasionally must say 'yes, but …' and explain the consequence of choices that drive up prices or delay delivery. 'I find this level of client wants transparency,' she said. 'So we clearly present to them the options and what their choice would be, but, you know, there's two motivators for them, time and price point. 'Only they can decide how they feel. 'Every client has a Cadillac story, whether it's their parents, their grandfather, someone that they have this connection to, or a classic Cadillac in their collection. 'We're finding ways to help them tell that person's story too, whether it's taking the original license plate number and building it into the sill plates or coming up with very unique ways to have the colour palette reproduced. 'You see a lot of appetite for that right now.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store