How Dems Can Capitalize on the Musk-Trump Catfight
Plus, why Trump is poised to win this battle—decisively.
Ordinarily Bill and Andrew try to tackle different topics in Morning Shots, but you wouldn’t ask one of us to pass silently over this Trump/Musk story, would you? Pick your poison1—and hey, maybe we’re both wrong! Happy Friday.
Opportunity Knocks
by Andrew Egger
In yesterday’s Morning Shots, Bill wisely counseled Democrats (and the rest of us) to ward our hearts against developing a Strange New Respect for Elon Musk. We didn’t know how soon our resolve would be tested. Elon spent yesterday making some excellent points.2
In a must-read emergency Triad last night, JVL laid out the stakes for what happens if the fight between the two men continues at a boil and what happens if it goes back to a simmer. These people, who have enormous opportunities to wound one another, have correspondingly massive incentives to go back to playing nice—but then, they had massive incentives never to pick the fight in the first place.
Whether they make peace or not, it would be malpractice for Democrats not to make this whole sordid episode a bedrock part of their critique of the Trump administration.
Since Trump retook office, the unholy MAGA/tech alliance personified in the persons of Musk and Trump has been fundamentally unlike ordinary political corruption or access-trading. Trump didn’t just give Musk ample opportunities to make himself richer; he gave him unprecedented authority to remake the U.S. government in his own image. It wasn’t just DOGE. Musk’s SpaceX was positioning itself to helm the effort to update the Federal Aviation Association’s creaky communications systems. Trump’s trade-war negotiators were hard at work strong-arming smaller nations into giving contracts to SpaceX’s Starlink service.
How confident was Musk that his businesses enjoyed a favored position in White House policy? Last month, he tried to bully the United Arab Emirates into shoehorning his AI startup into an Abu Dhabi data-center deal they had struck with Sam Altman’s OpenAI, claiming Trump would never approve the deal if Musk wasn’t included. (The White House did approve the deal, however, in what now appears to be a critical and underappreciated moment in the disintegration of the relationship between the two men.)
All along, the line from Trump world was that Elon was simply the best man for every job. “Elon loves the country,” the president said back in March. “He’s never asked me for a favor, not one time.” This convenient fiction lasted about five minutes into the men’s public feud. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump posted on Truth Social. If those contracts were so good for the country yesterday, you’d think they’d be good for the country today, whatever Musk’s stance on the Big Beautiful Bill.
To this Musk responded: You can’t fire me if I quit. “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts,” he posted, “SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.”3 A few hours later, he backed off this specific threat. But the disquieting reality continues to hang in the air: Major parts of our government rely on a return to goodwill between two of the most arrogant and emotionally unbalanced men alive. In what world is that not a massive national security risk?
This is how Trump wants to run everything, of course—from the broadest-swath international trade policy down to the nitty-gritty level of individual government contracts. His lodestar is rewarding friends and punishing foes. It’s not even clear that, in his megalomania, he sees this as a different thing from rewarding good work and punishing bad work. Of course it was previously good for the country for the computer and business genius Elon Musk to run everything—it’s obvious what a good, patriotic guy he is from how much he loves Trump. Of course it’s good for the country now to pull the plug on everything Musk touches—tragically, you can tell he’s gone crazy by the fact he criticizes Trump.
Democrats need not embrace Elon Musk to hammer these points home. Two of the world’s most powerful men are having a dirt-kicking hissy fit. It’d be a better world if they couldn’t drag the rest of us into it too.
Trump Triumphant
by William Kristol
Some dramas end in postmodern ambiguity. But not, I think, the drama of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. The outcome of this confrontation will be straightforward. In fact it is already clear: Trump wins. Musk loses.
The action began a week ago when Donald Trump fired Elon Musk. Yes, fired. Musk had served his purpose. His money had helped Trump get elected. His shock troops had helped in the takeover of the executive branch in the first months of the administration. But Musk’s prominence had gone to his head. His shock troops had gotten too big for their britches. He’d outlived his usefulness as a separate force, though some of his people willing to pledge loyalty to Trump could be merged into Trump’s political apparatus.
Trump had gotten what he needed from Musk, and he wanted Musk gone. The firing was spun as a “breakup” or “divorce.” But in fact Musk was dumped.
Trump offered Musk a reasonably gracious exit, with a public expression of gratitude and a key to the White House. But Musk chose not to go quietly. The ketamine-addled Musk chose to go to battle stations.
But his attack on Trump fizzled.
The key moment yesterday was when Musk tweeted: “Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” The reaction in MAGA world was widespread disbelief or indifference. The threat fell flat. If you declare you’re dropping “the really big bomb” and it fails to detonate, you’re in trouble. Musk’s threats to start a third party and his apparent endorsement of the idea that Trump should be impeached made him seem even more desperate.
Trump stayed relatively calm. Musk’s wealth depends to a large degree on federal government contracts or favorable treatment from the government. Trump simply reminded Musk that he’s president and could put those contracts and deals at risk. Implicit was the further threat that the massive power of the executive branch, staffed at every key position by Trump loyalists, could be deployed more broadly against Musk, with investigations into a host of his business dealings and, for that matter, his personal life.
To put it indelicately: Trump has Musk by the balls. Trump knows it. And now Musk knows it.
And so Musk has begun to back down. He’s probably realizing that he should be grateful that he lives here in America. He won’t have to face a fate analogous to that meted out by Trump’s role model Putin to the rebellious Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 (blown out of the air), or to the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003 (thrown into prison).
The upshot is that Musk loses and Trump wins. It’s likely that, after weathering a little further turmoil, Trump will emerge stronger than ever, having crushed the richest man in the world. Musk operatives working in the administration—and Musk allies dealing with it from outside—will have to pledge fealty to Trump. Musk’s fellow oligarchs will be cowed. And Donald Trump, meanwhile, will have unparalleled personal control of the executive branch of the federal government.
If he then gets his budget bill through Congress—which I think likely—and concludes a nuclear deal with Iran—which I think quite possible—Trump will be riding high. The strongman will be stronger than ever.
AROUND THE BULWARK
So, about last night… The Trump-Musk breakup became too big to ignore, so we went Bill O’Reilly on Inside Edition and did it live: JVL and SARAH did an emergency livestream on the intra-MAGA fight.
Taking the Trump-Musk War Seriously… And then JVL wrote this special emergency Triad: In chaos there is opportunity.
Why Is Trump Trying to Fire This Museum Director? If the president succeeds in sacking National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet, writes CATHY YOUNG, it could put the whole Smithsonian under his thumb. That would be very bad.
We Have to Pass the Bill So You Can Find Out What to Regret… Plus, in JOE PERTICONE’s Press Pass, the CBO’s straight talk gets all the hate on Capitol Hill.
Quick Hits
BANNON’S MODEST PROPOSALS: While many MAGA figures are hovering anxiously on the sidelines, hoping this whole Trump/Musk feud blows over before they’re compelled to pick sides, Steve Bannon wasted no time Friday settling scores against Musk, whose tech-forward program has shoved Bannon’s own nationalist-populist agenda to the side. And he’s got no shortage of ideas.
“They should initiate a formal investigation of [Musk’s] immigration status,” Bannon told the New York Times, “because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately.” He added that Musk should lose his security clearance and be investigated for his reported drug use.
On his own War Room podcast, Bannon said Trump should play hardball about Musk’s threat to decommission SpaceX craft: “When he threatens to take one of the big programs out of SpaceX, President Trump tonight should sign an executive order calling for the Defense Production Act to be called and seize SpaceX tonight before midnight.”
Musk responded by calling Bannon a “communist retard.”
NO PRIDE: During last year’s Pride Month, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters did not waste any time celebrating. On June 1, the first day of the annual month-long celebration of the LGBTQ community, the union posted a digital flyer to their Facebook account stating that “Teamsters Celebrate Pride Month” in rainbow letters. They posted a rainbow flag emoji on Twitter and wrote: “We honor and celebrate our LGBTQ+ members and fight every day for equality and fair treatment at work regardless of sexual orientation.”
Fast-forward one year, and the union’s public embrace of Pride Month has been essentially nonexistent. As of this morning, the Teamsters have yet to post anything about it from their social media accounts.
That absence stands in contrast to other labor groups like the AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers, and the United Auto Workers—all of which have shared Pride content this week. And it suggests that the Teamsters union, which sought good relations with Trump during the campaign, is making adjustments to stay in his good graces during his presidency. Trump has railed against DEI initiatives and rejected public embraces of identity groups. It’s a subtle capitulation that speaks to the lengths some groups will go to in order to avoid the administration’s ire.
The Teamsters press office did not respond before publication to The Bulwark’s request for comment. But Andrew Rivas, president of the Teamsters’ LGBTQ+ caucus, told The Bulwark the caucus felt supported by the union’s leadership and noted that sometimes it can take time for social media posts to make their way through the chain of approval.
Rivas acknowledged there had been some frustration among rank-and-file members after Teamsters president Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention last summer and declined to endorse the Democratic ticket—the first time the union had not done so since 1996. Still, Rivas insisted the current political atmosphere hadn’t altered the union’s support for his caucus.
—Lauren Egan
SOME QUIET FUNCTIONING: While the president and the world’s richest man spent yesterday sucking up all the attention, the Supreme Court quietly had a pretty great day, issuing a string of strong unanimous decisions on ostensibly hot-button issues.
In Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, the Court struck down a circuit-court ruling that had threatened to place a heavier burden of evidence on members of majority groups than on members of minority groups in bringing discrimination suits. “By establishing the same protections for every ‘individual’—without regard to that individual’s membership in a minority or majority group—Congress left no room for courts to impose special requirements on majority-group plaintiffs alone,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for the unanimous court.
In Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, the Court found—unanimously again—that a Catholic charity could not be denied a tax break for religious institutions simply on the grounds that its work of caring for the poor was, in the judgment of state regulators, “charitable and secular.”
And in Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, the Court unanimously ruled that a lawsuit from the Mexican government seeking to hold U.S. gun manufacturers liable for cartel gun violence could not move forward. Setting aside the issue of moral culpability, the Court ruled that a 2005 law designed to shield the gun industry from lawsuits concerning misuse of guns was applicable here: “Mexico’s suit,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote, “closely resembles the ones Congress had in mind.”
Our pal Gregg Nunziata at the Society for the Rule of Law summed it up well yesterday: “While no human institution is perfect, we have a very high functioning federal judiciary, for which we should be grateful.”
Cheap Shots
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Dragon is the craft that delivers crew to and from the International Space Station.
I do not want to hear ONE WORD from Democrats on how we should welcome the Elon Snake into our midst.
SHUT UP, RO KHANNA.
I'm against picking on immigrants, but looking at Musk's status makes my evil heart beat faster. 😀