The rift between US President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who at one point became the second most important figure in the White House, should not represent more than another episode of the “musical chairs” game that is the norm for the Trump Administration, where the permanence of employees is the exception rather than the rule.
But this case brings particular problems for the North American president: He has momentarily earned himself as a rival to the world’s richest man ,the main funder of his campaign and the undisputed spokesperson for one of the pillars of his term, the American technological right.
The polls favor Trump over Musk
The polls are in favor of the president: a quick survey YouGovdeclares that a crushing 71% of Republican voters have taken Trump’s side in this fight. Musk comes out worse from this misunderstanding.
Leaves the White House with a sense of total failure:
The initial approval in Congress of Trump’s “great and beautiful” budget legislation, and the monumental increase in public spending it entails, invalidates all his efforts to reduce the size of the American bureaucracy.
For the South African, their stay at the White House has been wasted time that has resulted in a steep decline in Tesla stocks, and in the erosion of his public image among traditional Republicans. Musk, who bought the then social network Twitter in 2022 with the intention of moving out of the “niche,” has lost value in the conservative community at large.
In general, the conflict between Trump and Musk has been structural, ideological, and of character, and this last aspect matters when both control two social platforms such as TruthSocial in Trump’s case and X in the case of the tycoon.
two pillars of communication from the Make America Great Again (MAGA) ultra-right movement, the ideological backbone of Trumpism, whose influencers have been forced in recent hours to declare their loyalty to one of their two factions and call for peace between them.
The incorporation of Musk into the White House as a presidential advisor threatened to fracture the MAGA movement since late last year, when Trump and the magnate defended in unison an initiative to boost the granting of work visas to qualified foreign workers, a prospect intolerable for the “nativist” and anti-immigration wing of the movement.
At that moment, however, Musk was practically impervious to criticism, being a financial bastion of the Trump campaign, which contributed 277 million dollars record in the 2024 elections, through the fundraising body America Action Committee, which counted on the participation of prominent figures from North American technological conservatism, such as the co-founder of data analysis company Palantir, Joe Lonsdale.
Rubio vs Musk: The First Fight
Musk dedicated the first weeks to promoting his work in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, for its initials in English), a dark advisory commission tasked with reducing the size of the North American administration through the elimination of federal agencies, starting with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), under the purview of Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
Wisconsin: The Beginning of Musk’s Downfall
But if there is a turning point in the relationship between Musk and the White House occurred in March of this year, during the elections to the Supreme Court of the state of Wisconsin. The court, in the hands of liberal judges, is the highest judicial instance of a state traditionally divided between democrats and republicans, and the elections for its composition they represented a golden opportunity to install a conservative judge.
Musk decided at that moment to stage a show of strength: launching a new fundraising campaign in support of Trump’s candidate, Judge Brad Schimel, which ultimately became a referendum on the political impact of the figure of the South African tycoon within the broader current of American conservatism.
Musk presented himself as a radical actor with supremacist undertones, who went so far as to declare the judicial elections as a battle for “the future of Western civilization.” A month earlier, he had already given his public support to the far-right German party Alternative for Germany.
Needing victories following their catastrophic performance in the presidential elections and took the opportunity to pour salt in the wound by declaring Musk “a politically toxic figure, an enormous anchor that will drag Republicans to the bottom of the ocean,” as Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler commented.
By then, Tesla’s shares had fallen 13% amid investors’ criticism of Musk’s distancing himself from the company’s leadership, which was a target of activists against the tycoon,
who carried out attacks against the dealerships selling the electric vehicles of the company.
The definitive break between Musk and the White House came when he denounced it as an abomination.
Trump’s tax project, his “great and beautiful” law, which includes tax cuts and increased military spending, will result in a $2.41 trillion increase in the fiscal deficit by 2034, according to estimates made by the Congressional Budget Office. Musk described it as pure “slavery” before his 240 million followers on X, and he warned that it would be the catalyst for a “recession” in the second half of the year.
On Thursday, Musk’s outrage escalated into a frenzy through a barrage of messages, both original and retweeted, in which Musk polled the possibility of creating a third political party.
It echoed the requests of influencers like Ian Miles Cheong to overthrow Trump, and accused the President of the United States of adding to the “list” of child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Trump and his inner circle have paradoxically become the voice of reason.