Hot off the heels of their extremely public breakup that so many of us saw coming from a mile away, from the second Elon hitched his wagon to Trump’s rage machine, the pair cooled down the feud for a bit, exchanging minor jabs on social media as they recomposed themselves for round two. But the bell has rung, and now the girls are fighting again. This time it’s about subsidies, the horrific monstrosity that is the GOP’s spending bill, and vague threats of deportation. It’s schadenfreude incarnate.
A few weeks ago, Musk and Trump appeared to have reached a brief truce. Musk even picked up the phone, called Trump, and issued a rare public apology for his increasingly unhinged posts. The ceasefire didn’t last long, though. Musk took to X to trash a Republican policy bill that slashes subsidies for electric vehicles, the lifeblood of Tesla, just as the company is in the midst of a death spiral.
On Tuesday, things escalated when Trump, speaking from the South Lawn, suggested Musk might need to be deported. The President of the United States is threatening to use his powers to deport the man who is almost single-handedly responsible for getting him in that office for a second time. He is doing this to one of the richest men in the world, who is a naturalized US citizen born in South Africa, whom Trump is threatening to deport on the grounds of simply not liking him anymore.
This is all quite sustainable and gives us all the more reason to celebrate on July 4, the day we gained our independence from King George, only to subject ourselves to the whims of (thankfully) inept autocrats and oligarchs nearly 250 years later.
When pressed on whether he would actually deport Musk for no real reason, Trump ambiguously replied, “I don’t know. We’ll have to take a look,” in his usual style, where he says exactly what he means but masks it as being noncommittal.
Then there was the mention of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, a brainchild of Musk’s recent crusade to bring Silicon Valley-style disruption to government. Trump mocked the department as a self-serving grift, one that happened under his watch as the President of the United States, and suggested DOGE should instead investigate the subsidies Musk’s empire gobbles up. All of this was abundantly obvious to everyone. It’s funny to see Trump, yet again, just say it out loud, immediately selling out his dastardly plans as long as it means someone who annoys him takes the fall for it.
Musk, ever the visionary, started floating ideas about a new political party that doesn’t exist within the restrictive confines of the Republican-Democrat binary. Yet from the sound of it, it seems like it would directly challenge Republicans more than it would Democrats. Look, no one said it was a well-thought-out plan, or one he even thought about before he tweeted it, or even one that he remembers after tweeting it.
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