Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson tried to make dinner plans and made a modest suggestion.
The ambitious invite list included President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, and Elon Musk. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie quickly sent a conditional RSVP: “Take the sharp silverware off the place settings.”
The dinner won’t happen. Davidson knows as much. The bromance between the richest man in the world and the most powerful man in the world, the friendship with political benefits between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, is burning down. Appropriately enough, the fight is playing out in real-time on X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter.
Musk accused Trump of keeping the company of a pedophile.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” he wrote in reference to the late registered sex offender who cavorted with business elite and powerful politicians. “Have a nice day, DJT!”
And later Musk replied “Yes” to a post suggesting that Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President JD Vance. He was also attacking Johnson, accusing the House speaker of hypocrisy over spending levels, though that feud was little more than a sideshow. Johnson replied that he remained consistent. The mild back-and-forth on policy was merely a blip that hardly registered.
By Thursday afternoon, White House staff were sarcastically referring to the whirlwind fracas as “the one big, beautiful breakup,” a reference to Trump’s one big, beautiful spending bill that ostensibly set off Musk.
A former White House official until last week, Musk had bashed Trump’s marquee legislation as a “disgusting abomination,” arguing that the bill making its way through Congress would bankrupt the United States. He then rallied his online following to “Kill the Bill,” a boon to fiscal conservatives in the Senate eager to reduce spending levels.
And Trump did not respond.
Musk had timed his assault for maximum effect. He waited until the middle of the press briefing on Tuesday to air his grievances. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, replied with a shrug and told reporters the criticism “does not change the president’s opinion.”
Then things escalated.
Musk complained online Thursday that “Trump would have lost the election” without him and his millions of dollars. The bad policy in the bill, the trashing of Musk in the press, all of it, he said, was indicative of “ingratitude.”
There was a time when this was unimaginable. Sean Hannity of Fox News once described the pair “as two brothers.” And the admiration seemed legitimate. Trump handed Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency the keys to the federal bureaucracy. As he slashed and burned his way across the government, Musk heralded his crusade as an attempt to save democracy itself.
They were once the twin stars of the MAGA constellation. “I love Elon Musk! The media wants to drive us apart, and it’s not working. He’s great,” Trump said in a February fundraising pitch. That same month, Musk wrote on X, “I love @RealDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.”
The pair now seems to hate one another as much as humanly possible.
“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday afternoon.
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!” Trump added.
This was too much for Musk, who shared clips of the president telling the press that his DOGE contractor had never asked for anything. “An obvious lie,” he called it without mentioning that Tesla did, in fact, lobby Congress to keep in place the tax credit for electric vehicles.
Musk and the federal government are intertwined to the tune of $38 billion, according to some analyses. NASA contracts to use his SpaceX rockets. The Defense Department relies on Starlink satellites to keep Ukrainian allies connected to the outside world. The Department of Justice vowed to crack down on arsonists burning down Tesla dealerships.
Trump even purchased a red $90,000 Tesla Model S and parked it on the South Lawn. The president even let senior White House staff take the keys. Margo Martin, a longtime aide, posted a picture of herself along with Leavitt in the passenger seat. “Best boss ever,” she wrote.
The whereabouts of the presidential Tesla are now unknown. The deep disdain between the two men, however, is front and center, leaving White House officials to speculate about the fallout. One insisted that they “always knew that this would happen,” telling RealClearPolitics a breakup was inevitable. Another replied to RCP with a yawning emoji. “Who cares,” they texted. “Elon is a man child.”
The list of jilted former Trump officials is a long one. He fired former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson via Tweet. He sent Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, packing after just 11 days. Also axed: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and National Security Advisor HR McMaster.
But not Musk. The Elon exit was supposed to be different after his special government status expired.
Trump rolled out the red carpet for his DOGE brother last week. He brought Musk into the Oval Office and gave him a gold key to the White House. “Elon’s service to America has been without comparison in modern history,” the president said.
The latest word from Trump about his now estranged brother? “Disappointed.”
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.