Brace yourself, because I’m about to deliver some bad news. If you’re reading this on a phone standing up, you might even want to sit down, maybe grab a tissue. So I don’t know, maybe you’ve heard, but in case you haven't I’m going to go ahead and rip the bandaid right off: mega billionaire businessman and former DOGE head Elon Musk and President Donald Trump are, well, to put it mildly … no longer friends.
I know, I know, it’s a complete shock that two rich, powerful, egotistical, mercurial individuals, one of whom likely with a much more severe case of Asperger's than any of us imagined before all this, would grow tired of each other’s company and torch their relationship in the most bizarre, yet for them perfectly predictable way possible, but there you have it. It’s not a bad dream, it’s reality.
If a situation ever existed that better encapsulated the classic “that escalated quickly” meme, I certainly couldn’t name it. I mean, this thing went from “maybe we should do a better bill” to “our president and my former best friend is probably a child molester” faster than you can say “rocket crash.” And since everybody knows there’s no coming back when you go full Epstein, it’s probably pretty safe to assume this friendship won’t be restored anytime soon, if ever.
Of course, as in any situation where mommy and daddy can’t, or refuse to, get along, it’s the children who suffer. Other than leftists who want to see the country burn, nobody wins when talented, powerful people who are supposed to be working for our best interests turn their proverbial guns on each other. But children also can take sides, and the side to take on this particular spat is easy: Donald Trump.
Sure, the president can be petty, vindictive, and even downright mean at times, especially to people who take shots at him, but Musk’s increasingly unhinged posts managed to make the wildest Trumpian brouhahas seem tame by comparison. This wasn’t just two men who disagree on an issue hashing out their policy differences in public. This was something else entirely, and frankly it was disturbing to witness.
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Why did it get so personal so fast? I have no idea, but it seems to have entirely more to do with Musk than Trump. First of all, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the man who voted for Barack Obama twice, gave money to and voted for Hillary Clinton, voted for Joe Biden, and supported Andrew Yang in a Democratic primary would be confused about how government works.
Don’t get me wrong. It was incredible to witness Musk getting redpilled seemingly one tweet at a time from 2022 and beyond. From free speech to trans-mania to taxes to the climate cult to plenty of other issues, watching the world’s richest man become sane before our very eyes has been one of the more satisfying news events to come out of the Covid era. It would be like if an army captured the enemy’s most powerful weapon and reprogrammed it to attack its former owners. Even given the latest disaster, it’s been incredible to have this guy on our side.
The problem in this case though is Musk’s newfound deficit hawkness combined with his aforementioned confusion about how government actually works. If he had a clearer understanding or even a willingness to learn from people more learned than himself, he would know that it took many months of hard work, compromises and careful consensus building between multiple factions of an already razor thin majority party to come up with the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that finally passed. In the business world, Musk can issue an order and expect it to be followed immediately and exactly, but getting things done in government is a lot more messy.
As Townhall’s Matt Vespa pointed out in this piece about the CBO’s “fearmongering” that also highlights White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s staunch and well reasoned support, the bill “seeks to reform welfare, make the Trump tax cuts permanent, and enact crucial immigration enforcement policies.”
Yes, deficits are important and should be addressed. No, this bill doesn’t go far enough and it contains some bad items we’d be better off not having. But, at least for the initial stretch, making the tax cuts permanent and securing the border in a meaningful, lasting way are the most important priorities of this administration, bar none.
If Trump fails to accomplish those basic things in his first two years and Democrats manage to take the House in 2026, not only will his presidency be viewed by most as mostly a failure, it will be a long, long time before the American people trust Republicans with power again.
Good luck getting the deficits down then, Mr. Musk.