President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are America’s modern-day Bickersons.

Thursday’s childish name-calling between the two hot-headed executives, which escalated swiftly, wasn’t their first public breakup.

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The fact is, it was their third spat. And if the first two provide a hint of what will happen next, don’t be surprised if you see the two together again and soon.

“The fight between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is entertaining and was perhaps inevitable, but we should not assume that it is permanent,” said Tevi Troy, a former official in the George W. Bush administration and a scholar on the presidency.

Troy, a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a senior scholar at Yeshiva University’s Straus Center, highlighted the bickering between Trump and Musk in his latest book on the presidency, The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry, published last August.

“Musk and Trump have had their ups and downs in the past,” wrote Troy in the acclaimed book about CEO-presidential relationships that have helped shape American history.

“While Trump in his first term appointed Musk to two of his advisory councils, Musk left the policy councils over Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Climate Accords, tweeting, ‘Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.’ He also criticized Trump on tariffs, tweeting in March of 2018 that, ‘I am against import duties in general, but the current rules make things very difficult. It’s like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes.’”

And how did those end? “As we all know, they made up for the 2024 campaign, leading to Musk’s outsize role in the Trump White House,” Troy wrote.

In fact, Musk spent the first 100 days as a sort of co-president, running the Department of Government Efficiency, and was handed a golden key to the Oval Office when he left to return to Tesla on May 30.

Now, after their messy divorce over Musk’s disgust with Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” of tax cuts and spending increases, many are wondering what will happen next.

Trump already indicated on Friday that he wasn’t ready for a third truce and blew off plans for a mediation phone call with Musk.

But Troy thinks it will happen.

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“In any clash between presidents and CEOs, presidents have the power in the short term, but CEOs have the ability to outlast presidential tenures. This means that both sides ultimately have an interest in accommodation rather than conflict,” Troy told Secrets Friday.

“Presidents and CEOs need each other. Relationships between them may fray, but reconciliations always loom over the horizon,” he added.