Dueling Socials

The moment I saw the headline yesterday afternoon, the first thing I did was call my mother to gloat. Not because I felt extreme schadenfreude over watching the war of words between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump playing out in real time. Instead, I was calling to gloat because I was right.

“It won’t take long before Elon and Donald fall out of favor with each other. Because if I know one thing, Donald don’t share the spotlight well, and Elon will take too much attention away from him.”

Sure enough, last week Elon was pulled off the center stage after being handed a cheap-looking golden key for losing a lot of money in the process of trying to “help the government” with chainsaw slashing.

Then the heat turned up over the weekend on the new frenemies, after Elon criticized the One Big Beautiful Bill. The social media jabs and kicks continued from there, until we reached a climax on Thursday night.

Uncle Don threatened to take away the government contracts for SpaceX. Elon threatened to dismantle the Dragon capsule program, leaving Americans unable to get to orbit in the future. This morning?

Sorry Elon, the President won’t be speaking to you. But he wishes you well.

Two personalities that are polar opposites in many facets of life were bound to collide even if they were partners in crime for a relatively short amount of time. All the pundits and talking heads who provide the “liberal bias” predicted this downfall. The right wingers claim this is some sort of advanced chess maneuvers no one can understand but “two of the world’s greatest geniuses.” I even saw someone claiming this was 5D chess.

Y’all. Just… Y’all.

This brings up a few thoughts that I think are important to game out for how all this could go moving forward:

Fallout

It isn’t an original story. Two people diametrically opposed come together to fight for a common cause. Then backstabbing occurs, and suddenly the knives come out for each other’s throats. Others get caught in the crossfire. Everyone loses.

The speed at which this all fell apart is interesting, but the continuing written jabs between Elon and Donald are what are more interesting to me. They seem more focused on attacking each other than spending time at what they should be doing: running corporations and running the country, respectively.

Additionally, some of what has been suggested by each side also comes into a clear picture with what is being shared on the respective platforms owned by each side. Elon used X to help Donald get elected, but then claims Donald has “such ingratitude” for helping him win a new term in office and attempt to destroy Democracy in the process.

El Presidente went on Truth Social and sent his own jabs into the social media stratosphere, and things really got ugly with the following X post from Elon:

“Time to drop the really big bomb: Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

All of this in a day, but it wasn’t done yet. Trump threatened the government contracts for SpaceX. Elon threatened then pulled back on decommissioning the Dragon program. The President says he won’t talk to Elon.

Elon also posted a poll asking users if they believed a party for “80% of Americans in the center” is necessary. (Something I’ve written about before myself.)

So where does this winding road go into the weekend? It seems for now the two sides have gone quiet for a brief moment, maybe each waiting for the other to make their next “chess move” in short messages. Where do they

The immediate fallout is clear: the two men who believe they hold the greatest amount of power are doing the job themselves that the rest of the country expected would only happen when prying buttons out of cold dead fingers on each side. They’re going to try and destroy each other in the same way that two candidates in a congressional primary try to destroy each other.

Information warfare – especially when targeted in today’s environment of a hypersensitive social media landscape – will undoubtedly open with some files being leaked by someone, somewhere. Then the President will try to use the power of the Federal government against Musk and the companies under his control. Lawyers will get involved.

It’s going to get ugly, and may well be entertaining for those of us on the sidelines who don’t mind watching the I-Hate-You tennis match unfold.

Yet there will be long term damage done from all of this. Confidence is already at a point where many Americans believe that the President has taken on kingly powers, and the way the two sides will go at each other will reinforce those preconceived notions further than before. It’ll also damage the ability for the nation to be taken seriously on the international stage moving forward, since distractions posed by what is more or less the battle of two men who are incapable of keeping their thoughts to themselves.

This will cost us all in the long run in prestige to start, but who knows what other areas this will spill over into depending on a couple of factors. How much information was Elon Musk actually privy to during his time heading DOGE, and did he sneak a thumb drive of documents with him? In this particular case, information is the real power, and what either side has on the other will ultimately determine the outcome.

Finances also matter as well. Elon’s war chest is shrinking somewhat thanks to short term market turmoil and the brand identity hit taken by his actions on behalf of the government. Tesla dealerships being firebombed and cars attacked by random drivers are some of the more prevalent examples. It doesn’t speak well when innocent people who just wanted an electric vehicle are the victims having rage taken out on them because of the head of the company’s actions completely unrelated to the car company.

Musk lost a large amount of value in his Tesla shares on Thursday when the market reacted poorly to the fighting on social media with the President, fearing that Trump will somehow take out retribution on the company in response to Musk’s tweets.

But that doesn’t mean Musk is walking away from the fight having lost his shirt. He’s still ridiculously wealthy.

I call it stupid money. Enough to do something that everyone would on the face think is stupid, but might be the only way to fix things.

Coalition building

It has been since… oh… I’m guessing the 1800s off the top of my head since we’ve had a government with more than two parties. (Hang with me on this weave for a minute. It has a point.)

Those of you who slept through the boring parts of American History classes of old will probably not remember that the current American political parties of the Democrats and the Republicans weren’t the first choices for politicians in the past. In fact, Democrats were originally considered “Democratic Republicans” and they were more conservative than any grandparent watching Fox News could ever be in our current time. They were opposed by the Federalists at the time, and the major issue at the time for these two parties focused on who should things like America’s debt. (Federalists wanted to have a central authority, while Democratic Republicans wanted the states to handle things instead.)

No one thinks about it, but the reason the Federal government has so much authority is because they ultimately control the supply of money – how it is printed, what it is backed by, how it is distributed through programs, etc. If we worship anything collectively as a national religion, it is the almighty dollar that is the head of the Church of the USA. We can all fundamentally agree on the value of a dollar, and it is because there is only one organizational body that is issuing it to everyone: the federal government.

The Federalists went by the wayside, replaced by changing times with the Whigs. The Democratic Republicans dropped the second half of their name, and was taken over by Andrew Jackson much in the same way that President Trump’s hold on the Republican party has been a decade-long takeover.

The Whigs fell out of favor ahead of the Civil War, and a new party emerged that believed in individual rights, common sense and was also fine with abolition. The Republicans became the Party of Lincoln after that, and their banner carried the day.

The Democrats (later referred to as Dixiecrats) were the ones opposed to ending slavery, were dominated by the south through generations opposing integration, and it took FDR to fundamentally begin changing that party over four terms as president. JFK and Lyndon Johnson did the remainder of the heavy lifting in the 1960s pushing the Democratic Party into a liberal camp the modern era. In the meantime the GOP built up its foundations to become what it is today, but shifted toward a conservative bent following continued losses to FDR in the 30s and 40s, a takeover of the party by radicals on the right wing in recent decades, and with guys like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan at the helm… well… Here we are today.

The two parties began moving toward each other in policies in a slow, steady way over the past four or five decades as corporate money has taken ever-greater prominence over each side, allowing their moral compass to essentially keep forever spinning away from true north. Their social issues kept the differences on the table – abortion, immigration, same-sex marriage, etc. – used to stoke the divisions we face today for no other reason than to keep us busy from what really matters: the money.

People with big pockets decided that it was easier to pay both sides and ensure the outcome no matter what happens in ballot boxes. It was cheaper to donate to each side rather than dumping wasted dollars into only a single party that might lose the midterms badly, or not gain a complete foothold on power. Hence why pharmaceutical makers continue to charge whatever they want for cures and medicines for all kinds of diseases and illnesses, why food companies can get away with all kinds of chemical ingredients in food, why car companies can continue to make products we know are poisoning the atmosphere. They bought both sides with their campaign donations, so the parties ultimately are beholden to corporate masters over the people they are supposed to represent.

So long as both sides are being funded by the same people and get the outcomes they want out of laws and regulations, we will continue to have a monopoly of power centered around two parties who have extremist wings that shout about radical changes that never come, and centrists who remain quietly keeping things just the way they are so everyone keeps making record profits.

The only thing different about now versus 20 years previous is the names on TV screens have changed somewhat, and the people who have been bought are so blatant in their tactics it can hardly be considered hidden corruption anymore.

It was so blatant that Elon Musk (I told you the weave would pay off) just dumped $250 million into GOP coffers, turned the algorithms essentially toward a biased right wing filter on X for every user, and expected it to pay off in the end with a lot of control.

His bet around the President was that he’d let the “genius” do everything he wanted and stay out of his way, while in the process allowing the President to take credit for things he did. The problem? Elon Musk wasn’t elected to anything. And his money might have bought Donald Trump a lot of votes on 2024’s ballots, but that is all it bought him.

When he tried the same thing again at a smaller scale in Wisconsin, people weren’t buying into it.

Now Musk has a huge image problem, having been the chainsaw-wielding Jason for America’s horror movie that fortunately isn’t turning into a summer blockbuster. He’s tainted forever by gestures that were just about as close to Hitler youth as one could get and claim it was just an accident. The claims of drug use, the claims around his children and many partners, the history of his takeover of companies and the way he enshrines himself as some rocket scientist or automotive engineer before the press isn’t any kind of secret. He is a Bond villain personified.

The real trouble now is that he’s a Bond villain with a giant pile of cash, and isn’t afraid of throwing that money around to get what he wants. He joked about buying Twitter for $420.69 in a tweet, and ultimately had to live up to what was supposed to be a ha-ha post on his favorite platform. Rebranded as X and focused in too many directions, it is just an example of how stupid money can get people into trouble and they’ll still figure out ultimately how to turn it into a profit.

He might not be a rocket scientist, but he ain’t dumb. He’s also clearly crazy enough to do something like throw money at a new political party.

Both sides will say it will be the dumbest thing anyone has done in American history, creating a new party from scratch with nothing but one man’s riches to back it. I think it might be the only way Musk can strike back and get what he wants out of the the deal: someone who will do what he believes needs to be done to fix the government.

His positions on how to fix the government – cutting departments to the bone, relying solely on technology to fix all problems, hiring people with no experience to make decisions about who should stay and who should go, and essentially making up numbers to claim savings without any basis in reality – are just as bad as the President’s.

Despite that, this could finally spark what has long been overdue: new parties that represent the will of the people, not the interests of corporations.

Musk is clearly not the person to lead that party, but him deciding to form a party seen as representing “the center” of American political discourse will prompt others to jump into the fray, forcing members of current parties into positions where they have to choose sides.

It just takes someone with a lot of cash and the will to get things done. Musk has stupid money enough to sacrifice in the effort.

Should that come to pass and Musk is able to fund enough candidates to unseat Democrats and Republicans in Congress, it would force something that hasn’t happened in generations in American politics: coalition building governance. Meaning that two parties or more would have to come together to hold a majority over another, able with votes to maintain control over what happens.

Could the GOP and Democrats come together for that? Not in today’s climate. But could that happen if a party backed by Musk dollars is able to gain enough to mess up the outcomes of every vote? Absolutely possible.

A big nothing-burger

All of this prognosticating could be for nothing, as Musk could be forced into silence due to the threat of actions against him personally due to allegations of drug use and possession, and investigations being undertaken by the administration into SpaceX, Tesla and X. Something investors SpaceX and Tesla would be unable to stomach. It could force all of this to go away before it gets going in earnest.

But something in my gut tells me this one is different, is personal for Musk and Trump.

I guess time will tell as events continue to transpire.