Musk, Trump, and Miller: Tracking the explosion.
Look between the couple.
“Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him, at least until I don’t like him.”
I possess no insights into the minds of Donald Trump or Elon Musk. There have always been tensions in the coalition and it was always a marriage of arsonists and, as such, it was bound to explode. Trump’s brand is as the autocrat who never backs down. Musk’s brand is as the supergenius who is never wrong. Neither one can really back away from this without a significant loss of rep and with it money and power.
I make no claim to know where this is all going. But I do note that there is one person who sits between them, one man who in some way has both ears and that is Stephen Miller. Miller is after all Trump's go-to ghoul and is the architect of his cruelest policies. His wife is a special assistant to Elon Musk and while Miller may not be in tech circles like Vance he is ambitious and knows how to play a very long game.
Musk, Trump, and Miller are all honest racists. Each comes to it differently of course but there is no doubt that they all want a white-run world and the power to enforce it. Trump for his part has political power and political attraction that neither Musk, nor Miller (nor likely Vance) ever could. So Miller whispers in Trump's ear, hide behinds behind his shining light, and plans out his raids.
Musk for his part is rich, and is willing to rain cash on those who share his obsession with white genocide. So Miller dispatches his wife to be there by Musk's side and relay the odd kind word.
Trump may yet make good on his word to cut Musk off from the government dole. He certainly would score points with many people by doing so. Musk may yet make good on his offer of cash to anyone who challenges an incumbent. In the battle of war chest vs. war chest noone decent will win.
But wherever it goes, however it goes, Stephen Miller will be right there to use them.
Addendum: As
has rightly noted this is not the same as Musk being out. His DOGE fanboys are still in place in the government and he attained full access with Trump’s blessing. If they stay loyal to him or if he has already copied what he needs, then he can destroy a lot. And, as Frank Herbert reminds us, “he who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.”Trump has the nuclear codes and the capacity to rip Musk out of the budget. Musk has exfiltrated a lot of our personal data and has no control over what he does with it. And, as he showed with his threats to DragonX he is willing to cut his own business to cut the government (i.e. Trump). What will he do with Starlink?
What will he, or his fanboys with no background checks, do with the Federal Reserve?
Simply put BigBalls and others have their knives next to the arteries of the US economy. They got in with no security clearances and no oversight. They were chosen for their loyalty to Musk and they are in their 20’s with nothing to lose, some dubious if not criminal history, and a deep-seated need for a tech career. Few understand what they can really do, Trump most of all, but he let them in. Now he, or more likely someone like Vought, has to be wondering if they will really listen when told or, for that matter, what they might do if pressed.
This may be entertaining but it is not the fall of Trump, and when two titanic egos fight everyone else, everyone else, just becomes terrain.
Postscript: A number of people have raised the belief that this will end with Trump being replaced by the Tech-supplicant JD Vance. The argument is that the marriage of arsonists was always about putting a Thiel acolyte behind the resolute desk with Trump being just a stepping stone.
Some in the populist camp are raising this as a point of concern while the Yarvin camp see it as a step to welcome because it would allow them to rid themselves of the populists. I believe the former group is right to be concerned because for Thiel and Musk this was always a marriage of convenience and Vance has never, ever, shown that he can be trusted. He may not be a plotter, but he is an opportunist.