Why Can't Elon Musk and Donald Trump Both Win?
In a petty, public war of words, Trump threatens to cut off federal support to Musk's companies after the billionaire attacked his deficit-busting budget bill.
A feud between President Donald Trump and his former advisor Elon Musk erupted on Thursday, when the two billionaires began swapping escalating insults and threats over their respective social media platforms.
Trump said that the U.S. government would be canceling its contracts with Musk's companies. He asserted that Musk had only turned on his administration because of its support for rolling back tax credits for electric vehicle purchases.
Musk, meanwhile, dredged up the president's past calls for deficit reduction and spending cuts (a stab at his support for the deficit-increasing tax bill working its way through Congress). He said the "Trump tariffs" would cause a recession later this year, claimed the president was implicated in the so-called "Epstein files," and even endorsed a call for Trump's impeachment.
To watch the feud erupt and escalate in real time is undeniably extremely entertaining political theater. The memes alone might redeem social media.
As formerly simpatico Trump and Musk partisans lined up to take sides, I couldn't help but wish that they both could win.
For all the chest-thumping and veiled accusations of human trafficking, Trump and Musk were mostly threatening to harm each other by embracing good, small government policy.
Since his role as a special government employee ended on Friday, Musk has been on a one-man crusade against the One Big Beautiful Bill that would add trillions to the national debt. He's called for tearing up the entire budget bill and starting again on something that would be more fiscally responsible.
Doing so would be a much-welcome improvement over the red-ink-soaked legislation that's been passed by the House and is currently being considered by the Senate. If Musk were able to score a win over his former government boss by killing the bill, fiscal hawks would have cause to rejoice.
Trump, for his part, said that the easiest way to find savings in the bill would be to eliminate Musk's various government contracts and subsidies.
That by itself wouldn't do too much to reduce the deficit impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Nevertheless, there's no reason that the federal government should be subsidizing car buyers to purchase pricey Teslas.
While Musk's SpaceX has certainly been a cost-saving boon to the government's space operations, it would be great if this company too were forced to earn its keep from private customers in a competitive free market for rocket launches.
Musk's calls for ending Trump's destructive tariffs and even impeaching the president, whose abuses of executive power increase by the day, are similarly laudable.
There's no denying a certain ugliness that comes with a sitting president swapping petty insults with one of the country's leading entrepreneurs.
In a more perfect world, the federal government's chief executive wouldn't be going after individual businesses, and a successful industrialist would have a lot less reason to care about who's in the Oval Office.
In our current big government reality, there's nevertheless a sunny side to a crony capitalist being with a fiscally profligate president who's really bankrupting the country by abandoning free market principles.
