What will happen next in the Musk vs Trump civil war?

Rumours of a global shortage of popcorn are obviously exaggerated, but watching the most spectacular public bust-up since Megxit has certainly been entertaining (so far).

Aside from the endless supply of broken crockery for the media – including Musk’s very own X channel – there will actually be some real-world consequences for this very traumatic experience for both men.

It’s not clear who will be the winner. Perhaps in the end there won’t be one, and the pair, locked in a storm of mutual destruction, will be the first to disprove Henry Kissinger’s famous dictum about Iran-Iraq: “It’s a pity they can’t both lose.”

It wasn’t inevitable, by the way, that the Elon Musk and Donald Trump “bromance” would end this way. It was more 50/50. Elon did, after all, say that he loved Donald “as much as any straight man can love another man”.

The richest person on the planet had money and influence that could be used to get elected – $300m, Musk says, plus the passive acquiescence of X, in promoting helpful conspiracy theories and Maga propaganda. Trump, as his recent threats prove, could help Musk’s businesses to thrive – satellites, electric cars, and Musk’s sworn (if bonkers) mission to “occupy Mars”.

It wasn’t a marriage made in heaven (more Mar-a-Lago) but they did share, if not platonic love, at least a deep hatred for the “woke mind virus”. So the partnership could have worked.

Except, as the consensus suggests the egos were too big. The sheer speed of the collapse has exceeded all expectations, and they’re probably not done. What may we expect?

On the big economic stuff, probably not that much for now. Shares in Tesla are way down, but that doesn’t matter much in the great scheme of things. Musk only owns about 12 per cent anyway, and the company and its technology would probably be better off in different hands. SpaceX has such a strong market position only nationalisation (Steve Bannon’s solution) would really affect Musk – but, again, the satellites would still be up there.

So let’s raise our horizons. On the economy, Musk is right about Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” being a fiscal disaster and he’s also probably correct in suggesting Trump’s chaotic tariffs will trigger a US recession later in the year, if only because no one knows what’s going on with them.

The Doge “savings”, such as they are, are neither here nor there in the context of the whole US public sector. But here Musk is only pointing out the obvious; he would never have been able to alter Trump’s policy if he’d wanted to, and, to be fair to the president, Musk showed no signs of dissent in his time in the White House. The tech bro may have been intoxicated by becoming “First Buddy”, but Trump would no more take advice from him than he would from Melania (with all due respect to her – he would be a better leader if he did ask Flotus what she thought).

Politically, the consequences will be marginal, too – but consequentially so in a nation so evenly divided, despite Trump’s incessant claims about elections getting rigged, except for his “landslide” last November (which, of course, it was not).

Musk talks about a new party to end the Democrat-Republican duopoly, but the system wouldn’t really allow such a presumably radical grouping to break through. (Curiously, his rough UK equivalent, Dominic Cummings, sometimes entertains similar fantasies, after his own break with “Britain Trump”, Boris Johnson). Besides, they already have that in Maga, which has taken over the Republican Party like a parasitic grub eating its host from within, but leaving the appearance of the outer skin and a few inner organs intact).

However, Musk, and any political following he starts to cultivate, could prove a constant distraction for Trump, attacking him from a fiscally conservative, maybe more libertarian standpoint, and he’d attract some following. He seems to have been doing this in Congress already. More to the point, with his still vast fortune and social media platform, Musk could well target suitable electoral districts to defeat selected Trumpian candidates, which would help lose the hold the president has on the legislature in the midterms.

True or not, Trump would have to deal with a constant flow of Musk-inspired stories about his personal behaviour, private life, financial affairs and all the vague allegations about the Epstein files. Musk, in other words, could hurt Trump quite badly without somehow persuading the cabinet to declare Trump mad and replace him with JD Vance (an idea Musk supports).

On the other hand, there’s no doubt Trump, acting on Steve Bannon’s advice, could hurt Musk. He could, as threatened, cancel government contracts with Musk companies, impose tougher regulations, cancel the electric vehicle mandate, hit him with tariffs, order an investigation into him, deport him or even jail him for some trumped-up charge, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Imagine if Elon asks President Cyril Ramaphosa, a man so recently humiliated in Musk's presence in the Oval Office, for asylum and safe passage to South Africa. Or applies for a British passport, which he could too. Might be good for UK economic growth?

The net effect of all this is that both men would lose some of the things they love most, apart from themselves – money, prestige and power.

As far as the US economy and the world is concerned, it would just be more chaos and uncertainty, the periodic eruption of their civil war adding to the instability that has characterised both Trump presidencies. That will hit trade flows, investment, employment and the living standards of virtually everyone on the planet, to a greater or lesser extent.

In this relationship break-up, in which both protagonists will emerge weaker, the rest of us are like the kids – we’ll get hurt whatever happens.