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— Ann Telnaes (@anntelnaes.bsky.social) June 7, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Albert Burneko, at Defector — “Donald Trump And Elon Musk Throw Day-Long Tantrums At Each Other”:
Other than every interaction either of them has had with another living being in their entire lives, as well as every single thing that is true about either of their personalities, and everything that either of them believes about themselves and each other and all others and life and the world, and their being the absolute two worst people presently alive, there was no reason to think, or even to fear, that Donald Trump and Elon Musk would not remain loyal allies and strategic partners forever. Alas, the dream of lifelong friendship died on Thursday, in a cascade of insults and threats posted to their respective embarrassing social media platforms. I don’t know about you, but I’ll never trust again…
Listen. Recounting the, like, political or financial reasons why Donald Trump and Elon Musk fell out is among the more absurd things I can imagine doing; for one thing it grants a conceivable alternative reality in which they were not always going to become enemies at some point. The ultimate and most salient reason Donald Trump and Elon Musk fell out is that they are, respectively, Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Sure, yes: There may be proximate triggers for their having fallen out on Thursday, June 5, 2025, as opposed to some other time; there inevitably would be specific triggers whenever they eventually turned on each other. But they never were not going to turn on each other, because they are Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Anyway they did! At a Thursday Oval Office press availability pegged to his meeting with German chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump sniped when a reporter asked him about Musk’s criticism of the bill. First he referred to their “great relationship” in the past tense, then blithely suggested Musk is upset about the loss of EV subsidies his company depends on. Then he did the classic Trump thing where he insults someone by listing the favors they did for him—in Trump’s view, you are by definition a sucker from the very moment you do anything for him that he didn’t pay for in advance, and he is 100-percent right about that—while simultaneously dismissing those favors as worthless…
That set off Musk. Soon after, on Twitter, he derided the bill as containing a “MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK” and made a classic Elon Musk Fake-Smart History Gibberish claim that “in the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that [is] both big and beautiful. Everyone knows this!”
Typically, if someone said That’s hitting him where it hurts about remarks as dumb and toothless as these, that would be an example of sarcasm. Not in this case! Calling his bill ugly and disgusting is exactly the kind of thing that actually would bother Donald Trump, much more than some sober analysis of its probably disastrous effects on American society, about which he does not and will never give a frig…