On the menu today: Oh, you know what we’re talking about this morning. On Thursday afternoon, Washington, D.C., was treated to its own destructive battle between the political equivalents of Godzilla and Mechagodzilla.
This Is Not Ending Well
The widely predicted breakup between Elon Musk and Donald Trump is making the Sunni and Shia divide look like a minor scuffle. The Hatfields and McCoys think this thing is getting a little out of hand. Kendrick Lamar and Drake are offering to host peace talks. As declared in The Week, the fight “is getting so intensely nasty and personal that even Johnny Depp and Amber Heard are telling them to calm down.”
As I wrote on January 22, “one of the consequences of having the world’s richest man, and a guy who parallel-parks rockets, as the guy heading your commission on eliminating waste in government is that guys like that tend to do or say whatever they want, and aren’t always such team players.”
The Congressional Budget Office released an updated cost estimate for the House-passed “Big Beautiful Bill” projecting that the bill would add more than $2.4 trillion to the national debt over ten years. Musk is correct that any bill that keeps increasing the deficit by trillions is not putting us anywhere near a path to fiscal responsibility, and it more than wipes out all the savings that have been generated by the Department of Government Efficiency so far. (Stay tuned for a National Review article chronicling DOGE’s progress and disappointments in the print magazine.)
Trump is correct that the bill extends much-needed income tax cuts, and makes some modest but much-needed reforms to Medicaid. He is also correct that politics is the art of the possible, and that there is only so much that Republicans can do with a 220–212 House majority and through reconciliation. The U.S. Senate is going to make some tweaks, but scrapping the BBB and starting over is not a realistic option.
When you’re a billionaire, you are often surrounded by people who will tell you that you’re right, that you’re the greatest, and that every idea that pops into your head is absolute genius. It is probably quite difficult to stay in touch with reality, and retain any humility, when you’re surrounded by people who are always telling you what you want to hear and showering you with praise and, I suspect, terrified of telling you that you’re wrong, or even acknowledging that there’s another side to the story.
You don’t become the world’s richest man or the U.S. president without having a large ego. Our era of having the executive branch shaped by not just one but two bombastic, larger-than-life personalities was destined to be short-lived. Both Trump and Musk are used to being the one in charge, having the final say, dismissing critics, and steamrolling opponents. With temperaments like this, it was just about guaranteed that eventually some disagreement would be taken as a personal affront, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportions.
It appears that neither man is capable of saying, “I think well of you, my friend, but I think you’re making a serious mistake, and here’s why.”
Musk started this dispute when he declared on X Tuesday, “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.” Musk continued his criticism of the bill on X throughout the week.
Trump was quiet on Wednesday. Too quiet. I wonder if any animals exhibited strange behavior that day, like right before an earthquake.
On Thursday, Trump erupted like Vesuvius, contending that the world’s richest man opposed the bill because he greedily wanted to preserve subsidies for electric vehicles, and because of a dispute over who should be the administrator of NASA.
“Elon’s upset because we took the EV mandate and you know, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles, and, you know, they [are] having a hard time, the electric vehicles, and they want us to pay billions of dollars in subsidy . . . Elon knew this from the beginning, he knew it from a long time ago.
. . . He wanted and rightfully, you know, he recommended somebody from uh, that he I guess knew very well. I’m sure he respected him, but to run NASA. And I didn’t think it was appropriate and he happened to be a Democrat. Like, totally Democrat. And I say, you know, look, we won. We get certain privileges and one of the privileges, we don’t have to appoint the Democrat. NASA is very important, we have great people. General Caine is going to be picking somebody with our, uh, will be checking them out, and seeing.”
(The Senate confirmed General Dan “Razin” Caine to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April. On the All-In podcast Wednesday, Trump’s former nominee for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, said of the president’s sudden decision to withdraw his nomination: “I don’t think that the timing was much of a coincidence. . . There [were] other changes going on the same day. . . Obviously there was more than. . . one departure that was covered on that day. . . There were some people [who] had some axes to grind, I guess, and I was a good visible target.” Yesterday, Musk reminded Trump of his high praise for Isaacman when he nominated him in December.)
“But he wanted that person, a certain person, and we said no. And, you know, I can understand why he’s upset. Remember he was here for a long time. You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the oval desk. And, even with the black eye, I said, ‘You want a little makeup? We’ll get you a little makeup.’ But he said, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ which is interesting. And very nice.
He wants to be who he is. So you could make that statement too I guess. Look. Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore. I was surprised because you were here, everybody in this room practically was here, as we had a wonderful send off. He said, wonderful things about me, you couldn’t have nicer — said the best thing. He’s worn the hat, ‘Trump was right about everything.’ And I am right about the Great Big Beautiful Bill. We go to ‘Great Big Beautiful Bill’ because that’s what it is.
. . . I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. . . . He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden, he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate, because that’s billions and billions of dollars. . . . I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot.”
As usual with Trump, everyone who disagrees with him must be doing so because they have secret, sinister motives.
On the social media platform he owns, Musk responded shortly after noon, “False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!”
(This is misleading. The non-tax portions of the bill were published in late April, and the tax portions May 12. The Republicans’ intent to end most electric-vehicle subsidies and phase out or alter several clean-energy tax credits was reported on May 12. The House passed the bill in the early morning hours of May 22. Musk may not have seen the bill, but it’s not like the intent to eliminate these subsidies was a secret.)
Musk responded with his own version of rhetorical DEFCON 1, reminding Trump of all the times he had promised a balanced budget, including a post from 2012, “No member of Congress should be eligible for re-election if our country’s budget is not balanced — deficits not allowed!” Musk did the same for similar past promises of fiscal responsibility from House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
By 2:37, Trump responded on the social media platform he owns: “Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY! . . . The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
A few hours later, Musk responded, “In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.” (He has since backed off from this threat.)
At 3:10, Musk posted on X: “Time to drop the really big bomb: [Donald Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
So, just to clarify, Musk has known that Donald Trump was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex trafficking this whole time, but he held his tongue because he wanted to run DOGE? Is that what we’re supposed to take away from this accusation?
There are many extraordinarily frustrating aspects of this debate, among them the habitual rhetorical sleight of hand designed to obscure inconvenient facts. For example, last night, Trump adviser Stephen Miller contended, “The only ‘new’ spending in the bill is to defend the homeland and deport the illegals — paid for by raising visa fees. All the other provisions? Massive spending cuts. There is no ‘pork’ in the bill. Just campaign promises.”
But the spending isn’t the only provision of the bill that affects the deficit and the debt. When you quadruple the deduction cap for state and local taxes, as the BBB does, you drastically reduce revenue. While it may not be “pork” in the traditional sense of spending on local projects, this is definitely a deal-sweetener for the seven House Republicans from New York, the nine from California, the three from New Jersey, and maybe a handful of other members representing districts with high state and local taxes.
Yesterday’s newsletter noted that expanding the current $10,000 deduction for state and local taxes to $40,000 reduces revenue by $981 billion over ten years! If you just take out that provision, the bill raises the deficit by $1.419 trillion over ten years – a much better figure.
But even more frustrating is that the president and his outgoing chief adviser on eliminating waste have proven to be emotionally incontinent man-children who lose their temper and lash out the moment they hear a counterargument.
You don’t have to look hard to find those in the MAGA crowd insisting that these two billionaires exchanging furious accusations on two dueling social-media sites is just “phallocentric” communication, and that anyone who’s cringing at their public meltdown just doesn’t know how real men settle differences, or is too delicate to witness it, never mind practice it.
Still, history gives us plenty of examples of exceptionally strong-willed, tough, accomplished male leaders with big egos who did not get along at all putting aside their personal differences and focusing on the task before them.
Could you imagine generals George Patton and Bernard Montgomery getting into a name-calling fight on social-media platforms? Dwight Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman?
Not exactly Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley debating the Panama Canal, now, is it?
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, the New York City Democratic mayoral primary is asking the city’s Democrats to choose between two of their most cherished values, Establishment Corruption versus Far Left Socialism.