Trump and Musk: One Big Beautiful Break-up

The world’s richest man has fallen out with the President he helped elect. Elliot Crossan asks: does this mark the beginning of the end for Trump 2.0? And might we hope for the same fate to befall the NZ Coalition Govt?

January 2025. The richest man in the world walks into the White House as advisor to the newly-elected President of the United States. A right-wing demagogue with an axe to grind and a tech billionaire who so desperately wants people to like him. Together, with Musk’s vast fortune and Trump’s fanatical base of supporters, they could remake America in their image. What could possibly go wrong?

Trump is no stranger to dramatic fallings-out with officials and advisors. His first term featured a rotating cast of characters who would come and go at a dizzying rate. The President takes glee running his administration like a reality show, knowing that the whole world has no choice but to watch.

The over-inflated egos of Trump and Musk can both be seen from space. Both are used to getting what they want, and both throw very public tantrums when they can’t get it. Trump encouraged a fascist mob to overthrow the US government when he lost the 2020 election; Musk appears to be utterly incredulous about the amount of backlash his political actions have generated, unable to comprehend the idea that other people disagree with him. Two egomaniacs trying to share the spotlight is never a good idea.

Yet just a couple of months ago, this relationship seemed too big to fail. It cannot be overstated how much firepower Musk’s backing leant to Trump’s electoral prospects; to a man worth hundreds of billions of dollars, throwing millions upon millions at election campaigns is as easy as buying a new coat. Musk spent an eye-watering $277 million on Trump’s successful bid for a second term, and very much believes he is responsible for Republican victories in 2024 congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

Whilst ultra-wealthy elites usually prefer to manipulate politics from the shadows, the Tesla CEO was enthusiastically outspoken in his support for the Republican nominee. Musk’s endorsement came in the immediate aftermath of the attempted assassination of Trump in July, and the South African-born billionaire later joined the once-and-future President at a series of campaign rallies. Musk was seen jumping around the stage in excitement and openly handing out bribes to voters in swing states.

Once Trump was back in the White House, Musk’s financial heft became a threat hanging over every Republican Senator and Member of Congress: thinking of disobeying the White House’s agenda? Musk will throw millions at your primary challenger in the midterm elections. Trump’s cult-like following among the Republican faithful already makes it very difficult for any GOP lawmaker to oppose the President; liberal hopes of “sensible Republicans” reigning Trump in rarely materialise in reality. Republican majorities in the House and Senate may have been small going into 2025, but the combination of Musk’s war-chest and Trump’s base appeared to quash any threats to party unity. Add into the mix a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and the President was empowered to act in open defiance of the usual checks-and-balances built into the US Constitution.

Fast forward to the beginning of June, and the unholy alliance of Donald Trump and Elon Musk is dead in the water. The prelude to this catastrophic breakdown in relations began in early April when Musk cautiously distanced himself from the President’s tariff regime. Around the same time, Trump stopped constantly name-dropping Musk in press conferences and Truth Social posts. Then at the end of May, Musk left his role as a White House advisor due to the 130-day limit on special government employees not appointed by Congress. An amicable press conference was held to mark the end of Musk’s tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency.

After departing the administration, Musk abruptly turned on Trump and launched a scathing attack on the President’s proposed budget legislation — which is officially entitled “One Big Beautiful Bill.” This budget reconciliation bill is the lynchpin of Trump’s domestic economic agenda, and will require approval from 50 out of 53 Republicans to pass through the Senate. The President hopes to have it on his desk ready to sign by the Independence Day celebrations on 4 July. Musk labelled the bill a “disgusting abomination” and pointed out that it will explode the federal deficit.

Yesterday, this feud exploded into the headlines. Musk escalated his criticisms of the Big Beautiful Bill by digging up and retweeting Trump’s comments from 2012-2013 about the need to balance the federal budget. Trump responded by claiming that Musk knew the details of the bill before he left the administration and didn’t object until he found out that tax credits for electric vehicles were being cut; the President then threatened to cut subsidies to Musk’s companies in order to reduce the deficit. Trump expressed disappointment in Elon; Musk claimed responsibility for Trump’s 2024 victory and called his former ally ungrateful. Trump retorted that he had asked Elon to leave the White House as he was “wearing thin;” Musk then dropped “the really big bomb” (his words) — that the reason the Epstein files haven’t been made public is because Trump is mentioned in them. Musk did not seem to realise the implication of his own statements — that he was directly responsible for the election of a sexual predator.

Musk asked his followers if America needed “a new political party” representing “the 80% in the middle,” and called for Trump to be impeached. The latter option would pave the way for Peter Thiel protégée JD Vance to take over as president; Vance’s ascension would represent an unprecedented coup on behalf of the Silicon Valley elite.

The Tesla CEO appeared to calm down later in the evening. When fellow billionaire Bill Ackman tweeted that Trump and Musk are “stronger together than apart” and urged them to make peace, Musk replied “you’re not wrong.” Perhaps he should have considered this before picking a fight with the famously prickly, petty, vindictive President.

There were rumours today that Musk wanted a phone call with the President. A peace offering. Trump doubled down on the feud. “You meant the man who has lost his mind?” was the President’s response when asked about potential reconciliation with the Tesla billionaire. “I’m not even thinking about Elon. He’s got a problem. The poor guy’s got a problem.” The White House confirmed that Trump plans to sell his Tesla Model S — the very same car he showed off in a press conference in March. It remains to be seen whether or not the President will retaliate directly against Musk’s companies; but it is never wise to pick a fight with an authoritarian leader obsessed with asserting his own dominance over others.

Tesla stocks fell sharply on Thursday as a result of this falling out, but recovered somewhat on Friday. Trump’s political capital, already bruised by his humiliating u-turns over trade policy, has also taken a major blow. Ackman is pointing out the obvious — neither side wins from this Big Beautiful Break-up. However, initial reports suggest that the Republican Party on the whole is falling in line behind its President rather than taking the side of the richest man in the world.

Two events in early April foreshadowed the breakdown of the Trump-Musk alliance. Both may spell further danger on the horizon for the MAGA project as a whole.

Musk Humiliated in Wisconsin

The first of these events was a Supreme Court election in the state of Wisconsin, which became the most expensive judicial race in American history after Musk and other right-wing billionaires poured in millions behind the campaign of conservative candidate Brad Schimel. Musk alone contributed $25 million, with a total of nearly $100 million being spent in the race, the majority favouring Schimel. Musk resorted to open bribery just as he had done during the presidential election, handing out two $1 million checks to voters and claiming that the “future of civilisation” was at stake. There had been a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court prior to the election; Tesla’s business interests in the state were reliant on this majority being overturned.

The results came in on 1 April, and pundits were surprised by the wide winning margin — 55-45% in favour of liberal candidate Susan Crawford. Shockwaves reverberated throughout the Republican Party as a dawning realisation struck: in spite of giving him a colossal funding advantage, Musk’s public support of Schimel ended up hurting the conservative nominee rather than helping him.

The world’s richest man had become a toxic brand. His favourability numbers in opinion polls were falling sharply; Tesla sales were in trouble, particularly in Europe and Canada; voters in red states as well as blue states were furious at the attacks on social programmes and consumer protections unleashed by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. Musk was suddenly so unpopular that his support was costing Republicans elections; as a result, his ability to blackmail every Republican in Congress by funding primary opponents became a paper tiger.

This embarrassing blow undermined Musk’s bargain with Trump significantly. It also demonstrated a growing trend that the left across the world must take note of: billionaires buying elections is not popular. Railing against corporate greed and taking on the billionaire oligarchy is popular.

Perhaps it finally dawned on Musk why his fellow billionaires prefer to fund political campaigns from the shadows, through dark money that is untraceable to the source. People don’t like their future being dictated by a tiny elite who are openly rigging the system in their own interests.

Campaign donations by wealthy individuals and corporate investors increased dramatically in the 2023 NZ election, overwhelmingly favouring the three right-wing parties that would go on to form the Coalition. Labour and other opposition parties have two choices. One is to bend over backwards in an effort to appease the top 1%, trying to out-compete National, ACT and NZ First for a share of campaign contributions. The Democrats and the US and the Labour Party in the UK have tried this — they have sold out to the rich and are deeply unpopular as a result.

The other option is to overtly campaign against the corruption inherent in an electoral system where the rich can buy elections; to fight back, and to call for an end to the corporate domination of our society. Musk’s humiliation in Wisconsin proves that this strategy is viable in America, where the campaign financing system is orders of magnitude worse than it is here in Aotearoa.

We must fight back before we allow this country to go further down the same path. With the Coalition imposing austerity on public services, US-style privatisation threatening our health sector, corporations openly bribing ministers for favourable fast-track approvals, and David Seymour attempting to overhaul our regulatory system in the interests of multinational corporations, we are already on a slippery slope.

A Band of Warring Brothers

The second event that spelt the beginning of the end for Musk and Trump’s love-in was the fallout from the Liberation Day tariffs. Trump’s declaration of a global trade war initiated a rapid stock market crash, and the run on US Treasury bonds that followed caused panic across the world. Signs of Musk’s displeasure emerged within the week. He called for a free trade zone across Europe and America, and labelled White House trade advisor Peter Navarro “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

In my April essay regarding Liberation Day, I argued that there was method to Trump’s madness. The tariffs may have been a massive blunder, but to dismiss Liberation Day as a random act of idiocy with no plan behind it was foolish. The trade war was part of a chaotic strategy to reorder the world economy in the interests of the US empire and its corporations.

The fatal flaw inherent in this strategy has already emerged. To reorder the world economy by creating short-term pain and instability would have required committed buy-in from the dominant sections of the US ruling class. Trump and his officials massively overestimated the support they held amongst the Silicon Valley oligarchy.

Musk was the most vocal of the tech billionaires in his support for the President, and is now the most vocal in turning against him. Yet it wasn’t only Musk who broke with tradition by aligning themselves with Trump — Amazon mogul Jeff Bezos, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and the CEOs of Apple, Google and other tech giants lined up together at the President’s 2025 inauguration ceremony. While Musk now openly denounces Trump’s agenda, no doubt the rest of the tech oligarchy is similarly questioning the wisdom of the administration which has deliberately threatened their global supply chains and tanked the stock values of their companies as part of a grand strategy that does not appear to be working.

It is exceedingly difficult to convince capitalists to forego short-term profits for any cause. Even in this instance, when the cause is to try and reassert the dominance of US corporations in the face of increased competition from China, it’s a hard sell for Trump to make to CEOs and shareholders when their bottom lines are threatened. The ruthless competition imposed by the market makes it hard for individual capitalists to sacrifice immediate advantage even to advance their shared interests in the long-term.

Karl Marx described the ruling class as “a band of warring brothers.” In times of political, social and economic crisis, the internal rivalries within the ruling elite can threaten the stability of their entire system.

In 2025, the US empire is entering the worst crisis of legitimacy in its history. The dollar-based global financial system that has been the backbone of the world economy since 1944 has been imperiled by Trump’s recklessness. The run on US Treasury bonds in the wake of Liberation Day was unprecedented. A “sell America” trend developed on global stock markets, threatening the safety of what was once the safest asset in the world. Trump responded to market madness a week after Liberation Day with his 90-day pause to some tariffs; yet the signs of investor panic have not gone away.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” has been labelled a “big beautiful bribe” by many. It is an attempt to buy the loyalty of the capitalist class by extending the historic tax cuts implemented in 2017 by the first Trump administration. These tax cuts — which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy — are set to expire at the end of 2025 if the President’s budget reconciliation fails to pass.

The bill in its current form will throw millions more Americans into poverty thanks to cuts to food stamps and Medicaid. Clean energy subsidies are set to be cut during a climate crisis. Despite these spending cuts, the combination of the tax cut extension alongside an additional $150 billion in defence spending means that the bill will add an estimated $2.6 trillion to the US national debt. With a sell-off of US Treasury bonds already increasing borrowing costs for the most powerful nation on earth, the passage of the “Big, Beautiful Bill” may threaten to send the country into a full-blown debt crisis.

When an empire is in deep crisis, a stabilising figure is required to try and steady the ship. A leader who can unite rival factions of the ruling class behind their agenda, rally confidence in the system and placate the population at large, with concessions to popular demands if necessary. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the perfect example of such a figure — he served as President from 1933 until 1945, led America through the Great Depression and World War II, and staved off the threat of working class resistance with his New Deal policies which created jobs and a welfare system to support those in need.

Admittedly, in the Roosevelt era American power was yet to reach its height, and FDR was a product of an ascendant US empire. American political, economic and military dominance were already on a downward trajectory before Trump rose to power, and were likely to continue trending down regardless of the actions of any president. Nobody can hold back the tide of history. Trump is the product of terminal American decline.

The Trump-Musk alliance entered office and immediately launched an historic attack on the remnants of the New Deal. The administration’s policies have both destabilised the world economy and caused greater hardship for working people across America who were already suffering from a cost-of-living crisis. Neither the capitalist class nor the working class benefits from the economic mayhem being unleashed by the combined effects of the Department of Government Efficiency, the Liberation Day tariffs and the spectre of the Big, Beautiful Bill.

Trump and Musk’s partnership lasted less than five months. The two most powerful men in America are already at each other’s throats. This is no accident — it is merely the most blatant example of ongoing strife within the American ruling class.

The Democrats are showing no signs of producing a figure able to unify the American nation and stabilise the global capitalist system underpinned by US hegemony. Anemic and unable to offer anything except increasingly desperate calls to return to the status quo of the 1990s, the official opposition to the Trump administration looks no more capable of resolving this crisis.

Its strategy may be fatally flawed, and its flailing actions are clearly worsening the situation, but at least the Trump administration is willing to take radical measures to try and solve the problems faced by the US empire. The Democrats on the other hand ruthlessly bludgeoned Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, and in doing so shot down any hope of meaningful reform that would benefit the American working class. Their priority was to defend the status quo at all costs, in the interests of the more cautious sections of the ruling class.

Both parties went into 2024 headed by geriatric old men who were utterly out of touch with reality. President Biden only ended his reelection campaign — with great reluctance — once his rapid cognitive decline became obvious through his excruciating debate performance against Trump. Once Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic presidential nominee, she ran a campaign that completely ignored the concerns of working class voters and paved the way for Trump’s return to power.

Out-of-touch elites fighting amongst themselves. Working class discontent going ignored by the powers that be. The rise of a authoritarian demagogues. Increased competition from emerging powers. Failed attempts to win overseas conflicts. This is how empires fall.

Will the Coalition Experience Its Own Break-up?

There are some parallels to the Trump-Musk dynamic within the right-wing Coalition which currently governs Aotearoa. Winston Peters has always been a nationalistic demagogue, and whilst he used to be fairly tame by Trump’s standards, he is increasingly moving away from the centre-ground ‘kingmaker’ role he used to play and towards overtly right-wing populist politics. His vicious personal attacks on Green and Te Pāti Māori MPs are part of a strategy which relies on transphobia and race-baiting. NZ First second-in-command Shane Jones has been just as bad, lashing out at climate activists who oppose the mining and fossil fuel industries. The recent polling increase for NZ First, with Peters also surging in the Preferred Prime Minister stakes, is a warning sign that this strategy is paying off — especially in comparison to the usual trend of NZ First falling below the 5% threshold after entering government.

On the other hand, David Seymour and the ACT Party adhere to libertarian ideology championed by Musk and the Silicon Valley oligarchy. The Ministry for Regulation and the Regulatory Standards Bill represent attempts to take a chainsaw to supposed bureaucracy and “red tape,” just as Musk tried to do. Like Musk, the ACT Party are staunch advocates for free trade and fiscal conservatism; Musk and Seymour both oppose tariff barriers on principle and wish to radically reduce government spending and government debt.

Peters began his political career as an acolyte of Robert Muldoon, the Prime Minister whose protectionism, deficit spending, authoritarianism and demagoguery made him Aotearoa’s very own Trump back in the day. Yet NZ First has not kicked up much of a fuss against the Coalition’s agenda of austerity and free trade.

Today’s National Party is much more aligned with free market philosophy than it is with the legacy of Muldoon. National remains the most moderate of the right-wing parties and is the largest by far; Luxon and Willis appear quite happy to let Seymour’s more radical party behave as the advance guard for their shared agenda of cuts, privatisation and a redistribution of wealth towards the super-rich.

We cannot rely on a homegrown repeat of the Trump-Musk feud to bring down this government. The ruling class of this country remains united in its support for free trade, free markets and fiscal conservatism. There is no support base at this stage for NZ First to embark on a Trump-style offensive championing protectionism and deficit spending.

Whilst there will be increased attempts by ACT and NZ First to differentiate themselves from National and from each other in the lead up to the 2026 election, none of the three Coalition partners benefit from bringing down the government early or triggering a snap election. For Peters or Seymour to have a motive to take such radical action, they would need good reason to believe that making a major gamble was the only way to either maintain their positions of power going forward, or gain significantly more power from the fallout. The situation would have to change markedly for either scenario to become plausible.

If we want to bring down this government, we must fight them. The Coalition might collapse of its own volition, but we cannot rely on that possibility. Fighting the Coalition means fighting their agenda of cuts and privatisation, and it means pointing the finger squarely at the corporations and wealthy individuals who profit from these policies at the expense of the vast majority of the population.

Resisting the rise of oligarchy, in both America and Aotearoa, is the only way forward.

Elliot Crossan is a socialist writer and activist from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He is the Chair of System Change Aotearoa. Subscribe to his Substack page to read more.