Trump is not just facing a powerful opponent for the first time this year — he is directly confronting an angry rival like Elon Musk, who has the capacity to keep up the fight and shares with the president the instinct to hit opponents hard and use any means to gain even a short-term advantage.
President Trump is in a showdown with the world’s richest man, who is hardly an ordinary opponent. Since taking office in January, Trump has faced little or no serious opposition. Congress has been coy and apparently uninterested in exercising oversight. He has bypassed the courts to impose his will on immigration policies and retaliate against law firms and universities. Conservative media outlets have supported him and his agenda, while some mainstream outlets have been reticent. But now, Trump is not just facing a powerful opponent for the first time this year—he is facing a fierce rival in Elon Musk, who has the capacity to keep up the fight and shares the president’s instinct to hit opponents hard and use any means necessary to gain even a short-term advantage.
It’s a new challenge for Donald Trump, who has always had a talent for intimidating and humiliating rivals and using social media and the power of the presidency to crush any opposition.
Musk, who owns X and has 220 million followers, could rival or perhaps surpass Trump’s vocal power on social media, given the limited reach of Truth Social, the president’s platform. If this were a showdown akin to school bullies or movie monsters, it would be a real battle. “It’s just like Godzilla versus Kong,” said Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University. But beyond the appeal of this showdown between the two most powerful men in the world, there’s a lot at stake.
Their battle comes at a time when Trump is conducting a delicate maneuver in Congress to pass his flagship legislation, called the “Big Beautiful Bill,” as well as to negotiate closures on several foreign conflicts that have been much more difficult than he had anticipated.
It’s not clear how long their clash will last, at least not with the intensity seen on Thursday. And Musk, the owner of SpaceX and Tesla, has a lot to lose from a protracted battle with Trump, who has a firm grip on the Republican Party and the power to harm Musk’s interests. But their conflict has exposed for the first time some of Trump’s previously veiled weaknesses. The president’s big-spending habits have long irritated a small group of libertarian-leaning lawmakers who often voice concerns about the nation’s rising debt but have usually been silenced. Now, with Musk joining their cause, they have more support, jeopardizing passage of the bill that carries out Trump’s domestic agenda, which includes billions in tax cuts, border wall funding and Medicaid restrictions — but also a debt ceiling hike.
The Trump-Musk clash could also become a major distraction as the administration tries to negotiate difficult trade, war and peace issues, including with Russia, Iran and China. Musk suggested on Thursday that Trump’s tariff strategy could push the United States into a recession later this year, a concern shared by some economists.
There’s also the issue of Musk’s significant space business through his company SpaceX, on which the federal government relies heavily. After Musk attacked the president, Trump threatened to cancel his contracts. The billionaire businessman said he would begin dismantling a capsule used to transport astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.
Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University, predicted that unless the two men mend their ways, they could end up endorsing different candidates in the 2026 Republican primary. “Elon Musk is a risk-taker, and his businesses are so deeply entrenched in government that you can’t see him leaving politics,” Belt said. “So I think, ultimately, we could see Musk candidates and Trump candidates in the 2026 primaries.” Trump rose to power in part because of his knack for identifying his opponents’ weaknesses and mercilessly mocking them. His catchphrases, such as “Jeb Bush without energy” and “Marco Rubio with little money,” helped destroy rival campaigns and either drove opponents out of politics or forced them to bow to him.
But now, in Musk, he has found an opponent who possesses strong social media skills and a penchant for hitting below the belt.
Throughout Thursday, the two traded barbs on their respective social media platforms: Trump attacked Musk on Truth Social, suggesting that his opposition to the bill was motivated by greed and a desire for subsidies for electric vehicles for Tesla; while Musk insulted the president on his much larger platform, X, formerly known as Twitter. Although the clash between Trump and Musk began as a disagreement over policy, it was Musk who quickly muddied it, suggesting that the president might be involved in the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, a multimillionaire who hanged himself in a New York federal prison in 2019. He then supported Trump’s impeachment and vowed to outlast him in politics. “Trump has 3.5 more years as president,” Musk wrote on X, “but I’ll be around for another 40.”
The president, who had initially used mild criticism, saying he was “disappointed” with Musk, quickly declared that the billionaire had “gotten completely crazy!”
Trump’s allies took the fight into their own hands and came out on his side: Stephen K. Bannon, one of the president’s former advisers, called for Musk to be deported. Musk’s supporters, on the other hand, attacked the president online, even on his platform.
“Trump has always governed through chaos, but anyone who thought a second term would be orderly and calm has now been disabused of that illusion,” said William G. Howell, dean of the School of Government and Policy Science at Johns Hopkins University. “And yet, even when you know what’s coming, it’s hard not to be constantly surprised by the level of venom and how public and immediate it is. It’s truly extraordinary.” In Congress, Republicans have been careful not to say a bad word about anyone and hope they can weather this war of words without having to take sides. They have long been afraid to oppose Trump, and this week, as Musk attacked the president’s bill, they tried to placate the billionaire, even as he threatened to impeach them if they supported Trump’s agenda. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, summed up the predicament Republican lawmakers find themselves in as a child having to choose which parent to stay with after a divorce. “But … I love them both,” Lee wrote in X. (NYT)