How unlucky can a country be. America has the world’s richest man and world’s greatest con man, both with multiple factory defects and peculiar world views, reshaping their country by a quiet, or maybe not quiet, revolution. They were best buddies, politically, but it was only a matter of time before the two superegos would fall out.
While Musk’s tech bro and bozo-in-arms, Jeff Bezos of ALPHABET looked on bemused, the Twar of the Bozos broke out. From the Alpha Pale to the Orange Man, from X to T, it ranged through the letters of the alphabet except for F, U, C, K and U. It was naked aggression except for some of Trump’s letters which were written in CAPS.
Trump had given Elon the keys to the kingdom by making him top DOGE and told him to have fun. Elon cried havoc and let slip his barely legal nerd minions who were still popping pimples while he popped pills at a prodigious rate. Like pigs snuffling for truffles, they rooted out all vaguely DEI programs and appointments, no matter how deeply buried and canned years of institutional memory and important programs in the Federal system with the sweep of Elon’s chainsaw. On 30 May it was time for Elon to return to try to save Tesla from a fate worse than a dead battery (or no battery at all thanks to Trump’s tariff war). Trump thanked him and presented him with a Disney-esque golden key to the White (and Gold) House.
Meanwhile Trump was pushing his Opus Magnum, his 1000+ page Big Beautiful Bill or BBB. It is actually more prosaically a budget reconciliation bill, but with semantic infiltration, Trump has got everyone, even Democrats, to call it the BBB. In fact, it is a toxic witches’ brew of every Republican’s personal wet dream and stuffed with pork to suit everyone’s taste. But instead of decreasing the dangerously high Federal deficit, it looks to increase it and could reduce America to BBB investment grade.
Perhaps Musk felt lonely not being at the centre of the anarchistic vortex anymore or perhaps he was just allergic to B’s. He fired his first broadside at Trump’s BBB calling it a “disgusting abomination” just after lunch with a side order of uppers on 3 June. The bromance was dead. Uncharacteristically Trump did not clap back. It was only at midday on 5 June after a long night of Presidential briefings – binge watching Fox News – that he took the bait and issued a mild response. A flurry of provocative Musk posts on X followed including asking for a new political party. They traded stinging cross court returns like well-seasoned tennis pros with Trump threatening his government contracts which Musk petulantly returned with, “SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.” At 3:10 Elon snapped and removed his musk to reveal his ace – the Epstein Files which hadn’t been released as promised because his ex-best buddy was in them. Whoa, the Big Mac and its sauce was sure to hit the fan but the Angry Bird was now the adult in the room. Like an old married partner, he had given Musk the hot tongue, it was time for the cold bum and what a bum. Looney Tunes continued the twar with no response until 7:30 when he folded – he had no more cards – bummer.
There was silence in the virtual battlefield. Musk realised that he had miscalculated. Six days later in the dark lonely hours of 11 June at 3:00 am, Musk grovelled.