There’s Only One Question Here: Can Musk Bring Trump Down if He Wants?

There were signs Friday morning that the feud was being turned down a notch or two. The White House was desperate for a meeting with Musk to cool the temperature—interesting in itself that it wasn’t the other way around. So maybe Musk won’t follow through on Thursday’s threats. And who knows, with people this unstable, they could easily be BFFs again in six months.

But any eulogy for this relationship must first and foremost be a eulogy for the United States of America. An amoral billionaire who by rights should have been impeached and barred from running for office for life became president again—legitimately this time, as far as we know—and put the world’s richest multibillionaire in charge of a sensitive task that he oversaw with the delicacy of a hyena stripping a wildebeest carcass clean. Their efforts have already resulted in deaths around the globe and will cause untold harm in this country over time.

And now they’re engaged in a “substantive” argument that can be summarized like this. One, Trump wants a bill that is the usual Republican recipe for fiscal disaster—massive tax cuts for the rich, cuts to programs that help working and poor people, huge deficits and debts as far as the eye can see. The other, Musk, at least professes to care about the deficits and debt, but he’s totally chill with the massive tax cuts for the rich. He’s just against the “pork,” which is rich-man speak for things that might actually benefit people and communities.