It’s no shock the ‘short-lived romance’ between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has come to a crashing end, according to an expert on US politics – it was all a question of ego.
The US President and the world’s richest man formally brought their working relationship to a close last month in an Oval Office press conference.
There did not appear to be any animosity between the pair at the time, with Trump thanking Musk for ‘tirelessly helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform programme in generations’.
But things have gone sour rather quickly.
Yesterday afternoon, the South African billionaire described Trump’s flagship Congressional spending bill as a ‘disgusting abomination’.
Angelia Wilson, Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester, said this moment was predictable from the moment Musk joined the Republican’s presidential campaign last year.
She said: ‘I hope most of the world could see that those two rather significant egos were not going to stay best buddies for long.’
Professor Wilson argues Musk stepped in to fill a role played by Steve Bannon, the founder of alt-right news website Breitbart, during Trump’s first campaign and administration.
Bannon served as the White House Chief Strategist following the inauguration but had a similarly truncated tenure, leaving just seven months in the job.
Both he and Musk played the part of a ‘best friend’, Professor Wilson said, offering ‘some direction of something new and different and interesting’.
She said: ‘Look at the cycle of American politics, and look at the cycle of the previous Trump administration.
‘We had Bannon, and they came in and did this, “we’re going to get rid of half the government”, “we’re going to shrink the size of the government”, and then realised that they’re not walking into a palace.
‘He’s not a king, and there is eventually going to be some pushback about that. And those type of men with large egos are going to struggle if they’re in it for their own ego and not in it for the country.’
After announcing his backing for Trump shortly after the then-candidate survived an assassination attempt, Musk became comfortably the biggest single political donor in last year’s election.
He gave a total of $288 million (around £210m) to support the Republican presidential nominee and other party figures down the ballot.
When Trump entered the White House to begin his second term, he appointed Musk to head up the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and handed him an enormous amount of power.
So far, Doge has not saved anywhere near the amount of money Musk said it would – but it has fired tens of thousands of government workers and effectively shut down major bodies such as aid agency USAID.
Professor Wilson, author of a book on Trump’s rise titled The Politics of Hate, argues that despite Musk’s description of himself as ‘first buddy’, the two men probably never really liked each other much.
‘I think when you’re talking about two significant figures like that, or any significant figures that have such large egos and are in politics, I wouldn’t throw around the word “like”,’ she said.
‘I don’t know what their basis of their friendship was, but I don’t think it was even to the extent of a Facebook friendship, that they weren’t, in that sense, emotionally close. It was, if anything, a partnership of convenience.’
But if it was a partnership of convenience, it seems to have been an extremely lucrative one.
While Trump got ‘a bro that would help him get elected with something new and shiny’, Professor Wilson said, Musk got to cut regulations and gained access to ‘the data that he needs or that he wanted’ from government files.
That may be a reason why – despite the Tesla boss’s fury over the spending bill – neither Trump nor his administration have fired back with vicious insults, as they have in the past when criticised.
Professor Wilson predicted: ‘I don’t think Musk is going to be an enemy of the White House.’
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