Reconciling with Donald Trump is no longer a possibility.Will Elon Musk rejoin the Democrats, create a third party, or slink back to Tesla?
No, President Donald Trump will not deport Elon Musk to South Africa, as Steve Bannon is urging. Nor does Musk seem likely to seek asylum in Moscow, as one Russian parliamentarian is suggesting. But Musk’s power play—trying to grab the MAGA base for himself by decrying Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill—has issued a kind of political cage match between the two billionaires (Trump at No. 691 on the Forbes list with a measly $5.4 billion or so and Musk at No. 1 with a fortune at nearly $400 billion).
Musk’s criticisms of the bill are on target. The bill is indeed an abomination. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would increase the federal deficit by another $2.4 trillion over the next decade, and that may be a conservative figure. During the George W. Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney famously remarked that “deficits don’t matter.” But at some point, they do. Already, America is paying more on debt interest than it spends on the Pentagon.
Still, the bill is only the proximate cause of their feud. There is a mano-a-mano quality to the battle between Musk and Trump. Musk, as he pointed out in a tweet on X, has another 40 or so years to go. Trump, by contrast, has only a few, at least if you think he’s going to abide by the constitutional provision, as he’s indicated he will, foreclosing a third term as president.
But Musk is impatient. He’s grown tired of playing Sancho Panza to Trump’s Don Quixote, Silver Surfer to his Galactus. His objective appears to be to render Trump a lame duck now, substituting himself as the leader of the MAGA base and installing JD Vance in power as the puppet of the Silicon Valley technocracy.
This is likely an idle dream, at least for now. Trump has weathered worse than Musk, ranging from two impeachments to an assassination attempt, not to mention a flurry of indictments and a felony conviction. Musk, by contrast, seems mainly to be doping himself up with a variety of pharmaceutical compounds, according to The New York Times.
Can the two reach a truce? Investor Bill Ackman said that they should “reach peace for the benefit of our great country.” It seems improbable that Trump, who soured on Musk weeks ago, would seek an accommodation with him, particularly after Musk’s latest sallies that called for his impeachment and suggested that the Jeffrey Epstein files contained salacious material about him. On Friday, Trump dismissed the possibility of a détente, telling ABC News: “You mean the man who has lost his mind?” He indicated that he was “not particularly” eager to talk with his quondam sidekick.
For now, Musk is mooting the possibility of a third party. This would be good for Musk and bad for the GOP as it heads into the midterm elections. Musk may not be exaggerating when he declares that his bankrolling helped propel the GOP to victory in 2024. Another $100 million for the 2026 midterm election could hardly hurt. But if Musk backs a third party, he will ensure that he remains at the center of the political fray by functioning as a spoiler.
Another possibility is the redemption saga—Musk returns to the Democrats. California Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) is suggesting that his colleagues should “be in a dialogue” with Musk. “We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values,” Khanna averred, “that he agrees with.” Politico reports that a number of other Democrats, including Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), see it the same way.
A third option is that Musk simply retreats from politics and focuses on his ailing Tesla business. Trump appears to have moved on. Will Musk?
About the Author: Jacob Heilbrunn
Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel.
Image: Phot Agency / Shutterstock.com.
