In the 1970s’ blockbuster Sholay, Dharmendra, sitting atop the water tank, tells the villagers that his story has “drama, emotion, tragedy”. The Trump vs Musk spat has all that and more—the alchemy of loyalty and betrayal, of power facing off against money. It is the kind of reality drama that inspires fiction. The spectacle of the battle between the most powerful man and the richest man, each deploying surround-sound platforms to spew vitriol, had millions riveted and posting puns, from ‘I hate my X’ to ‘Trump is now Elon’s X’.
The fusillade of emotions and emojis streaming live on Musk’s X and Trump’s Truth Social has brought out shades of House of Cards. Eerily, Shakespeare’s observation in Macbeth, “the nearer, the bloodier”, was manifest in real life. Till the other day, the duo was gushing effusive praise. Musk, bearing the moniker of ‘First Buddy’, famously tweeted, “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man.” Trump anointed Musk as “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced”.
By Thursday night, the Big Beautiful Bromance plummeted from disagreement to diatribe. Musk morphed from being miffed to mutinous. He claimed Trump would have lost without him, dropped the Epstein allegation and called for impeachment. Trump travelled from disappointment to threats of cutting federal funding to declaring that Elon “has lost his mind”. By late night, interlocutors were urging the duo to make up.
In House of Cards, Frank Underwood says, “Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location. The closer you are to the source, the higher your property value.” On November 8, Tesla’s stock valuation touched the $1-trillion mark as Musk was seen as a beneficiary of Trump’s return to power. As he distanced from Trump and while the investors watched the war of words, Tesla’s stock fell over 14 percent and lost over $150 billion in market value. Between January and June, the stock has slid from $426 to $284.
History shows that power tames money power. In 1934, a group of American icons led by Jouett Shouse, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, Pierre, Irenee and Lammot DuPont, Alfred Sloan of General Motors, Edward F Hutton of General Foods, J Howard Pew of Sun Oil, Ernest Weir and others set up the American Liberty League. Their aim: oppose the New Deal unveiled by President Franklin D Roosevelt. The league denounced the New Deal as both socialist and fascist. FDR, in his re-election campaign in 1936, focused on the league and called them ‘economic royalists’. He thwarted the ‘Wall Street putsch‘ and was re-elected.
FDR was not the only US president who faced frenemies. Ted Roosevelt fell out with John Rockefeller over the break-up of Standard Oil. Henry Ford and Woodrow Wilson collaborated on wage policies before falling out on US neutrality in WWI. William Randolph Hearst, who popularised ‘America First’, fought with successive presidents. Ross Perot opposed the policies of Ronald Reagan, critiqued George H W Bush on NAFTA and Bill Clinton over government spending. The spats haven’t daunted regimes from choosing businessmen as treasury secretaries—from Andrew Mellon to Scott Bessent.
The Trump-Musk break-up, to quote a cliché, was written in the stars. The two are from different worlds in different time zones, with a great appreciation of the self. Arguably, this was a partnership that was too good to last—and the count of people with ‘I told so’ placards is now a legion. Those pushed around may well have remembered Henry Kissinger’s quip “It’s a pity both sides can’t lose”, uttered during the Iran-Iraq war. As the feud played out, memes of Vladimir Putin offering to negotiate a ceasefire between the two surfaced.
Musk was not a Trump groupie to start with. It is useful to remember that Musk’s first foray into the Washington circles was in the Obama era, during the rollout of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Musk used a $465-million federal loan to set up his plant in California, and got attention for SpaceX when Obama visited its Florida facility. Indeed, Musk was not pro-Trump even in 2016; he became a groupie only in 2024, following the assassination attempt on DJT. Musk put his money where his mouth was and donated over $290 million to Trump and the Republicans.
To be fair, Musk didn’t always couch his words or hide his opinion. Tariffs are the main plank of Trumponomics and Musk never quite agreed with higher tariffs, and even said trade tsar Peter Navarro is a “moron”. Having led the department of government efficiency and funded senators, Musk believed he had a say on debt and deficit, on the ‘big, beautiful bill’. When he wasn’t heard and edged out, Musk took to calling the bill “abominable” and campaigned to kill it. An outsider who found his way inside the Trump camp is, verily, outside again.
The saga of the politician-businessman nexus and fallout is neither new nor dying anytime soon. There is no predicting how the Trump vs Musk battle will play out. Last heard, Trump seemed in no mood to talk. The episode holds a salutary tutorial for the hegemons of the tech world and elsewhere. An observation of Michael Dobbs of House of Cards merits attention: “Politics requires sacrifice… the sacrifice of others, of course.”
Author of The Gated Republic, Aadhaar:
A Biometric History of India’s 12 Digit
Revolution, and Accidental India
(shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com)