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President Finds a Rival Who Can Punch Back
Clash of Titans Reveals Vulnerabilties
Matt Davis
June 07, 2025
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Morning! I went to Costco yesterday with my father-in-law, and got two enormous jars of peanut butter. The trip was far more satisfying than reading this morning’s front page of the newspaper, but: We read the newspaper so that we can go to Costco, guilt-free, knowing we’re as informed as possible about the “events” of the “day,” right? Amen.
Luke Broadwater has the unfortunate job of being a reporter covering the Trump administration. Today he writes a story about how since taking office, Donald has faced “almost no meaningful opposition.” Now the Democrats are finally doing their job. Kidding. Trump’s biggest donor is doing the job. Thank God for the richest man in the world, eh?
Congress has been acquiescent and conspicuously uninterested in oversight. He has bulldozed past the courts to impose his will on immigration policy and exact retribution on law firms and universities. Conservative media outlets have backed him and his agenda, and some mainstream news organizations have been cowed.
But now Mr. Trump is not just confronting a powerful foe for the first time this year — he is going toe-to-toe with an angry rival in Elon Musk, who has the capacity to sustain a fight and shares the president’s go-for-jugular instincts and willingness to scorch the earth to achieve even short-term advantage.
While they may have “go-for-jugular instincts” and like to “scorch the earth,” I do want to point out that both men spent yesterday doing a lot of damage control, such as is possible for two men so intent on damage as a way of life. Trump spent the day calling cable news editors telling them he’s hardly “thinking about Elon”, before calling him “the man who has lost his mind.” That’s good reporting by Rolling Stone, highlighted this morning by Heather Cox Richardson. She also highlighted this story in Wired, showing how tech investors are trying their best to avoid choosing between the two men. But they’re facing down a choice. The vast majority of us would prefer to choose between different options, I suspect.
Having meaningful opposition from the Democrats, sorry, from the world’s richest man is a “new challenge” for Trump, Mr. Broadwater reports. He has “always had a knack for cowing and humiliating rivals and using social media and the soft and hard powers of the presidency to steamroll any opposition.”
The trouble is…
Mr. Musk, who owns X and has 220 million followers, can match or arguably exceed Mr. Trump’s volume on social media, given the limited reach of Truth Social, the president’s own platform.
Yikes. Mr. Trump may be a billionaire, “but Mr. Musk is the world’s wealthiest man and among its most successful entrepreneurs and technology visionaries.” A photograph from Texas makes the point:
“It really is like Godzilla versus Kong,” said Costas Panagopoulos, a professor of political science at Northeastern University.
But for all the irresistible allure of watching two of the world’s most powerful men savage each other, there is much substance at stake, the story continues. There’s a budget bill to get through congress and a bunch of wars raging around the world, rather more strongly than Mr. Trump had hoped when he took office. Mr. Trump can also damage Mr. Musk’s business interests by severing government contracts although really? My favorite illustration of Musk’s real power this week was his Tweet reminding us that Trump will be President for another 3.5 years, while Musk hopes to be “around” for another 40. He gave $250 million from a net worth of $350 billion to finance Trump’s campaign. That’s peanuts, and he can repeat himself each election cycle, provided he can get his horse tranquilizer habit under control.
Meanwhile the feud has “for the first time brought into the open vulnerabilities for Mr. Trump that had largely been papered over,” Mr. Broadwater reports.
The president’s big-spending habits have long rankled a small group of libertarian-minded lawmakers who often raise concerns about the growing national debt but are frequently pressured into submission. Now, with Mr. Musk taking up their cause, they have added firepower, further endangering the passage of the legislation carrying Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda, which include billions in tax cuts, funding for the border wall and restrictions on Medicaid — but also a hike in the debt ceiling.
The feud could also make it more difficult for Trump to negotiate his tariffs, peace in Ukraine, and delicate deals with Iran and China. Musk suggested on Thursday that tariffs could drive the U.S. into recession later this year, a concern shared by economists. The government also “heavily relies on” Mr. Musk’s “substantive work in aerospace through his company SpaceX.” After Mr. Trump threatened to cancel Mr. Musk’s contracts, he said he would begin decommissioning a capsule used to take astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station — before saying he would not follow through on the threat.
Todd Belt, the director of the political management program at George Washington University, predicts that the two men could back different candidates in the Republican primaries in 2026.
Mr. Trump rose in politics in part because of his knack for sizing up his target’s weaknesses, and then relentlessly mocking them. His one-liners, like “Low-Energy Jeb” Bush and “Little Marco” Rubio, helped end rival campaigns and either drive his opponents out of politics altogether or convince them to bend the knee.
But now in Mr. Musk, he has met an opponent with social media prowess and a propensity to punch below the belt.
As we saw on Thursday. Musk was the first to take the fight “below the belt,” the paper reports, by saying Trump is in the “Epstein files,” along with half of Christendom.
William G. Howell, the dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Government and Policy, noted that while “Trump has always governed with chaos,” for “anybody who thought that a second term in office was going to be disciplined and steady, this disabuses them of that notion.”
“And still, even when you know what’s coming, it’s hard not to repeatedly, continually be surprised at the level of vitriol and just how public and sudden it is,” he said. “It’s really extraordinary.”
On Capitol Hill, Republicans have been wary about saying a cross word about either man. They found themselves scrambling to mollify Musk this week even as he threatened to unseat them if they supported the Trump agenda. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, summed up the awkward spot G.O.P. lawmakers found themselves in, like a child choosing which parent to stay with after a divorce.
“But … I really like both of them,” Mr. Lee wrote on X.
Thanks for letting me read the newspaper so that you don’t have to.
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Say, is there a story that might cheer me up a bit?
Sure. Director Wes Anderson borrowed a Renoir and a Magritte for his new movie. Here’s how.
Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and kid.
Standard disclaimer: I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I also do an occasional five-minute video version of this on weekday mornings at around 9 a.m. (depending on how long it takes me to read the newspaper). If you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later). Or if you subscribe to my Youtube channel it’ll send you a notification when I’m “going live.”