The Musk-Trump duel: digital mud and damage limitation

The Oval Office ego showdown was doomed to disaster. The narcissism of one would eventually set the limits of the other's power. But the broadcast confrontation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk is much more than a simple clash of personalities. It surpasses the televised spectacles that the US president offers when accompanied by the international leaders who visit him at the White House. The new Cold war Washington's power also has the capacity for mutual destruction. The companies of the world's richest man need public contracts, and the US president knows he owes Musk, who has become the essential instrument of his return to the White House.

The divorce between Trump and Musk makes the ideological inconsistencies of the MAGA movement even more evident: this mix of mercantilism, religious conservatism, state slimming, and technological oligopolism. These are the contradictions of an exercise of power conceived from the philosophy of a Silicon Valley that boasts of "moving fast and breaking things." Musk and Trump are, above all, the symbol of the new hierarchies of power; of that fusion between digital power and state power that is transforming the global order. In 2021, political scientist Ian Bremmer was already theorizing about this "technopolar moment," which the new Trump administration has further reinforced. "Politics is increasingly subordinated to the private objectives of technologists," Bremmer argued again in a recent article in the journal Foreign Affairs, therefore, "even if Big Tech's control over Washington doesn't last, the damage will remain." The new digital power surpasses Donald Trump's scattered agenda, despite the many superlatives and capital letters that accompany the policies of the new White House tenant. "The consequences of the January 6 riots," Bremmer wrote in 2021, "are the latest proof that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter are no longer just big companies; they have taken control of aspects of society and the economy" in the country. Perhaps that's why the owner of X allowed himself to tweet a few days ago that "Trump has three years left as president, but I'll be around for more than forty."

The love that Trump and Musk professed for each other has broken down. But the South African tycoon remains the owner of a media ecosystem that he has managed to turn into an algorithmically constructed instrument at the service of his own ideological agenda, where information, lies, conspiracy theories, mems, propaganda and a concept of freedom of expression that protects hate speech are mixed. A perfect combination of digital noise and Musk's own likes and dislikes, who on February 7 of this year declared his love for Trump: "I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man," he told X. Only four months later, the richest man in the world now accuses the President of the United States of Trump (who proposes tax cuts, healthcare cuts and an increase in the public deficit) of being a "repugnant abomination."

Trump, who has already shown he has no problem insulting or ridiculing friends and enemies on social media, has chosen not to add fuel to the fire, advising his cabinet to exercise caution. While he calculates and delimits the damage from this divorce, Trump is once again trying to seize control of the agenda and fuel his own media buzz in order to cushion the impact of the humiliation of the public spat. Abandoned by his "genius," the president is clinging to hard power: on the one hand, he is sending the National Guard to Los Angeles to quell street protests against his deportation policy; on the other, he is planning a military parade, scheduled for June 14, coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the creation of the US Army and—as life would have it—the day Trump will turn 79. Nearly 7,000 troops, 50 aircraft, and 150 military vehicles will be part of the display, which will tour Washington's National Mall and offer the martial pomp that Trump's imperial power needs in these times of internal challenge and digital mud.