Poor Elon Musk!

I don’t want to sound too paternalistic, but one thing should be said: poor Elon Musk played a game he does not understand. “This is what victory feels like,” he shouted with overexcitement at Mr. Trump’s inauguration event (it is worth watching the one-minute video). He had contributed more than $250 million to the Trump 2024 campaign. He carelessly promised that he would cut $2 trillion, or one-third, from federal government expenditures, before he cut his cutting promise to $1 trillion, and he finally achieved less than 20% of this last goal. His conspiracy theorizing did not help him, as it never does.

The acrimonious crash of the Trump-Musk relationship was predictable. (See “The Trump-Musk Relationship Ruptures in Real Time,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2025; and “The Trump-Musk ‘War of the Roses,’” June 5, 2025.) Neither of the two men is used to being bullied around. It is not the first time that Trump has turned against a former associate. I suspect that Mr. Musk, like Mr. Trump, requires personal loyalty and fealty of the medieval sort, but neither can fathom decentralized power. They both think in terms of power, not in terms of liberty. And both are more emotional than rational.

Musk is certainly a great visionary and entrepreneur, but he does not mind getting or requesting assistance from governments. As we have seen in the last election, he is also a daring political entrepreneur, although his bad bet on Trump may haunt him for a long time.

Although he did oppose the deficit-happy “Big Beautiful Bill” and (less openly) the trade war, Musk is certainly not a libertarian or classical liberal. The classical liberal tradition entertains an economic and philosophical theory of politics that excludes the Princess-Mathilde view—that the criterion of a good government is that it serves my immediate interest at the cost of others. At best, Musk’s political ideology looks like naïve democratism based on a “will of the people” that even lawyers dare not oppose. He probably has never read any structured libertarian argument.

Some of us may have hoped that Musk would eventually discover the liberal ideal of liberty. If any hope remains, it will likely be frustrated. At any rate, few people in their fifties (even in their thirties, John Maynard Keynes believed) are able to seriously consider new ideas. I doubt he will take the red pill. (See my post “Elon Musk, Edward Luce, and Libertarianism,” June 5, 2023.)

The stronger the embrace of Leviathan, the more politics becomes what Anthony de Jasay described: a game of coercively harming some people in order to favor useful clientèles. Mr. Musk thought he had positioned himself on the right side of the divide; he may now, poor man, have fallen on the other side. Trump wrote on his social media:

The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts.

Musk’s billions will help him survive on the wrong side of the adversary and discriminatory state, if only Leviathan does not seriously get on his case. As Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s secret police chief, reportedly said, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” According to the Wall Street Journal, Steve Bannon “suggested that Musk’s immigration status be investigated.” According to The Economist, Bannon wants him to be stripped of American citizenship. Other threats have been voiced. Musk may end up wishing there are judges to block the “will of the people” against him.

If one chickens out between the king and the courtier, it will nearly certainly be the latter. In the meantime, some chaotic surprises and reversals are not impossible. As Trump also has much to lose, it is possible that the two warriors will bury the war hatchet, at least publicly or for a time. As William Riker noted, in democratic choices insufficiently constrained by institutions, “anything can happen.”

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