And so, as it was foretold, the great tech right / populist right wing schism of 2025 begins.

Yesterday, following several days of increasingly furious posting over President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Elon Musk’s relationship with the White House reached its breaking point. Both men have long promised the most entertaining outcome imaginable — Trump implicitly, as he ascended the highest ranks of American politics through savant-level showmanship, and Elon explicitly on X, again and again for years. Both men are historic titans in their respective fields, which they both know, and they are both globally famous social media personalities, which is no small thing: beyond politics or tech, these are the two most successful shitposters in human history. Their instincts are to conflict, and to navigating conflict, which means while their alliance was powerful, the highly dramatic dissolution of their alliance was always inevitable. It also meant that when it finally happened, the entire world would watch.