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.

At first glance, the catalyst for Elon’s falling out with Trump was a disagreement over our national debt. Tl;dr, Elon believes the debt is an existential crisis and any legislative action contributing to this debt is a betrayal of the country, while the Trump GOP has entered its YOLO era — if you can’t beat the Democrats with austerity, join them in psychotic boomer overspending until the whole machine explodes. Or so the tension seemed. But the back-and-forth between the men rapidly escalated on X, quickly turned ugly, and ultimately dragged the tech and populist corners of the right into what now seems an irreparable (if also inevitable) break.

While Elon poked at the bill for days, the real show started Tuesday, when he seemed to reach a breaking point, calling Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” a “disgusting abomination,” threatening the GOP with political retaliation, and demanding a new bill be drafted. There were memes. There was a “raise the debt ceiling rap”? And for anyone even somewhat keyed into Elon’s history, it was obvious he had entered a fugue state. Now, he would not conclude in posting, while he concurrently made moves in private, until he found some resolution to the issue that had captured his attention.

We’ve seen this pattern for years. The most famous example, I think, began when Elon joined Twitter’s board, and concluded when he purchased Twitter (I covered that entire epic drama for Pirate Wires at the time). When he gets like this, there’s no walking him back. He becomes, for as long as it takes, a force of nature.

Around noon on Thursday, just after Elon resumed his assault with a volley of Trump’s old tweets on the importance of reducing our debt, Trump finally responded from the White House:

... I’d rather have him criticize me than the bill. Because the bill is incredible. Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore. I was surprised. Because — everybody in this room, practically, was here as we had a wonderful send-off. He said wonderful things about me. He said the best things. He’s worn the hat — ‘Trump was right about everything.’ And I am right about the great big beautiful bill.

I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost everybody sitting here. Better than you people. He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of the sudden, he had a problem — and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate. Because that’s billions and billions of dollars, and it really is unfair. We want to have cars of all types…[gas, electric, hybrid]...we want to be able to sell everything. And when that was cut, and when Congress wanted to cut it, he became a little bit different. And I can understand that. But he knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody. And he never had a problem until right after he left. And if you saw the statements he made about me…he said the most beautiful things about me. And he hasn’t said bad about me [sic] personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot. I’ll tell you, he’s not the first. People leave my administration, and they love us, and then, at some point, they miss it so badly. And some of them embrace it. And some of them actually become hostile.

I don’t know what it is. It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it.

The president was a liar, Elon responded — he never saw the bill. He also addressed Trump’s accusation of bias, and the EV tax credits, which Elon said he never cared about (and came with years of receipts). He called out Mike Johnson and John Thune for supporting the BBB. There were… many more memes.

Then Trump cracked his knuckles, and a fresh Diet Coke, and started typing.

Some (who don’t know what they’re talking about) believe Elon calling Trump a liar is what finally got him to post. But we enlightened few know the truth: it was definitely the moment Elon said — in a comment to prolific citizen journalist Autism Capital on X — that Trump would not have won the election without him.

Elon was “wearing thin,” Trump posted to Truth Social (you can almost feel that ketamine reference coming). “I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!”

But it was the president’s following post that likely changed the course of history. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

This is around the time the stock market started to dip (Tesla and Palantir are both still down). And the moment Elon went nuclear:

The real reason Trump’s administration hasn’t released the Epstein Files? Trump is in them. Elon escalated further. In a now deleted tweet, Elon threatened to decommission the Dragon spacecraft.

“Broooos please noooooo [hug emoji],” said (former?) Nazi pop star Kanye West on behalf of a startled, tired nation. “We love you both so much.”

But it was too late. “Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him,” posted Ian Miles Cheong. “Yes,” said Elon.

Around 4:30 PM, Trump commented one last time from the White House State Dining Room. “We’re going to have a little discussion now,” the president said. “Very private.”

The call seemed to work, as what followed was a period of at least performative de-escalation. A couple hours later, in a comment to previously no name / no follower account “fab25june,” Elon walked back his threat to decommission Dragon, and — in a comment to Bill Ackman, the man who famously discovered and defeated wokeness in late 2023 — expressed his wish, after implicitly accusing him of sex crimes?, to reconcile with the President. There is, reportedly, a call scheduled for today.

But there are also now reports that Trump is selling his Tesla. And at the time of my writing, Elon’s post suggesting it might be time to form a new political party is still pinned to the top of his feed.

So what the hell just happened?

In the first place, and most obviously, this was just a massive entertaining battle of the posters. It was dramatic. It was exciting. It was, yet again, an indication there is no replacing Twitter, where the fate of our country was debated in public while posters on Bluesky litigated the question of whether saying “the girls are fighting,” as AOC joked, was a dangerous example of misogyny.

A few bangers, for posterity:

But then, to the root of the conflict, is this really just a disagreement over spending? I’m not convinced. The divide between Elon and Trump is bigger than a spending bill, and broader than their relationship. For evidence of my former point, it’s worth — and bear with me here, you’re going to find this shocking — actually reading the BBB, for which, critically, not a single Democrat in Congress voted.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is not a budget resolution or appropriations bill, and it passed through Congress along standard partisan lines. Yes, it’s going to cost money, but the price tag — a whopping $5.1 trillion over ten years — is mostly comprised of a $3.5 trillion dollar tax cut, including: an extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act ($1.6 trillion), raising the SALT deduction cap to $40,000 for most taxpayers ($600 billion), an expansion the child tax credit ($350 billion), and an exemption of tips and overtime pay from taxation ($400 billion).

There are some items here that generate revenue, but they don’t come anywhere close to covering the tax breaks, which is why they strike me more as policy. The bill creates a new remittance tax on foreigners sending income back to their home countries, increases the tax on university endowments, and authorizes the Treasury Department to revoke tax-exempt status from nonprofits “supporting terrorism” (sounds lovely, but gives me pause (and is very much a whole other piece, so for now we’re moving on)). Yes, this thing increases spending on defense and border security… by like $220 billion. But it also imposes work requirements for large swaths of our welfare population, with a host of new regulations targeting SNAP and Medicaid recipients.

Of note to the tech industry, the BBB also includes a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulations, which is just unambiguously awesome. As I furiously type through this massive drama, 44 states are currently attempting to shove AI policy through their legislature, accounting for something like 1,000 new bills written by people who don’t understand the subject. Yes, you read that correctly: 1,000 new AI bills. This would cripple the space.

In terms of “pork,” I don’t see any. There are no special earmarks in this bill — or bribes, we might say — which is why no Democrats support it. And no, this is not to say only Democrats in Congress love bribes. Everyone in Congress loves bribes. My point is just the BBB is not a Trillion Dollar Paint Job. Which is why I don’t think it’s what these guys are actually fighting about.

Elon and Trump have an affinity for one another, and both appreciate the validation of the other. To me, Trump seems like a father figure for Musk, while Elon represents a stamp of approval for Trump from the highest peak of American business. But let’s be honest, DOGE was kind of a nightmare. While the value of uncovering USAID’s malignance alone was of incalculable value from an information perspective, DOGE has not yet uncovered any seismic fraud (unless that is how you characterize standard Congressional legislation, a position I certainly understand). The actual dollar sum Elon’s team presented for cutting is around $200 billion, which will not put a dent in our $37 trillion debt. Worse, it’s not yet clear these cuts will be codified into law. In other words, there’s a decent chance that not even USAID will be defunded. And it’s not entirely clear why.

While it would have been procedurally difficult, some of DOGE’s cuts could have been incorporated into the BBB with a bit of creative legislative strategy. Would that have offset the bill’s massive price tag? No. Many of the cuts are controversial, which might have risked the bill’s passage. But it would have validated Elon’s work. Now, after an excruciating five months, over the course of which he was made a human shield for Trump, taking the brunt of almost all media and popular criticism of the administration, Tesla sales have tanked. Elon’s brand has been permanently politicized. His life has been threatened.

For what?

I think this all has less to do with spending than it does with Elon feeling betrayed. And while I understand Trump’s political calculus, I believe Elon was betrayed. Nonetheless, Trump will never forget what Elon posted on X, and in this, unfortunately, Elon doesn’t only represent himself.

To a large and obvious extent, Elon also represents the nascent Tech Right. And if you think your average New York Times Democrat hates the Tech Right, you haven’t listened to a Steve Bannon podcast. If Elon represents the industry, Bannon represents the populists — and while Elon has money, Bannon has the mob. As of last night, Bannon is now calling for the nationalization of SpaceX, and for Elon’s imprisonment. I guess lawfare hits different when you’re out of the clink.

Is it fascism? Is it communism? At this point in the horseshoe, it’s always hard to tell. But here’s a thing I’ve noticed in the sewers of social media: at the furthest extremes of the far right you will meet people further to the left than AOC. Greta Thunberg? “Based,” according to Andrew Tate. Luigi Mangione? I’ve seen MAGA moms glaze the guy on X glaze as often as Hasan Piker. The vibe is always shifting, and at their core the populists have very little in common with the Tech Right.

Steve Bannon would happily nationalize the industry, and send us all (me for sure) to the gulags. When asked if self-driving trucks should be banned, Tucker Carlson said “Are you kidding? In a second.” The populists are luddites in the classic sense, which is to say labor comes first, but unlike what we generally see from the left they are not “progressive” in any sense of the word. Meanwhile, the Tech Right is not at all conservative. Because conservation is impossible in tech. Technology is fundamentally new. People often ask me what the Tech Right stands for, and I think the best explanation is something like: imagine high-speed rail, and also it is very well policed.

Trump is a coalition builder. He has not only navigated the tech and populist right wing, but every camp from Kennedy’s MAHA movement to the last remaining libertarians, still flying that old banner of the Pauls. Still, the real power in this country, on both the left and right, is with the mob, which no elitist will ever comfortably control. This has been another one of Trump’s great talents: somehow holding this together despite his wealthy background and success in business. But yesterday, with the likes of Catturd (populist right) at the throat of Alex Jones (schizo right), it’s obvious how close we are to chaos. The truth is, we’re only ever a riot or two away from the French Reign of Terror. And on Twitter, it’s already being LARPd.

This morning, our nation of the Too Online woke up and largely clung to hope of reconciliation. The public war was a joke, some tried to say, with Elon and Trump in on it together. For the laughs, I guess, as the stock market turned. Others suggested this is just how “Real Men” talk — a war of secrets spilled and public threats. This is obviously cope. While Trump may work with Elon, neither man will ever fully trust the other again. This means the populists have another opening, and what will likely follow is a quiet war for power at the White House, where they certainly outnumber the Tech Right.

This is the beginning of a civil war. The word “Republican” is no longer sufficient. Moving forward, the only question that will matter is “what kind of Republican are you?”

-SOLANA