The Daily Dose: Elon, Meet Reality

Elon Musk fucked around, and now he's finding out.

A thought experiment:

Take two egomaniacal, fragile little blowhards and lock them in a room together for a month. One of them has money and media. The other has a gun.

Two things are guaranteed to happen:

1. The blowhard with the gun will be the only one who comes out alive.

2. He will take the other guy’s money and media assets with him.

Right now, a real-life version of this experiment is playing out before our eyes. The two protagonists, of course, are Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Musk has the money and the media. Trump has the gun—which, in his case, takes the form of the state and its monopoly on force.

At this point, I must take a moment to pat myself on the back. In the first few weeks of Trump's second term, everybody was convinced that Elon had become the new King of America. Remember this?

I pushed back against this view at the time, arguing that Musk’s apparent power was a mirage. Contrary to the consensus that he was holding Trump by a string, he was exceptionally vulnerable. Although he had real influence, it could be snuffed out on a whim.

Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote in February:

Musk’s sway, while extraordinary, is also fleeting. Snatching it away is as easy as slamming the Wendy’s Baconator button on the Resolute Desk.

It is only a matter of time before these two imbecilic, impulsive narcissists come to blows. When that happens, Musk will receive a harsh lesson in the reality of competitive authoritarianism. His immense wealth matters little when up against the guy who can wield the Justice Department as his personal bludgeon. In all likelihood, he will become the subject of multiple criminal probes and be chased out of the country. It is a lesson that will not be lost on his fellow moguls.

History is replete with examples of business tycoons coming to rue their past support for autocrats. Trump’s reign should prove no different.

This was always how it was going to end. It might have turned out differently had the people in question not been as stupid, vain, and impulsive as they are. But these two assholes? Forget about it. A bitter, asinine, and very public falling-out was inevitable.

Musk has not been chased out of the country yet. But he probably will be before the end of the year. We are barely a day into this feud and administration officials are already talking up the possibility of investigations.

Authoritarian leaders almost always hold the upper hand over their oligarch-backers. There is a simple reason for this: The leader controls the state. And however influential the oligarchs may be, any policy decisions ultimately run through him. This is how it works whether you are talking about Russia, Hungary, Turkey, or Venezuela. The autocrat controls the oligarchs, not the other way around.

In democracies, oligarchs sometimes do call the shots. That is because the rule of law gives them a certain degree of protection from abuses by the executive. But authoritarians like Trump need not concern themselves with such trivialities and can weaponize the state against whoever they want. This is the whole point of being an authoritarian.

There are exceptions, to be sure, but they are rare. In places like the Philippines, the oligarchs are scions of multi-generational dynasties who possess independent power bases in the countryside as well as their own private armies. This gives them a good deal of leverage over an authoritarian leader.

Needless to say, Elon Musk does not have an independent power base in the countryside. Nor does he have his own private army. His cash and media assets do give him influence. So does the rather unique infiltrative mechanisms he has placed inside federal agencies; if there is one thing that might save his ass, this is it.

But when push comes to shove, the guy with the gun can take all of that away.