Bulwark Takes - Elon and Trump’s Messy Breakup Keeps Getting Crazier

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Tim Miller and Sam Stein deep dive into the drama in the Trump–Elon bromance being officially over. From black eyes to ketamine rumors, cabinet meltdowns and physical altercations, it's getting weird.

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And 50% boy. 50% boy. Kind of like Nokia. And then there's a CBS Sunday morning interview that Elon did that is super awkward where he heavily applies he's got some issues with Donald as well. So I want to break this all down with you, Sam. But first, let's just play a little clip from CBS. The interview didn't get off to a smooth start.

I noticed that all of your businesses involve a lot of components, a lot of parts. Do the tariffs and the trade wars affect any of this? You know, tariffs always affect things a little bit. Wondering what your thought is on the ban on foreign students, the proposal. I mean, you were one of those kids, right? Yeah, I mean, I think we want to stick to, you know, the subject of the day, which is like spaceships, as opposed to, you know, presidential policy. Oh, OK. I was told anything is good, but no, well, no.

Must done seem like he's told about the tariffs. And then when it comes to the student visas, something that must take advantage of for foreign students, he gets real awkward. Well, the whole thing was awkward. Even the interviewer was like awkward about it. He's like, I thought we were supposed to talk about that. The whole thing was like- It's weird they played that part of the interview. Oh, I loved it. Were the interviewer was like awkward about it. Uh, he's like, I thought we were supposed to talk about that. Uh, the whole thing was like played that part of the interview. Oh, I loved it.

Where the interviewer. No, I loved it. It was, that was fascinating to me. It's like two people who are like pretty introverted being like, wait, I thought we were going to talk about that. No, I thought you weren't going to talk about that and be like, wait, did we not coordinate this? It's just like, guys, just get, get on with it.

Um, no, Musk is clearly uncomfortable about a lot of things too. I you know, it's just like when they actually went through the list of things, tariffs, student visas, you know, just sort of general disposition I do towards foreign students, you could tell he's just sort of like, I don't know, I didn't really want to talk about this. It's uncomfortable. I don't agree with this. And then they kind of get on with it. Yeah. Musk is physically uncomfortable too, isn't he?

Physically uncomfortable. Yeah. He's like kind of squirming. He has the black eyes still, which is interesting. I noticed that. I did notice that. I still don't believe the explanation. I think it's ridiculous. Yeah. I was just horsing around with Lillex and I said, go ahead, punch me in the face. And he did. Turns out even a five-year-old punching you in the face actually does. That was exited?

Yeah. The idea that you're going to turn to your five-year-old and say, hey, punch me in the face. I would never do that, ever. I mean, I've gotten smoked in the face by my child. I also will tell a personal story right now that I probably shouldn't tell, but in college, I showed up to my grandfather's funeral with like a stitched up chin. And that is because I was a sophomore in college and didn't know what the hell I was doing and drank a bunch of gin and fell down the stairs two nights before my grandfather's funeral. And, you

know, I told my mother some story about how I had, you know, I don't remember what the fib was, but let me tell you, she wasn't buying it because when you're partying all the time, like she knew I was, sometimes you get unidentified party wounds. But I guess if you combine the New York Times reporting about the extremely heavy ketamine usage with the black eye. It's something that's in the question that the child's story, I guess, if it was, I don't know if it was Mitt Romney that said, Hey, I've got black eye because my grandchild punched me in the face. I'd be like, I guess that sounds weird though. They roughed out

the Mormons rough house. No, no, because that's not the story. The story is I turned to my child and said, hey, punch me in the face, which doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that? Unless in fact, you were on drugs. Yeah, maybe it sounded fun. Okay. Okay. Who knows what else is in that pill box? Okay. So the interview goes on. Elon is awkward at the beginning, says he doesn't want to talk about anything except spaceships. 50%, boy. I thought we were just here to talk about my trucks. But in the follow-up question as we get into kind of what is happening, what happened with Doge and what is happening on the Hill with the reconciliation bill, he shows a little

more leg. Let's watch that. And you know, it's not like I agree with everything the administration does. So it's like, there's, I mean, I agree with much of what the administration does, but we have differences of opinion. You know, there's things that I don't entirely agree with. But it's difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention. So then I'm a little stuck in a bind where I'm like, well, I

Don't want to you know speak up against the administration, but I don't want to Or also don't want to take responsibility for everything the administration is doing all right Sam, what do you think so it's interesting I Don't want to say I'm like well, I am a little bit understanding of what he's saying here. There. When you're part of an administration, look, it's every ministry, when you're part of the administration, your job is to support the administration, right? Like, that's what you do, you're not going to go out and publicly say, actually, no, I disagree with that. And in fact, it was when Elon did go out publicly

with opposition to certain things that, you know, it became highly controversial, right? Like he was very clear that he didn't support the tariffs. I hope it is great that both Europe and the United States should move ideally in my view to a zero tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America. It was evident that he was fighting with cabinet officials. And we'll get to that when we talk about this Wall Street Journal story. So, you know, he is being, I think there's some sincerity to the idea that, no, I couldn't, I was in this uncomfortable bond.

I couldn't speak out. That said, he enabled this. I mean, he is the chief enabler of all this. He funded the, the campaign, uh, to a degree that no one else has done in history. So the fact that he ended up with these non-inconsequential outcomes that he himself doesn't approve of is, you know, it says a lot. It says a lot about how off the rails this whole thing got. Yeah. I don't want to take responsibility for everything the administration's doing. Too late, bro. Yeah, that's, I mean, like too late, bro.

I'm sorry. That's not how this works. I mean, you are responsible. You funded this. You got him over the finish line. You enabled this. You put, you turned X into a platform that just absolutely spewed all his stuff. Like this is your product.

You're jumping around on stage. You have a dark mega hat. You're jumping around, showing off your belt. You're jumping around on stage. You have a dark mega hat. You're jumping around showing off your belt. You're at campaign rallies. I give you one thing if you're like, oh, you're a donor that, you know, went to one fundraiser and maxed out. And you're like, you know,

I preferred this candidate to the other candidate. And so I don't feel responsible for everything. Like that's what a traditional rich person, like a traditional rich person's engagement with politics. That's not what Elon did. Elon was the wingman. Like Elon was the shadow president when he got in there and on the way in, he gave more money than anybody

in history to the Trump campaign in order to put him in there. And so when you do that, when you put the fucking brand on your head and you fund the campaign and then you go into the White House and you sleep there, like you own it all. And he lent them his credibility, which is not a small matter, right? Like he was Mr. New Tech, big money, Silicon Valley, all that stuff. And he was a way that other people could rationalize getting on board Trump. Yes. And so he enabled this more than any human being other than Donald Trump himself. Yes. And yeah, we talk so much about the Manosphere, like young men, a lot of them, like really

are impressed with Elon for some good reasons for some of the things that Elon has done in his past. He had this huge fan base that he had built. And not all of them were MAGA, right? Like a lot of the Elon. No, a lot of them were not. Like, yeah, we're like non-political. Like it was not like a Charlie Kirk style, like a college Republican fan base. It was a different crowd and he brought them into the tent. And, um, and so, no, I mean, yeah, he has total responsibility for all that.

A lot of the stuff that he did himself is actually some of the worst stuff the administration's done. So he's, no, but, but, but there's like a cascading effect here, right? It's like when he got on board, it convinced like that all in podcast crew that Oh, actually, this is okay. Like this is acceptable. It convinced people who were fans of H1B visas, for instance, like, okay, we can get along with because we have the guy who understands this stuff, it convinced the tech world,

hey, this is actually a person who will like be our advocate. It convinced crypto bros and all that things like, okay, we have smart people in the tent. And then that gives you know, an incredible boost to Trump to do whatever he wants. But it doesn't let you on off the hook. In fact, it puts him on the hook for this. Yeah. You know, I did write a book about this. There is an there is an increase there is a there is a trend that just, it goes across a lot of people throughout

Washington who got involved with Trump, got involved in politics, who thought that they could use Trump and manipulate Trump to their ends. That they could jump on the bandwagon and kind of, you know, be, be bumpers around it or, you know, push him in a direction that would advance their objectives and it didn't work for anybody and actually we saw two examples this week the person that was probably the most Successful at that was Leonard Leo the Federal Society guy cuz Trump really didn't care about judges And so he was able to put his judges through and Trump turned on him finally to Sending out a bleat shitting on Leonard Leo and now and that's just like the reality Trump it's Trump's show. And if you get on board,

only one, maybe the only one is Stephen Miller, honestly, but that's just cause they aligned. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, okay. I want, let's get into the Trump side of the, uh, of the drama of the split, the real housewives split here, uh, and the white house. And, uh, this is this Wall Street Journal article.

Fascinating article. A lot of interesting stuff in there. What's jumped out to you? So articles fascinating. This is where we got the 50% genies, 50% boy ratio. In fact, there's another proposed ratio in there, which is 90% genies, 10% boy. I'll get your take on what the right ratio is after this. But to me, what stands out about this article, and I encourage people to read it is that if you if it's like almost in between lines, but it just hits you. It's like, they basically let this dude, Elon kind of like, run amok. And he was doing

things without telling anybody like he was cutting, you know, across agencies without telling anybody, including the chief of staff, and I'm not really sure how that works. Like he's just like, you're fired. And like, that's it. I mean, it was just kind of, it must've been utter, utter chaos. He went into a cabinet meeting and was just bitching about, you know, the damage that was happening to Tesla and somehow convinced Pam Bondi to like, just, you know, put in

ton of DOJ resources into protecting his own private company. I mean, think about that for a second. Like, he got the actual attorney general to sort of refocus on his own private company. That's like deeply scandalous in a way. And then the Sam Altman announcement where he, you know, he threw a hissy fit, because we're going to do this AI deal with his arch nemesis. And he got so pissed off about it that like the president had to like intervene and delay the announcement and like make sure that Sam Altman wasn't involved in it again, like I know we're sort of callous, but like that's crazy to me. That's crazy to me that you can have an individual with such clear conflicts

of interest. Absolutely re-engineer government policy around his own hissy fits and bottom line. And he did that repeatedly. The thing that struck me on that part was, did you see the exchange with the fight with Besant? No. I missed it.

Like that confrontation with him and Besant that had been previously reported on, there's some more details. Scott Besant apparently called him out in front of Trump and said, you promised us a trillion dollars in cuts and now you're at like a hundred billion and nobody can find anything. What are you doing? And that's when Elon got physical. That's the surest subject with them. Yeah. That's how Elon started to like, get up in his grill, like they're gonna have a man fight. I so I like that again, it just shows the person that's totally like, I would absolutely pay to see that.

Trump and that leads us back to the the lead of the journal story is that Trump basically like asking other officials internally, like was all Elon did bullshit, was it all bullshit? Yeah. Like, so to your point, like he is so out on his own doing all the stuff without asking the approvals. And now Trump is like in classic Trump, like CYA trying to protect himself mode. Yeah.

It's just like, I don't even believe that anything happened, which is like the sad part is a bunch of bad shit happened actually. Oh yeah, totally. I think the one graph in the journal piece that sort of summarizes everything to me was, I'll just read it because it's like if you actually step back and think about it, it's kind of hilarious. It goes, Trump disliked how critical Musk was toward cabinet secretaries and his public attacks on trade advisor Peter Navarro, who Musk called a moron and said was dumber than a sack of bricks.

What officials that Trump was surprised at how nasty Musk was in one cabinet meeting toward other members of his administration. Like, yeah, like you shouldn't call your, your other advisor or more public is like if you're too hot for Trump, you know, it's like something's going to get Did Peter ritardo not make it to Trump? Because that was another thing that most tweeted. The Yeah, it is. That's so funny.

The Trump thing is like Trump's like, Whoa, whoa, little gauche. Okay, we only we only talk this way about Democrats. All right. And the fake news media. All right, you know, we don't use the house. All right. And the fake news media. All right. You know, we don't use nasty. Don't do it in house, buddy. Meanwhile, Trump's calling Leonard Leo like scum and shit.

Sloppy Steve Bannon. I'm the only one that gets to make a childish nickname. What are you doing? Maybe that was the problem is Elon was just too much like Trump. And he's just, I can't, we can't have two of these. It's the interesting thing for me. And every time we've talked about this, the like Musk Trump fallout, I was always like, the one element about Musk that's different than these other guys is that

like he, like a full frontal war could really be damaging to Trump. Like if Musk decided he wanted to go full fuck you. And so it's interesting to kind of see them a little bit. It's like a dance right now, a little bit. We're like, you know, where Musk is kind of doing that. Well, I wouldn't want to attack you. You know, I don't want to give him the key to the white. Yeah, the kid.

Yeah, like this useless fucking gold key that Elon Musk is going to probably toss aside or something like that. Exactly what Trump would want to get. Yeah, exactly. It was a gift to himself. Give me a gaudy gold fake key that I can put up in my office. So it'll be interesting to continue to monitor all that. Sam, any other final final takes? No, I think you're right about that one. I noted in Ro Khanna when he was doing one Democrats should strategically use Elon for this purpose. He wants to bring Elon back into the fold. Not sure Democrats are ready for that yet, but yeah, this, that, that to me is

interesting. Like will Elon get totally combustible about this? Will he just go full on like attack on Trump? Probably not because I think there's still some goodwill there, but that is, that's something they got to watch out for. And he hasn't, Elon has not paid the $100 million check that he apparently is supposed to give to their political action committee. So that's a lot of money. All right.

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