Decoding the Gurus - Trump vs. Elon: The Gurusphere Reacts

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

There’s been a disturbance in the Gurusphere. Two of its central objects of worship are feuding. The guru’s guru, Elon Musk, and the MAGA God-King, Donald Trump, have finally turned on each other, trading blows on social media. In this mini supplementary episode, Matt and Chris survey the shockwaves rippling through the Gurusphere as these titanic egos collide.It’s more slapfight than substance, but that hasn’t stopped gurus and sycophants from picking sides or admiring the sheer brass balls on display. Look out for Lex Fridman’s outside-the-box solution, Eric Weinstein’s cryptic mutterings, and some hilarious takes from the comedic genius Francis Foster. Strap in. It’s petty, it’s absurd, and it’s all happening.Trump vs. Elon: The Gurusphere Reacts00:00 Elon and Trump00:26 Introduction: Elon and Trump are feuding07:10 A little bit of context13:11 The Gurusphere reacts14:32 O'Fallon & Lindsay saw this coming16:01 Eric's Trademark - Both Sidesing Obscurantism20:38 The Big Dog's Take24:01 Lex suggests we need a podcast!27:10 Maculinity Hot Takes29:50 Sensemakers Take Flight31:17 Taleb's reasonable take!32:14 Konstantin Climbs the Ladder of Chaos36:37 The strategic Gaadfather & Scott Adams37:28 Tech Bros praying for peace39:25 The Red Scare MAGA Loyalist40:36 Conspiratorial Narcissists and their Public Feuds45:48 Sycophantic praise heals everything47:07 OutroThe full episode is available for Patreon subscribers (49 mins).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurus

Hello Hello and welcome to Coding the Gurus with the cognitive anthropologist Christopher Kavner, me and the social psychologist, other kind, psychologist, Matthew Bryan over there in Australia. I know, I know you're not a social psychologist. I identify as a statistician. I applied statistician. I dabble in psychology. We respect Matt's self identification here. But we're not here on the decoding episode. We're kind of here on the supplementary materials episode, but it's a special one. It's a little morsel of gurudom. The gurusphere is currently jiggling. We noticed some unusual

vibrations coming for the grometer that we needed to check out. We had a look and it seems indeed that the Guru sphere is vibrating due to some recent events related to Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Matt, you familiar with those guys? I am indeed. I am indeed. Yes, the long heralded, long predicted spat feud falling out between those two heavyweights in more ways than one has occurred. It may not last. I want to spoil everyone's fun. I mean, they're currently going hell for Leila against each other, but it might not stay that way because the guru sphere and these kinds of people can blow hot and cold. Like we've seen Donald Trump embrace people,

they call them get trees in this Hitler-esque figure, his vice president, notably. So as long as you are willing to cuddle them and say nice things, they're willing to forgive quite a lot. Yeah. So don't get too comfy. Don't think this is the end of them. But I think it is a rather significant crack in the relationship. I'm one which I was surprised didn't come sooner. Like I was expecting that their alliance would would fracture due to their egos more quickly. And it seemed to be strangely robust against, you know, even in cases where they disagreed

on things, they were uncharacteristically willing to let bygones be bygones or whatever. The only other person that Trump displays that with is Putin. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the thing is that this is the argument for the inevitability of the falling out is that, yeah, Trump's got his toadies and his lickspittles, Musk has his fanboys, and there's many of them would be just died on. They're never going to change their allegiance because they're always going to be looking

up to their reverend leader no matter what. Because at this point, anyone with principles or common sense has been left long ago, like the pences of this world. Now, the thing that's interesting with Donald Trump and Musk is that they have, it is in many ways, a marriage of convenience. They have some common things, but they see both see themselves as masters of the universe, as absolute alphas. And they've made common cause, they have common things that they're both into. But Musk ultimately has his own interests and his own business interests and his own sort of ideological commitments. And Trump has his ones too. And I think there

was a fissure growing. And you could see it in terms of budgets and incentives for certain industries and also coming down hard on immigrants, for instance, like highly skilled sorts of immigrants. There were a bunch of little issues where you could see a divergence between their interests and I think it just got too much. Yeah. And so the context for this is that Donald Trump is currently in the process of trying to pass this, what he calls his big, beautiful bill, right? Which is including a bunch of tax cuts, some for things, you know, like to make tipping not be taxed, but a lot of it is geared towards businesses

and rich people, right? Which is not that surprising because this is what Republicans normally do when they get into office. But in this case, it is on the back of a campaign that presented itself about cutting excess and weasel, the whole Doge agenda, Department of Government Deficiency. Now that has failed spectacularly.

They weren't able to deliver the two trillion nor the one trillion savings that they promised. They're claiming somewhere in the region of like a hundred billion or whatever, but that figure is highly disputed and most of it just seems to have involved slashing programs that were actually functioning and doing useful things for the US government. And it may end up through the legal procedures that it actually doesn't save any money, costs more. So Doge has not been successful, but at least the rhetoric has been that this is a regime which is going to try to cut the deficit and be more efficient. And then this bill is the exact opposite of this.

But it shouldn't be surprising in the same way that Donald Trump cannot, some say just say, oh, he's going to reduce the expenditure to the military and he's going to scale back foreign wars and whatnot. And then inevitably the military expenditure will increase or be just as large as ever under Trump. So that's the thing. These inconsistencies are not surprising in any way. It's business as usual in Trump land.

As is this turmoil and people denouncing each other online. This all happened in the first administration repeatedly as well. So it's not surprising. The reason it's notable is because it's Elon Musk that it's happening with. And in the gurus sphere, there are three suns around which everything orbits. One is Elon Musk, the other Donald Trump. Even when the gurus tried to kind of suggest that they're non-partisans or whatever, he is still there and they have to be careful with MAGA audiences. And the third is Joe Rogan. So if two of those sons are like feuding or pulling away, people get

dragged in different directions. A lot of people made the analogy to parents fighting in front of their children and them having to choose which side they're on. So when an event like this happens, it's actually useful to look at what the gurus that we've covered, the sycophantic network that revolves around these characters, these three sons, how are they responding to it? So that's what we're going to have a look at today, Matt. Just, you know, hide some of the gurus that we've covered and people in their orbit, how they've been responding.

Yeah. So shall we get to that? Oh, well, I suppose I should just mention as well the context, which is that Elon Musk was complaining about the big, beautiful bill on X. He said, I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. I don't know if it can be both, my personal opinion. So he kind of was tweeting out about this is a bad step. This is not what we should be doing and highlighting things that they had promised and said. And then Trump responded critically, as you would imagine, slamming people who are criticizing the bill and hand-raving off Elon's concern. And then Elon had a meltdown and decided to suggest that Donald Trump was on the Epstein files, that there's this evidence that he doesn't want released. And then Trump fired back.

So you have things like, without me, Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51, 49% of the Senate. Such ingratitude. That's Elon speaking about that. Did they even say thank you, Chris? Did they even say thank you? It. Did they even say thank you?

It's, it's a recurrent theme, isn't it? That kind of grievance of not being thanked enough, not being recognized, your contributions, uh, they should be kissing his feet. That's right. And so Elon Musk tweeted, time to drop the really big bomb. Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT.

To which Alex Jones responded, God help us all. What did Alex Jones mean by that Chris in your mind? Oh, he's like acting like, oh, this is a revolution, right? That Elon is revealing things about Donald Trump. Alex Jones is a MAGA guy, but he's in the past been willing to entertain Donald Trump conspiracies and whatnot. He kind of flips back and forth depending on what he's trying to do in any given situation. So he can issue criticisms of Trump, but he is firmly a MAGA guy. But I think the issue is here.

Elon Musk is saying, oh, there's a conspiracy. It runs deep. So of course, Alex Jones has to get in on the action. And Elon Musk did say, you know, mark this tweet, come back to it. We'll see what happens over time. And Donald Trump responded, as you might imagine, you know, he's not going to take these things lying down and he's, he was talking about how he kicked Elon Musk out and he overstayed his welcome and this kind of thing.

And he was also saying the easiest way 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. To which Elon responded, in light of the president's statement about cancellation of my government's contracts, SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately. Now you're not getting your rocket. I'll take care of your subsidies. No, no rocket. It's amazing, isn't it? It's such childish behavior. Thank goodness for social media. Otherwise, this could be happening behind closed doors. behind closed doors.

It is extremely childish and neither of them is a, you know, responsible person. Like Elon Musk is correct about this being a contradiction in the Trumpian policy agenda. But like, so what? Everything in Trump world is a contradiction and there's no coherence around particular commitments, right? They just constantly change. And so does Elon.

It's not like this is new. So people have suggested that this is because of cuts to subsidies around electric vehicles that would impact Tesla. It could be any number of things, but Elon has just decided to go scorched earth, at least temporarily. And so he was tweeting out videos of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein and this kind of thing. And so the internet daddies are at war, very public war.

Right. And the children, how are the children feeling? Yes, it's a good question. It's a good question. And Elon Musk did in response to Laura Loomer, try to remind people some food for thought as they ponder these questions. Trump has 3.5 years left as president, but I will be around for 40 plus years. So you see the dynamic there.

Steve Bannon suggested they could deport Elon Musk. But this is normal behavior in Trump land. Lest you forget, Trump feuded with Steve Bannon a mere couple of weeks, or maybe it was even days after being inaugurated. This kind of thing happens all the time. It's just because it's Elon that it's the issue. Now you said hire the children reacting, Matt. Well, let's have a look. So one child who we haven't talked about that much, Michael O'Fallon, a Southern nations guy. You might have forgotten who he is, but he's the kind of Christian nationalist who mentored James Lindsay

in hating globalists. He's probably responsible for where James Lindsay ended up. So he was looking on at this, you know, retweeting various people. And whenever Ian Miles Chung said, President versus Elon, who wins? My money's on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him. That's Ian Miles Chung. So Ian Miles Chung throwing in his lot with Elon. And Elon Musk retweeted that and said, yes. So now Michael O'Fallon retweets Elon and says, and here we go. If this attempt is made, there will be a civil war, Balkanization, the end of United States and the end of the Liberty. And we warned that this would be the play. And now you know why we have been warning everyone about the woke.

This is an OP, a reflexive coup attempt. I see a coup attempt. It's a coup. Yeah. So Michael O'Fallon, he tried to warn everyone about what was coming and what was happening. And he also though, Matt is just adding in that it is a coordinated PSYOP. But he doesn't mean the conflict is... He means that Elon Musk is part of the shadow government, you know, plotting against Trump. So, O'Fallon is a Trumpy kind of conservative guy, right? So he's kind of like, I always knew Elon Musk was wrong.

And he's maybe always been an agent of the New World Order. So, yeah, that's an interesting thing. OK, now his apprentice, James Lindsay. Who do you think James would go with? Elon or Trump? James, James, James, James. He seems more like an Elon guy to me. Yeah. Oh, oh, but a rare miss from Professor Brian. So didn't Elon just share classified info in an effort to take down POTUS? That's literally treason. classified info in an effort to take down POTUS, that's literally treason.

So you should have factored in my, he was mentored by O'Fallon. Right. So we got that. Forgot that. Yeah. So James, Lizzie thinks treason might be effort. Now, what about might be effort. No, I, what about Eric Weinstein? What, where do you think Eric? Cause Eric, you know, he's the dark horse, man. He hasn't received a call. So he's, he's been stewing in his, his juices, but what will he do in an event like this? He needs to give a tick. Of course he needs to give a tick. Of course he does. But Eric's the easy one because his take will always be both sides in obfuscating. He'll be playing both sides. But, but, but, but, but, but he is, okay, he is more of an Elon guy. Elon Musk, that's where his bread is buttered. So, you know, space, you know, faster than light travel. He loves Elon. So he's going to be in for a real on,

but he's not going to be wanting to burn any bridges. Yeah. Well, also that's interesting. So you're right. He loves Elon, but you have to remember, he also constantly appreciate that like Elon's rockets are not the solution here, right? He wants to take us to Mars, but Eric's geometric unity powered rockets can escape the Einsteinian limits. If they would only fund the necessary

efforts, Elon could take us to the other galaxies, let alone this obsession with Mars. So that factors in. But in any case, so he's only tweeted two things that are of relevant to it. And his first was he was responding to somebody pointing out that Tesla's stock is currently plummeting likely as a result of this TIF and potential removal of subsidies and all this kind of thing. So the person was saying that he was retweeting was saying, it's a good time to bet on Waymo for the US robot taxi race. Elon just became target number one for all sorts of warfare. And Eric says, or a great time to bet on Elon Musk depends on one's perspective, of course. So you're right. He did lean towards Elon, but then it's ink jets kicking and he squirts out,

you know, of course it's all depends on your opinion, depends on who you think is in the right. Right. So you got that in. But in case that was too clear, Matt, he did follow it up. And he said, part of my analysis is that I don't think Elon Musk keeps scoring money. He thinks we have a future and will be happy to take a large portion of his winnings after his death.

This sounds crazy to moderns, postmoderns and atheists, but this is just normal for being an ancestor. Ad Astra per Aspera is the full quote after all. And somebody responded to him saying, I find it wonderful that the world's richest man would be just as happy with very little money. And Eric says, I confess, I don't believe that either. It's a blended compensation. It's a blended compensation. So he likes money, but he's also wants to reach for the stars for our children's children. And Eric believes that, but he doesn't also believe that. I mean, you know, you shouldn't

bet against Elon, but you could bet against Elon depending on your opinion. So clarity as usual. Clarity as usual. That's right. If you try agreeing with Eric, he'll go, no, no, no, I wasn't saying that. It's more complicated than that. It's so nuanced that what I'm saying is completely meaningless. Yeah, that's Eric. He's not particularly brave when it comes to public statements, I think. He's not particularly brave when it comes to public statements, I think. He's not going to go all in. There's been an unusual silence, Mark, because Brett Weinstein has issued nothing yet. Like this is his moment that perhaps Goliath, he's reeling. Like Goliath made a move that he

wasn't anticipating. He needs to work out, but he shouldn't respond until he's got it done. Or maybe he's traveling or something, but we have to wait the breath take. It will be spectacular. It will likely involve him and Goliath and the ongoing efforts to interfere with his plans. So we have to wait and see, but so far, Brett has been the restrained brother. Okay. Now I know there's someone that you've been waiting on. You're like, okay, Chris, this is all sideshow, but there's, there's someone that you haven't mentioned that we really need to know what their take is.

What's Francis Foster? The big dog in the group. And he did tweet a lot of that. So don't worry. Francis has you covered. His comment was so good that he retweeted it himself. So he retweeted Elon Musk commenting about time to drop the really big bomb.

Francis, and I thought I was good at burning bridges. Uh huh. Yeah. I mean, he's a comic. He's a comedian. So has he burned a lot of bridges? Does the joke even work? Does the joke even work, you think a Polish comic like Francis Foster would would miss? No, like I have no idea what he's what he's referencing there, except for the fact that like he's generally unsuccessful or joy or whatever. But it is just that's comic gold from from Francis Foster. And a real insight there, too too, that burned a bridge. Yeah.

Yeah. Actually, Adola, not a comedian, but somebody with an other very, very funny take, Matt, that we should give credit to, Andrew Gold. Andrew Gold, because this is the kind of moment that people like Andrew Gold live for. It's a chance to climb the ladder of chaos or to get some attention with retweets. He tweeted out, my theory, Elon Musk and real

Donald Trump are only pretending to fall out to bury the reform resignation news, 40 chest from at Nigel Farage, a smiley emoji with glasses, thoughts. And then he adds a winky smiley emoji and a separate tweet just to make sure people get like this is a joke. Unfortunately, his audience, not the brightest. So he had to follow it up with another tweet. Retweet himself to say, just to be clear, this was a joke. I mean, come on. He obviously got some pushback in the comments.

So that, to be fair, that is a better joke than Francis's joke. Low bar, but nevertheless,. True. Not Guru yet. But it could have been worse. Actually, I can tell you the Guru who has delivered the best joke in response to this event. And it's actually a good joke. Okay. And it's a Guru that we've covered that you won't expect. Sean Carroll. Oh. Sean Carroll, Matt. Sean Carroll is not someone to weigh in on like, you know, current affairs. But this one is anything that man can't do. I know. I mean, I know.

I know we got little love hearts in our eyes for. But so Sean Carroll said, I think Elon and Trump need to go on Piers Morgan and have a civilized discussion. Nice. I like the. I like the reference. I like the reference. We like the reference here at GTG. We endorse that reference. And of course, someone who unironically felt that a heart to heart discussion would help would be Chris. Well, that's right, Matt. Lex Friedman has a solution. He has a solution that, you know, it's a little out of the box for Lex.

It's not not alike as typical solutions. To be clear, he was restrained. He didn't mention love, right? No, he probably thought about suggesting love, but that's that's really his second. That's his one to competition, right? Like more love. But what do we need first? Well, what we need, but podcast with Elon and Trump is needed.

That's the tweet. Sam, that's that's Lex's contribution. What we really need to sort this out. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at Patreon.com slash decoding the gurus Once you do you'll get access to full-length episodes of the decoding the gurus podcast including bonus shows Gurometer episodes and decoding academia

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