Trump Will Always Be the Dom

Musk was never pulling the strings--and nobody else ever will.

Normally, I don’t publish full articles on Saturday, but today some drama went down between Trump and Musk, so naturally I had to write about it. Bear with me, I will release the free article of the week tomorrow with Many Such Takes.

---

Just like any good liberal, I watched warily as Elon Musk suspiciously started appearing behind Trump at press briefings, usually appearing to wear a hat underneath some kind of invisible booster seat for hats. This time, our country really will be destroyed, I thought. After all, Elon Musk was rich—not in the way Trump is rich, but really rich—and what was stopping him from essentially buying the country and rigging every election in his favor (*Bluesky voice* assuming we still even have elections!) For the first time since Trump became President in 2016, I began hoping that Trump himself would be a moderating force in his administration, and worrying that he was, in fact, the only adult in the room.

While Trump’s presidency is pretty scary for me and anyone else who has ever asked a Trader Joe’s employee if the nori crisps are gluten-free, I was even more terrified at the possibility of Elon Musk acting as a “shadow president.” At least when it came to Trump (other other Republicans) we could rely on beating them electorally—and if that wasn’t possible, we could always just get all the dead people to vote. But Elon Musk felt like a dangerous wild card. And seeing him prance around with a chainsaw at CPAC wasn’t exactly reassuring. I could handle Republicans, I could even handle far-right Republicans, but an unelected psycho wielding a chainsaw was a bridge too far.

But as we’ve seen from the past week, Elon and Trump are no longer friends, which became obvious when Elon Musk went on an unchained Twitter rant against Trump, asserting that he helped Trump win the election and (mere afterthought) Trump was in cahoots with Jeffrey Epstein. I did a whole 8-minute improvised Trump impression on the topic a few days ago. So it turns out that Elon was never going to be shadow president, never was, and may soon be facing deportation to South Africa. Sad!

Many people are saying!

But in all seriousness, this spat speaks to the dynamic Trump has with all of his wacky sidekicks. Despite how dangerous Musk seemed at one point—and the danger that DOGE posed and still does—he was never in charge. He was never the shadow president, and Trump was never his puppet. As long as Trump is alive, nobody will ever be in charge of him. Because while he’s bad at many things, there’s one thing he’s unmistakably great at: immediately identifying the power dynamic of any relationship. If he notices that another person is even attempting to be the dominant one in the relationship, or even just flying a bit too close to the sun, he cuts them loose. When in doubt, we should assume any wacky character who attaches themselves to Trump is the latest Omarosa.

Nobody is “pulling the strings.” Trump will cut any string he believes is being pulled.