Why Trump-Musk Feud Suddenly Has White House in “Full Panic Mode” | The New Republic
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Why Trump-Musk Feud Suddenly Has White House in “Full Panic Mode”

As the war between Donald Trump and Elon Musk explodes, former GOP strategist Rick Wilson argues that Trump has more to lose—and explains why the White House is likely very nervous about what’s coming next.

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Elon Musk and President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on May 30

As you’ve surely heard, the feud between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has erupted, with the two men trading attacks on each other for hours. As of this recording, the last big things to happen are that Trump threatened to cut off all government contracts to Musk’s companies, and Musk then dropped what he called a “big bomb”that Trump is in the “Epstein files.” Former GOP strategist and Never Trumper Rick Wilson grasps the inner pathologies of MAGA like no one else, so we talked to Wilson about the latest Trump-Musk madness. He offers a counterintuitive take on why Musk’s attacks on Trump will trigger MAGA’s paranoid obsessions in an unexpectedly explosive way, why he thinks Musk has more weapons in this battle than Trump does, and why the White House has almost certainly entered into “full panic mode” about where this is all going. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.