“Trump Declares Dubious Emergencies to Amass Power, Scholars Say.” That’s a headline from a story in the New York
Can Musk beat Trump in a battle of Strict Father morality?
Yesterday, I joined historian Heather Cox Richardson to discuss Curtis Yarvin, a blogger whose extreme anti-democracy ideas are influencing the
Can Musk beat Trump in a battle of Strict Father morality?
The egos could not hold. The unholy alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, which took the presidency in 2024, appears to have imploded—at least for the moment.
Musk and Trump have gone to war with one another. In case you missed it: Musk spent most of Thursday attacking Trump on social media. He insulted Trump's budget bill and made serious allegations about Trump's ties to child rapist Jeffrey Epstein.
It was a stunning spectacle to behold. But has Musk really turned on Trump? Or is he just looking out for his own self-interest?
The answer reveals something deeper about the psychology of power—and the inevitable self-destruction built into authoritarian coalitions.
Musk's attacks on Trump's Epstein ties remind us of the punches Democrats should have landed years ago. And the Tesla CEO is appealing to well-worn GOP dogma by bashing the “pork” that Republicans have spent decades pretending to revile.
The real cause of the rift? A tantrum.
Musk is lashing out because he didn't get what he wanted.
As Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect explains:
Reporting indicates that Musk is upset that the bill does not have enough pork, namely the EV tax credits that have hitherto benefited Tesla, and a fat FAA contract for SpaceX. He has not breathed one word about the $3.7 trillion in tax cuts for the rich that are the actual reason the bill would blow up the deficit. If we take the "PORK" complaints at face value, Musk seems upset that Medicaid and food stamps were merely gutted instead of abolished entirely.
If Elon Musk actually cared about the deficit, he would be, as Marcy Wheeler notes, demanding much higher taxes on Elon Musk.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking, but it's also predictable. Republican strict father morality often contains this contradiction: the demand for others to sacrifice while exempting oneself from the same rules.
Yes, this incident is ridiculous and childish for two men with a combined age of 131 years, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez succinctly summed up:
This incident highlights the dangerous consequences of unchecked greed and the relentless pursuit of power and wealth. And let's not forget that Musk and his DOGE team have delivered continuous damage to the public good through systematic destruction disguised as reform. That will continue with or without Musk.
Now, Trump is (once again) threatening to abuse his executive powers, this time to go after Musk. He’s vowing to punish the billionaire as a king might punish an unruly subject, threatening to withhold funds appropriated by Congress to Musk. Key MAGA voices are even urging Trump to deport Musk.
The circular firing squad has begun, and perhaps it was always inevitable.
But there's so much more going on—and understanding it requires grasping the cognitive architecture of authoritarian power. This Musk vs. Trump ridiculousness reveals some vulnerabilities in the GOP's strict father worldview. Musk and Trump are in a full-blown “Daddy Crisis.”
Last year, FrameLab's Gil Durán explored what brought Trump and Musk together by looking at Walter Isaacson's biography of the tech billionaire and “The deep roots of Elon Musk's 'strict father' morality politics.” He depicted Musk as someone defined by “a cruel dominating father (who Musk both hates and emulates).” That could also be used to describe Musk's relationship with Donald Trump.
We have landed on an Oedipal problem with the “strict father” worldview that Dr. George Lakoff uses to describe the GOP's morality—a problem that was always structurally inevitable.
“In a strict father family, the father has all the power and decides what is right and wrong,” Gil wrote. “The job of everyone else is to obey his orders or face punishment.”
The Strict Father model is clear: there can be only one boss. Two alphas cannot coexist at the apex of a hierarchy built on hierarchy, dominance, and submission.
Musk seemed perfectly fine with that dynamic — at first.
He wore his “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING” hat as the president empowered him to “go wild.” He installed his acolytes throughout the government. But this was always an unstable alliance. Musk, himself an authoritarian, was playing a role that contradicted his deepest self-concept — that of a mere employee. The tension was unsustainable.
Soon, the #TeslaTakedown protests helped push Musk to the brink. Then, the GOP’s legislative efforts failed to match both Musk's desire for cuts for the poor and his own pork. Unhappy and spiraling, Musk became an annoyance to the White House.
Now he is throwing a full-on public tantrum. But it’s all his fault. He violated the “strict father” moral order by trying to position himself as Trump’s superior.
"Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate," Musk posted on X. "Such ingratitude."
In Musk’s mind, he’s not a servant to Trump—instead, Trump is his dependent.
This isn't just ego talking. We’re seeing the inevitable assertion of dominance that strict father psychology demands. Now, it becomes clear: Musk could never permanently accept subordinate status. Why? Because his entire worldview revolves around being the ultimate authority.
Strict-father dynamics demand a different order. Trump must be the dominant figure in the relationship. The White House hoped to solve the conflict with a call on Friday, but Musk resumed his caustic tweeting and remains in open rebellion.
But the Tesla billionaire is coming up short. A new poll from YouGov shows that 71% of Republicans side with Trump. Only 6% side with Musk. That’s how that works. Musk had zero chance of peeling support away from Trump.
Musk and Trump have many reasons to work together to foist their authoritarian visions on the country. Perhaps they will find a way to end hostilities and move forward. But the trust has been broken, and the dynamic will never be the same.
What remains constant is that Elon Musk has built his empire on government subsidies. And he's proven that he's willing to buy any election he can (even for a man he accuses of being a pedophile!).
More importantly, this split reveals the fundamental instability of authoritarian coalitions built on competing narcissisms.
Democrats must seize on this moment to attack the wanton lawlessness of DOGE that Elizabeth Warren has documented. Calls for defunding or even nationalizing SpaceX must be normalized. Now is also the time to turn the GOP’s performative concern about antisemitism back on Musk’s X, which has become a powerful platform for normalizing Nazi ideology.
The fracture lines are visible. The marriage of convenience between MAGA's authoritarian populism and the Nerd Reich's techno-feudalism is showing its weakness. This is the moment to drive the wedge deeper. Contact your members of Congress and urge them to act.
This moment reveals something crucial about the psychology of authoritarianism: It often contains the seeds of its own destruction. That's because dominance hierarchies cannot tolerate equals at the top. The cognitive architecture of strict father morality has just shown us a fatal flaw. Now we must act on it.
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