Even before Elon Musk and President Donald Trump escalated their feud Thursday, some Democrats were thinking of trying to entice the Tesla billionaire to their side. There’s nothing wrong with the president’s opposition looking for advantages against him as he continues his assault on U.S. institutions — an assault in which Musk has played a key role. But outright mending fences with Musk would be a mistake.
Unfortunately, some Democrats and their allies are suggesting doing just that. Rep. Ro Khanna, the California congressman who has long been close to Silicon Valley, said of Musk that the party “should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with.” Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York said that he was a “believer in redemption,” though he acknowledged that Musk’s track record might forestall a liberal comeback arc.
Musk is no ally to the Democratic Party’s base of voters.
And as Musk and Trump battled via social media in a personal fight that began over the president’s spending bill, hurling invective and threats at one another, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California backed Musk against Trump, writing that without the billionaire, the president would be “a Prisoner.” Influencers like Matthew Yglesias suggested Democrats try to flip Musk’s allegiance. “Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans,” centrist WelcomePAC co-founder Liam Kerr told Politico.
This would be an error for several reasons. First, Musk is no ally to the Democratic Party’s base of voters, who overwhelmingly despise him on cultural grounds. Even before Thursday’s blowup, he was consistently less popular than Trump, and the voters who did like him were almost all Republicans, who will surely stick with the president.
Second, the policies he pushed while in the White House have already led to untold levels of misery and deprivation both overseas and at home. The full extent of the damage the billionaire has done won’t be apparent for months, if not years. Experts estimate that recent cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development alone — the agency Musk bragged about feeding “into the wood chipper” — will lead to tens or even hundreds of thousands of deaths annually.
Finally, Musk has been pushing a radical, right-wing agenda for half a decade. As I detail in my recent book, his efforts to use his wealth to reshape the media and public discourse have been deleterious for the country and have poisoned American politics.
It’s hard to see an easy way back to a positive relationship for the two men. The president in particular has a history of holding grudges, and Musk can hardly walk back sharing footage of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein or approving calls for his impeachment. “I talked to an insider today who said it’s irreparable,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said Thursday evening. After reports that the two would speak by phone Friday, a senior White House official told NBC News that Trump is “not interested” in a call.
Every hour the two men spend sniping at each other is an hour they’re not spending destroying federal agencies. So what should Democrats do? For now, let them fight. As Alex Shephard noted at The New Republic, “Musk and Trump’s feud causes division within the Republican Party, imperils one of the worst pieces of legislation in modern history, and makes everyone involved in it look like a childish idiot.” Every hour the two men spend sniping at each other is an hour they’re not spending destroying federal agencies, cutting social services or fomenting far-right extremism. The president and his billionaire ally are at each other’s throats and neither man may well come out on top, and the Democrats don’t even need to do anything about it. They can just sit back and watch. In the future, once Democrats have regained the levers of power, they will need to clean up the disaster Trump and Musk have created. As I wrote here at MSNBC on Monday, Democrats should investigate Musk and his business dealings with the federal government, conduct hearings, subpoena the billionaire, and generally hold him accountable for his actions to the fullest extent possible. And they should take the same attitude toward Trump, whether he is still in office or not. Musk’s tenure as a White House employee and perhaps even his position as a Trump ally have almost certainly come to an end. But he and the president remain threats to democracy.
Eoin Higgins
Eoin Higgins is a writer based in New England. His book, "Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left," is available now. 
