KATE EMERY: Trump, Musk destined for break-up and its going to be messy

If there is a silver lining to what’s happening in US politics it’s that watching the inevitable break-up between president elect Donald Trump and “President Elon Musk”, as the uber rich tech guru has been dubbed, will be entertaining.

We don’t know when it is going to come or what it will look like but we know it will make the frenemy dynamics of Mean Girls look like The Famous Five.

And every Australian politician who has ever thought of getting a little too cosy with their own billionaire, millionaire or corporate backers — too many to list here, sorry guys — should be watching what just happened in the US with interest.

What just happened in the US is this: a bipartisan funding proposal that would have prevented a government shutdown got torpedoed in part by Mr Musk, who tweeted about it more than 100 times on X, the social media platform he owns.

Mr Musk urged his followers to contact their representative to protest what he claimed was “one of the worst bills ever” and, reportedly, many did.

Much of what Mr Musk tweeted wasn’t true — proposed pay rises for members of Congress weren’t 40 per cent but a maximum of 4 per cent, for example — but nobody expects truth on the site that was once a legitimate news-gathering resource and is now the online equivalent of the worst four drunk guys you’ve ever met arguing at a bar.

The site formerly known as Twitter is also, it must be said, increasingly a greenhouse for extremists, including the Saudi-born doctor charged with Sunday’s attack on a German Christmas market, which killed five, including a nine-year-old boy.

The alleged murderer was active on X and a supporter of the far-right German party, Alternative für Deutschland, which Mr Musk has also publicly endorsed.

While the US budget bill may well have been chucked out without Mr Musk’s interference, watching the way this played out felt like a preview of what the next four years might look like.

It was hard not to wonder what happens when the thing Mr Musk decides he hates is a thing Mr Trump decides he loves.

What’s interesting about the emerging Trump-Musk dynamic is that it is making public what anyone remotely connected with politics has known for a long time: that politicians do deals, officially and unofficially, with all kinds of power brokers in order to be elected and, once elected, have to deal with the consequences.

In the case of Mr Trump, he was very happy to let Mr Musk use his money and social media heft to spread propaganda that served his election campaign.

In return, Mr Musk was tapped to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency with businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, because nothing says efficiency like creating a new department with two bosses. (It’s the political equivalent of planning to de-clutter your home by first hitting up Howard’s Storage World to buy up big.)

The relationship between Mr Trump and Mr Musk isn’t new.

The dynamic of an easily-manipulated leader and a close adviser with questionable motivations is a common fixture in both life and great literature, from Iago in William Shakespeare’s Othello, Svengali in George du Maurier’s 1894 novel, Trilby, and, of course, Grima Wormtongue in The Lord of the Rings.

What’s new is the bit where, because Mr Musk exercises some of his power through social media, ordinary people who don’t usually follow politics can see just how much weight one un-elected individual can throw around when they’re cashed-up and have the boss’ ear.

Watching Mr Musk tweet things like: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” and seeing the bill abandoned hours later is different to knowing, in theory, about back room meetings and late night phone calls.

Whether or not ordinary people care that one un-elected, very rich guy who thinks what Germany needs is another far-right chancellor, can wield this kind of power is unclear or, at least, remains to be seen.

Maybe they do or maybe this very public display only confirms their worst theories about politicians anyway.

What is clear is that the Democrats’ enthusiasm for referring to Mr Musk as “co-president” or “President Musk” is already getting under the skin of Mr Trump, who is experiencing the same thing that every elected politician has to deal with: keeping sweet all those supporters who got you there in the first place.

We know this because the crepe-paper-skinned Mr Trump has started belittling the idea of a “President Musk”, telling a Republican conference in Phoenix, Arizona, that the South African-born Mr Musk is “not gonna be president, that I can tell you”.

“You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country,” Mr Trump said.

And maybe the world won’t have to wait as long for that Trump/Musk break-up as we thought.