[davidham]

Musk is different from the other people in Trump’s orbit. Trump can’t afford to throw Musk aside or turn him into an enemy. Not yet anyway.

This is not to say that there won’t be a breakup, there may yet be. But it seems like Musk was able to parlay his Twitter investment into tremendous direct influence over the government, a pearl without price. I don’t know that he ever cared whether Twitter made money or not.

[llm_nerd]

Trump and the MAGA cult is far bigger than Musk. Musk was against Trump, and actually backed DeSantis. Did not matter at all.

If Trump turned his cult against Musk, Musk would be done. Immediately all of the bootlickers and retweeters would deride everything Musk has said or done. Musk's money would be meaningless, and he'd be the next "Soros" in their minds.

Musk clearly cares incredibly about whether Twitter makes money, and has been desperately flailing around to try to make it viable. They're currently suing advertisers who don't advertise there, which is farcical. Musk really believed his grand "we'll be your bank!" thing would be some simple thing (because everything is super easy to do for someone who doesn't actually understand or do any of it)

[acdha]

I’ve been wondering about that because it seems like the relationship is increasingly unbalanced in Trump’s favor.

Musk is very exposed to Trump now: he needs pardons or abeyance of enforcement for DOGE, all of his companies are exposed to multiple regulators, and he depends on government contracts. A lot of the money he throws around in politics is leveraged on his stock holdings, so a regulatory move which affects that would also cut into his ability to fight back.

In contrast, while Trump was somewhat addicted to X he doesn’t need it after the election the way he did before and he’s shifted a lot to Truth Social. Before the election, he depended on Musk’s money but he’s been taking in a huge war chest which he can use to keep Republicans in line, too.