By José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez on June 7, 2025, from Havana
the Trump and Musk marriage comes to an end
This is the question that a responsible author asks himself every time he makes a prediction, an approximation, or dares to sketch out a scenario. It is a recurring question if one wants the next exercise to be closer to the truth, and it is essential for all work to be perfectible.
At the beginning of March, we presented a reflection entitled “The translation of a photo: Trump’s new Pentagons,” in which we drew attention to the likely influence that a group of billionaires from the so-called new technology sector would have on Donald Trump’s administration and the possible use by the new Republican team of all the wealth of information held by companies such as Apple, Amazon, Meta, and X, in accordance with their interests of domination.
At the time, we did not go beyond imagining a mutually beneficial alliance between political and economic power, without either side crossing the red line that separates their respective mandates in the prevailing social order (or disorder) in that country.
One of those companies (X, formerly Twitter) and in particular its chief executive, Elon Musk, had played a significant role in supporting Trump’s election campaign, both in terms of the amount of money invested (estimated at around $400 million) and the amount of data he interacted with directly with voters to obtain their votes.
As is well known, Trump made a “grateful gesture” by giving Musk a leading role in the new executive branch during his first 100 days in office, heading up a structure called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) without being subject to congressional scrutiny, which was supposedly tasked with quickly reviewing how money approved in the federal budget was being spent by each agency at that level, as well as investigating policies, regulations, and key priorities.
At the same time, Musk selflessly secured a hefty share of the federal budget for some of his companies, such as SpaceX, which would immediately benefit from large contracts related to US national defense, extra planetary conquest, and other areas.
To the surprise of many and the complicit silence of senators and congressmen who remain silent in order to secure their indefinite re-election, Musk and his closest collaborators enjoyed broad powers that allowed them to access sensitive information, propose the closure of institutions, and lay off thousands of state workers, without any legislative or judicial oversight.
But what seemed like a long-term marriage enjoyed by both parties suddenly came to an unexpected end. Musk resigned from his executive duties in early June, bluntly criticizing budget legislation that Trump considered essential to his second term and began to launch strong public attacks on his former partner and president. Trump reacted by launching his own missiles after an initial silence, which some interpreted as a desire to avoid a costly counterattack from Musk ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Trump responded to only some of Musk’s arguments and did not question his claims, particularly that his contribution to the current president’s campaign had been decisive and defining.
Much of the corporate press, as always superficial and complacent, focused on the use of adjectives, the repetition of offensive messages, and listing who supported each side. But Musk went further, and on June 5, he proposed on his X profile the possibility of creating a third federal party, opened a 24-hour poll on the subject, and targeted a growing majority of US voters, the so-called independents, who are increasingly less Republican or Democrat but are increasingly deciding where the pendulum is swinging.
This action was met with mixed reactions across the political spectrum. Some linked it to Musk’s “volatile personality,” others saw it as a desperate and possibly temporary outburst by the entrepreneur, and many attributed it to his penchant for making headlines.
To add further complexity to the political environment, it should be noted that these developments came just days after an unexpected public campaign against Trump (with widespread repercussions on X) took place, which took on the main hashtag #TACOTrump and aimed to “prove” that Trump “always chickens out,” (Trump Always Chickens Out), a stance that theoretically has accompanied him since his days as a real estate entrepreneur.
But perhaps the most interesting reaction to Musk’s stance was the terrified silence of many traditional politicians. The proposal by the man with the most economic resources at his disposal in the United States and the world, who also runs one of the digital platforms with the greatest impact on the US political class, has come at a time when both the Republican and Democratic parties are facing one of the most significant existential crises in their history.
What is happening within the so-called Grand Old Party (GOP) is perhaps more evident. Trump commands hordes that have no order or concerted action. He is the leader of an amalgam of interests, where there are no group discussions or interest in reaching consensus. Neither national committees nor local structures dare to challenge the emperor’s projections, whether they involve suicidal tariffs for the US economy or multimillion-dollar spending to expel or terrorize undocumented immigrants.
On the Democratic side, the outlook is also suicidal. Added to this is the real possibility that large sectors of young progressive minded people will split from the federal organization. This leakage has already begun and can be traced to the strong presidential campaign Bernie Sanders ran in 2020 only to betray his followers by urging them at the end to support Biden. They are also still recovering from the series of strategic errors that led to their humiliating defeat in the November 2024 presidential elections. The generational change needed to bring new figures into key positions has not taken place. The Clintons, as the core, and other small groups revolving around them, are not relinquishing political power within the party and continue to be the main factor of balance (or imbalance).
These Democratic afflictions have perhaps been less discussed, but recent texts such as the book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson (2025) provide enough evidence to conclude that the fate of the Democratic structure is increasingly dominated by a small group of elitist managers who are becoming increasingly detached from the party base. The terminal illness of these Democrats is evident in the fact that there are no leadership figures who can offer or simulate an alternative, either as individuals or as projects, for the midterm elections in 2026 or the presidential elections in 2028.
Musk’s brief exercise managed to gauge the opinion of more than five million people out of the nearly 40 million who read the question in just 24 hours. According to Musk himself (there is no way to verify this), 80% of those who responded were in favor of creating a third party, which he has already named the America Party. Keep in mind that X is a platform that is mainly used by executives and professionals in the United States, and a significant portion of young people who use Facebook or TikTok exclude themselves from it.
If we made a mistake in writing the article mentioned at the beginning, it was in not imagining that so quickly another figure (Musk) outside traditional political structures could take advantage so rapidly and possibly very efficiently of the fracture generated in the US system by the Trump phenomenon to attempt to seize power using old and new instruments that he masters like few others.
Perhaps we can already talk about techno-parties or techno-politicians. Extensive economic resources concentrated in the hands of those who accumulate unlimited data as a result of the use of artificial intelligence tools and who have the ability to place personalized messages on cell phones and tablets to create tastes and generate attitudes, can serve as a womb for conceiving political phenomena in the United States and other countries that seemed unthinkable until today.
The events of recent days, whose full extent is yet to be seen but which do not appear to be reversible, could pale in comparison to what has been called Trumpism until now and could turn Trump not just into an extreme on the spectrum, but into a transitional factor.
Isolated data does not make trends, and without trends it is impossible to make generalizations, but a number of variables will need to be observed in the coming days.
These include: the willingness of Musk and his associates to continue the campaign; the attitude that other executives in the virtual world and their respective corporations will take; the continuing deterioration of the relationship between the proactive Trump and the executive Trump; the state of the economy; and the reactions of various sectors to his main proposals, among others.
José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana, Cuba.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English