WASHINGTON — If history is any guide, and there is a lot of history, the explosive new falling out between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk is not going to end well for the former White House advisor and world’s richest man.
The political battlefield is littered with the scorched remains of some of Trump’s previous allies who picked a fight with him or were on the receiving end of one.
Lawyer Michael Cohen. Political advisor Steve Bannon. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. John Bolton, John Kelly and Chris Christie, to name just a few.
“If what happened to me is any indication of how they handle these matters, then Elon is going to get decimated,” said Cohen, the former long-term Trump lawyer and fixer who once said he’d “take a bullet” for his boss. Musk, he said, “just doesn’t understand how to fight this type of political guerilla warfare.”
“They’re going to take his money, they’re going to shutter his businesses and they’re going to either incarcerate or deport him,” Cohen said of what he thinks Musk will suffer at the hands of Trump and his administration. “He’s probably got the White House working overtime already, as we speak, figuring out how to close his whole damn thing down.”
Cohen had perhaps the most spectacular blow up, until now, with Trump. He served time in prison after Trump threw him under the bus by denying any knowledge of pre-election payments Cohen made to a porn actress to keep her alleged tryst with Trump quiet before the 2016 election.
Cohen felt so betrayed by Trump that he titled his memoir “Disloyal,” but the Trump administration tried to block its publication. Cohen ultimately fought back, becoming a star witness for the government in the state “hush money” case and helped get Trump convicted by a Manhattan jury.
Some suffered similar legal attacks and other slings and arrows, including Trump taunts and his trademark nasty nicknames. Trump vilified others, casting them into the political wilderness with his MAGA base.
When Sessions recused himself from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Trump savaged him, calling his appointment a “mistake” and lobbing other epithets.
Sessions resigned under pressure in 2018. When he tried to resurrect his political career by running for his old Senate seat in Alabama, Trump endorsed his opponent, who won the GOP primary.
After firing Tillerson, Trump called the former ExxonMobil chief lazy and “dumb as a rock.” Trump still taunts Christie, an early supporter and 2016 transition chief, especially about his weight.
Trump also had a falling out with Bannon, who was instrumental in delivering his presidential victory in 2016 and then joined the White House as special advisor.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency,” Trump said in 2018, a year after Bannon’s ouster from the White House. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
Trump’s Justice Department even indicted Bannon in 2020 for fraud, though the President pardoned him before leaving office.
One of Trump’s biggest feuds was with Bolton, whom he fired as his national security advisor in 2019.
Trump used every means possible to prevent his book, “The Room Where it Happened,” from being published, Bolton told USA TODAY on Thursday. That included having the U.S. government sue his publisher on the false premise that Bolton violated a nondisclosure agreement and was leaking classified information, Bolton said.
Bolton said Musk is unlike most others who have crossed swords with Trump in that he has unlimited amounts of money and control of a powerful social media platform in X to help shape the narrative. Musk also has billions in government contracts that even a vindictive Trump will have a hard time killing, as he threatened to do on Thursday, without significant legal challenges.
Even so, Bolton said, “It’s going to end up like most mud fights do, with both of them worse off. The question is how much worse the country is going to be off.”