‘100% Stupid’: MAGA World Is Cautiously Turning on Elon Musk

Much of the right-wing media ecosystem appeared unsure how to react to the seeming public implosion of the relationship between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on Thursday and into Friday morning. Outlets and influencers that typically react savagely to criticism of Trump played the spat more or less down the middle. Even much of the criticism of Musk was relatively genteel.

“He's gotta let Trump be Trump,” former Fox News host Eric Bolling said on Steve Bannon’s broadcast network, Real America’s Voice. “You can be First Bro,” he said of Musk, “but you can't be de facto president.”

Behind the scenes, they tell WIRED, Republican operatives could not help but be entertained at the torrent of messages flooding their group chats. They tended to take Trump’s side.

One Trumpworld consultant tells WIRED that the entire episode reminded them of a line in a recent Wall Street Journal report, about how Trump had privately described Musk as “50% genius, 50% boy.”

“After today,” the consultant says, “I think he’s just 100% stupid.” (Musk did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)

While Musk had been railing against the Republican budget reconciliation package formally known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for several days on X, things turned ugly once Trump denounced the billionaire during an Oval Office appearance on Thursday with the German chancellor Friedrich Merz. “Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said. “I don’t know if we will anymore.” Musk subsequently agreed with an X user who called for the president’s impeachment.

Still, some presented the conflict as a positive thing, even while calling for it to end.

“I think the great thing about this is we all see it,” said Fox News host Greg Gutfeld. “Would you take a forceful president and a billionaire publicly feuding in public over an invalid president? … At least I know what is going on, and I can somewhat enjoy it, but I want them to stop. I've had it. I don't want to see my parents fighting.”

By Friday morning, Fox & Friends cohost Brian Kilmeade was hoping for an end to the animosity, suggesting there could be a “big, beautiful truce.”

While many in the broader Trump coalition appeared hesitant to commit to one side or the other, this wasn’t true of everyone as Thursday afternoon’s bevy of rude posts bled into the night. After Musk posted “@realDonald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” some MAGA loyalists were shocked. Alex Jones, though—the right-wing talk radio host and conspiracy theorist who called the Sandy Hook school shootings a hoax and was sued for defamation and found liable by default—wrote that Trump “needs to respond asap.”

One of the MAGA-verse’s most prominent accounts, Catturd, then went after Jones. “What a POS Alex Jones turned out to be - what a fucking fraud,” he tweeted. (Jones did not immediately reply to a request for comment sent to InfoWars.)

Catturd—whom Musk apparently unfollowed— later shared a blown-out portrait of Trump with the caption “Trump 2028.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, released a statement Thursday evening attempting to put the fracas at bay. “This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted. The President is focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again."

Some stalwart Trump defenders used the occasion to take a victory lap over their perceived enemies on the tech right. Trump adviser Steve Bannon called on Musk to be deported in an interview with The New York Times. “They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status, because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately,” he said. On his War Room podcast, Bannon called for Trump to use a Korean War–era law to “seize” SpaceX before midnight. (Trump did not do so.)

Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy monger and influential voice in Trump’s ear, as WIRED detailed in a story about her role in national security personnel matters, referred back to a tweet of hers from December 25, 2024: “Don’t worry guys. The Big Tech divorce is coming soon. It’s now a scandal.”

Loomer later addressed Musk directly, asking him to “please tweet something nice about President Trump tonight.” For good measure, Loomer followed up with a tweet proclaiming “The President of the United States is not a pedophile,” and another predicting that Musk would stand next to Trump when the president signed the package the entrepreneur has described as “a disgusting abomination” into law.

(Trumpworld insiders referring to the 53-year-old Musk as a boy isn’t uncommon; as WIRED previously reported, one has called him a preteen child.)

Breitbart—the conservative media site and Trumpworld’s favored text outlet—highlighted Trump’s threat to cancel Musk’s government contracts and stuck with the president’s posts on his own social media platform, Truth Social, over embedding tweets from Musk’s X. In another story on the site, editor-in-chief Alex Marlow scored what Breitbart billed as an “exclusive” interview with White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields, who went for a cordial tone while defending Trump.

“There’s no daylight between this White House and Elon Musk,” Fields told Breitbart. “Elon Musk has his priorities, and this White House and this president have their priorities. We may not be aligned on this issue; but let me tell you this, we’re grateful to Elon Musk for the work that he was able to do for this administration.”

Amid all the back and forth, YouGov managed to get a quick online poll of nearly 4,000 people into the field. While many in the conservative media ecosystem hedged their bets, Republican voters were more clearly sorted. They backed Trump over Musk nearly 12 to one.