The Elon Musk and Donald Trump Feud Proves Men Are Just Too Emotional to Be in Charge

The Elon Musk and Donald Trump feud is proving to women what we’ve known all along: Boys are simply too emotional to be running the country.

Their once-celebrated, big, beautiful bromance that showed us all what a strong alliance between two alpha males could be has imploded this week, and the fallout is playing out in front of the entire country.

I’d love to say I was surprised. But didn’t you often find the way they spoke to each other a little hysterical? Watching their press conferences was often a bit like watching two divas mercurially circle each other—and we all know how painful and destructive friendship breakups can be. History is riddled with them. Ryan Murphy makes a living off them!

As with all epic friendship implosions, Musk and Trump were besties for a minute. The world’s richest man hitched his wagon to the former president slowly, beginning with his decision in 2022 to allow Trump back on Twitter, which he had bought and rebranded as X. Over the next few years, Musk’s once-left-leaning political beliefs began to morph, until he became one of Trump’s most powerful surrogates during the 2024 campaign.

“As you can see, I’m not just MAGA—I’m dark MAGA,” Musk said during his first Trump rally in October 2024. He was all in.

Soon, these besties were inseparable, with Musk and his young son X a constant fixture by the president’s side (that was a little ridiculous, right? Shouldn’t he have been at home raising his son, instead of bringing him to work?). Even as the two men presented a united front, many people could see that these two wouldn’t last. A friendship can only have one superstar, and both men thought they were it. They were doomed.

The implosion that inevitably ensued was so boy-coded: dramatic, hysterical, and way too much. Isn’t that so like men, though? They are always unable to stop their emotions from clouding their judgment, playing out a public bitch fight for all to see. Of course, we all tuned in. Who could resist a battle between two drama kings?

Trump hysterically threatened to kill Musk’s government contracts. Musk, like the messy bitch he is, said the president would have lost the election without his support, then claimed Trump had not released the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files because he was included in the documents. Trump called Musk “crazy.” Musk said he hopes the president would be impeached, which is kind of the president version of Tai calling Cher a “virgin who can’t drive.”

By Friday morning, Trump told CNN that he was “not even thinking about Elon,” which is totally something that someone who is definitely not consumed with thoughts of Elon would say. Sigh…letting his emotions get the best of him again. Doesn’t he have serious president work to do?

Of course, I’m not being serious. But I raise these issues with humor for a very serious reason. There are a lot of ways to describe the series of events that have played out on a global stage: completely humiliating to every American citizen, concerning for the future of our country, or rage-inducing when we think of what these two could be doing with their time instead. But what gives this moment a particular thread of irony is the fact that our country has never elected a woman as president, largely due to the belief that our gender does not have the emotional capacity to handle the job.