Within a year of the election, will Trump publicly disparage Elon Musk?
This could be for any reason, provoked or otherwise. Things like belittling nicknames and personal insults would count, or "I never liked him anyway" type statements.
As this might be somewhat subjective, I won't trade.
1,000
3.00Bloomberg: Trump Says Talk That He’s Ceded Presidency to Musk Is a ‘Hoax’
“No, he’s not taking the presidency,” Trump told a conservative audience in Phoenix, addressing growing complaints about the outsized role the Tesla boss has already had in his incoming administration.
“You know, they’re on a new kick,” he said. “All the different hoaxes. The new one is that President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk. No, no, that’s not happening.”
“Isn’t it nice to have smart people we can rely on? Don’t we want that?” Trump asked a gathering of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA.
“But no, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump said. “And I’m safe. You know why? He can’t be. He wasn’t born in this country. Ha ha ha."
@CryptoNeoLiberalist what about your dad? I thought he works in the US govt, really curious what he has to say
@Conflux My dad doesn't have the insight or instincts like this, his son. I am much more of the in the know.
@Marnix I hate to glaze Trump so shamelessly but nobody in history faced more negative press than he did. If anything he liked it?
He is a narcissist, sure, but he is the exact opposite of insecure.
@Shai I'm not super sure about that — I remember SNL really getting to him during his first presidency, and him being REALLY mad at Fox for calling Arizona in 2020. Plus, he's also been kind of obsessed with accusations of him doing Putin's bidding for about 7-8 years. I feel like enough coverage of Trump as Elon Sycophant (ESPECIALLY if an ally abandons him and starts saying it) could certainly drive a wedge.
@EvanDaniel will resolving to “yes” require actual audio / video footage of trump disparaging Musk? How will you deal with reporting of Trump disparaging him in a non-public setting (e.g., at a closed door meeting)?
@Shai it does yes, but it's slightly ambigious - imo - in that if footage / audio / reports are released into the public, if this counts towards a positive resolution or not.
@vitamind Yea I didn't mean to come of as rude, it's just that any reporting is by definition public, so we need to look at the context of the event itself.
The only reason I can think why this is at c. 50% is that people want it to happen.
Bear in mind that the Manifold community thinks that there is an 83% chance that Donald Trump will repay Elon Musk's backing in good faith.
@vitamind I am beginning to learn that it's better to just take the libs' mana rather than get frustrated arguing with them.
@vitamind Trump seems to sour on most people after a while? And Elon seems like the sort of person who, if he realized something bad about Trump, might just blurt it to the world on Twitter, after which Trump would almost certainly disparage him in some way, regardless of what else is going on.
I'm of the opinion that Trump will reward Elon for the help with the election, then insult him later for being insufficiently loyal. I would be really surprised if this didn't happen eventually, the major open question is, can Elon stay in Trump's good books for 10 months post-inauguration?
@equinoxhq could you give some of your highest probability scenarios where Elon "blurts" something out on Twitter and / or where he'd do something to make Trump think he's been insufficiently loyal? Bear in mind, these would be scenarios where Musk goes from zealot to, "hm, I'm not so sure about this guy anymore...".
I'd also put much less weight "Trump goes sour on people after a while" when the Musk-Trump relationship is so beneficial to him - perhaps beyond any other relationship he has with anyone else.
A good starting point is Trump's cabinet picks. Several of them have been absolutely outrageous, but Musk seems to be in complete agreement with them (at least publicly).
Another important point is DOGE. Elon isn't going to be left on the sidelines, rather he's going to have an active part in the Trump administration. A turning point could be the Trump reneging the creation of the department, or disagreeing with its proposals, but given how popular DOGE actually is (not just with Republicans), I don't think that's very likely.
@vitamind were you not around the last time Trump was president ? Here's a list of all the people Trump has insulted via twitter in 6 years time . This is JUST the ones he insulted via twitter until 2021, when he was banned. If the list included people he had insulted in interviews or on Truth Social or in rally speeches it would be even longer.
Many targets in the list are people that used to be in Trump's own administration, sometimes he insulted them while they were still working for the administration.
@vitamind My current scenario is that Trump repays Elon for his backing fairly quickly, killing investigations into his companies, gutting the NLRB or siccing it on his corporate enemies, etc.
Now, how they fall out could come from any number of likely sources:
Elon is further radicalized into more extreme beliefs via Twitter, and Trump refuses to go as far as Elon wants. He attempts to pressure Trump in an extremely loud manner, and Trump doesn't take kindly to someone turning his fans against him. He threatens to cut Elon loose if he doesn't knock it off, and Elon, being extremely dumb, does it again.
Trump has made being anti-anti–climate change one of his strongest positions. He takes the steps he's expected to regarding electric cars in a way that threatens Musk's bottom line, Musk makes a public stink about it, Trump and Elon end up in a back and forth.
Elon, through his own unfunny peculiarities and quirks, annoys Trump too much and Trump cuts him off.
Elon, in his role in Gov. Eff., loudly and publicly makes some strong recommendations that Trump brushes off, or worse - that Trump is convinced are stupid.
Elon keeps acting like he's the president, and starts getting talked about as if he was the man pulling Trump's strings.
Trump disparages Twitter in a way that personally slights Elon.
There's so many ways for these two men's fallout to happen. Both do their beefing in public, they're both notoriously hard to get along with, and neither one of them has any impulse control.
@vitamind Sure. I don't see Elon as a pro-Trump zealot. I think he's too smart for that. I can't claim to be able to reliably predict what he will or won't say or do, because his actions don't fit into a pattern where I go "yep, this all makes sense to me". But, I do notice that things he says he wants to happen tend to happen, and he's working on several civilization-scale projects. I think he's got goals and he's doing what he thinks (correctly or not) will achieve those goals, without much regard for how that plays in terms of public opinion. My interpretation of his behaviour pre-election was basically "I need Trump to win this election because ____", where I'm not sure what ___ is, but might have to do with giving him a freer hand with his companies than he anticipated Kamala would do, or maybe he really believes that the Democrats will stifle free speech and he thinks it's really important that not happen, or maybe something else. Anyway, because I don't have a really solid model of how Elon thinks (and I know my model is not solid because ex ante I wouldn't have predicted he'd promote a lot of the garbage he did on Twitter - he might be autistic or whatever, but he's definitely not dumb, so he knows a lot of what he promoted was false, and my model of him from a few years ago was that he cared about truth). With that as background, basically I think as soon as Elon figures it will serve one of his goals to say something Trump doesn't like, he'll say it - the things he wants to accomplish are more important to him than staying on Trump's good side, he's only doing the latter in service of the former. Also maybe just because he thinks it's true, he might say something Trump doesn't like - my prior that he cares about saying true things has taken a hit, but the probability I place on it is not near 0. For example, he understands that climate change is a real thing rather than a Chinese conspiracy, so he's at odds with the Trump administration about that and could say something at any point that indicates this difference. More generally, Elon cares about things that aren't Trump, and Trump does not, so there's a natural conflict there. Also, Trump does not like it when other people upstage him or are more popular or more visible (get higher viewership numbers) than him, and Elon runs the risk of doing that just by accomplishing things, which will trigger Trump's insecurities even if Elon doesn't say anything that Trump dislikes.
Also, if Elon goes ahead and makes massive and not particularly careful cuts to government that actually bite and lots of people realize their lives are worse now because a hatchet was taken to a program they depend on, Trump is going to need a fall guy so that the blame doesn't stick to him, and of course Elon's the natural pick for that.
Elon's also active in the AI space, and may decide that nothing else matters by comparison to getting that one area right, and may work hard to stay on Trump's good side in order to retain influence during what may be a pivotal time in the development of AI, which is one path to this resolving NO.
Another path that seems plausible is, Elon knows Vance is smart and Elon plans to turn on Trump as soon as he figures the result will be President Vance. Maybe the true thing he says that Trump doesn't like is "Trump is senile/insane, we should invoke the 25th amendment".
@equinoxhq I agree with a lot of what you wrote, aside from the idea that Elon might try to (politically) knife Trump.
But I think there's a pretty simple "not overthinking it" possibility. Elon is way, way, way smarter than Trump and is famously brash. At some point he's going to correct Trump about something in a way that makes Trump feel insulted or insecure. This could happen in private, in public, or even on camera. It'll probably happen mutliple times, in various contexts, because Trump says really dumb shit all the time.
And Trump is not the sort of person who feels insulted or inscure without retaliating.
Downhill from there, with neither having the sort of people skills that would smooth things over and patch up a relationship.
You ever seen smart people hang out with dumb people? Never goes well.
@notarealuser That's a reference to his standard line for people he's committed sex crimes against, and pedophiles and porn stars he has associated with in past. Probably won't apply to Musk, but who knows, Trump says many things.