‘Inevitably going to implode’: Here’s what experts think about Trump and Musk’s relationship as it unravels online

Psychologist Simon Sherry shares what he thinks may be behind public fallouts in the wake of Trump and Musk's online fight.

It may be the most high-profile breakup between two of the most powerful and richest men in the world. Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who not too long ago was a strong ally and adviser to the U.S. president, captured the world’s attention this week with their war of words on social media, including X, which Musk owns.

What could be happening with the alliance between two of the world’s most influential men, or what could similar feuds mean? CTVNews.ca reached out to a wide variety of experts, from a psychologist to Trump’s biographer, asking what they think.

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Simon Sherry, a registered psychologist, said he couldn’t speak directly about Trump or Musk since he has not assessed or diagnosed them. However, he said he could speak of individuals who may have certain personality traits and relationship styles that could lead to a similar public fallout.

Sherry says people who exhibit narcissistic qualities generally “don’t play nicely” with each other.

“Speaking in general terms, when two narcissistic individuals interact, it often becomes a struggle for dominance,” Sherry, a professor from the department of psychology and neuroscience at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca on Friday. “So if you’ve got traits like grandiosity and entitlement, you have a great need for admiration.”

These types of individuals may also be “low on empathy” and “cold” during interactions, he adds.

“And if you have that cold and unempathetic style, it’s more likely that you’re going to escalate conflict, as opposed to move toward repairing a relationship or any sort of a reconciliation.”

Bree McEwan, a communication professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga, told CTVNews.ca in a video interview Friday that the public unravelling between Trump and Musk raises questions.

“This is perhaps an unusual moment where we’re having power players in the U.S. government air out all of their beef in online settings,” said McEwan, who specializes in social media’s role in personal communication and public discourse.

“It does allow for a lot of conversation and chatter to occur around their discussion, but it also brings up the question of how much of this is a performance, who’s that performance for, and how much of this is sort of serious business of these major players,” McEwan added.

The high-profile feud also has significant consequences, she adds.

“From a responsibility perspective, when you are two major players whose every action has a huge influence on world markets, there’s a point here where maybe you should be picking up the phone and talking to each other, maybe have a conversation in the Oval Office,” she said.

Breakup was ‘inevitable’: Trump biographer

Marc Fisher, co-author of the 2016 book “Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power,” called the duo’s breakup “inevitable.”

“This is a case of two wealthy and narcissistic billionaires, who are very accustomed to having the spotlight entirely to themselves and find that, when someone challenges them, they tend to push back pretty hard,” Fisher said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca on Friday.

He added that the fallout “makes perfect sense,” with Musk moving on as a top White House adviser.

“He had endangered his own businesses by devoting himself entirely to his time in Washington, and so he’s now abandoned Trump and Trump doesn’t like that,” he said. “He doesn’t like when people separate from him or critique him in any way, and so we have this battle of the wits and battle of the wills going that very much reflects the personalities of both men.”

Both Musk and Trump are prone to “overreactions” and “emotional reactions,” Fisher added.

“Both of them see this kind of dispute as something that ought to play out in public, because that gives them even more attention, and attention is really the currency by which they measure their own success,” he said.

Fisher adds that the public fight positions Trump as standing up to a billionaire, while Musk may be trying to prove to his stockholders that he’s paying attention to his business.

“Neither of them has much to lose here,” he said.

‘A marriage of convenience’

Fisher doesn’t believe Trump and Musk had a genuine connection.

“It was a marriage of convenience, really more of an accident than anything else, doomed from the start,” Fisher said. “It’s the kind of relationship that was perhaps mutually beneficial for a short time but was inevitably going to implode.”

For Trump, Musk provided “extraordinary energy” to allow Trump and his officials to show they were “really tearing the federal government apart,” Fisher said, noting Trump seems to have less energy now than during his first administration.

“For Musk, this was an opportunity to push forward his business interests, get in close with the president who had a significant sway over whether large government contracts, which are at the heart of Musk’s operations, would come his way and stay with his companies,” Fisher said. “And so this was really, something that seemed mutually beneficial for a time.”

‘Kerosene being thrown on this fire’

Jeffrey Dvorkin, a media observer and former director of the journalism program at University of Toronto, had some ideas on what may be happening with the insults between the two men online. He called social media the “kerosene being thrown on this fire.”

“I think that what we’re seeing is the acting out of these unresolved issues that stem from childhood, but now have a terrible impact on the rest of us,” the senior fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto said in a video interview with CTVNews.ca on Friday, referring to their “very demanding” fathers. “It is a destabilizing situation in the United States in the American government, which is never good for anybody.”

Meanwhile, he said Musk is “a disruptor.”

“He’s throwing his toys around the room, hoping someone will pick up after him,” Dvorkin said. “There may be some rationalization of what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, but I think deep down, we’re dealing with two deeply flawed people, who have never really learned how to play well with others.”

But Dvorkin sees one benefit in the feud.

“The only advantage I can see is that Canada now has a new prime minister who seems to be a grown up, the adult in the room, and he will now be able to exercise a level of control that maybe the previous prime minister was unable or unwilling to do,” he said.