The spectacular public fallout between President Trump and his former best buddy Elon Musk, what a pundit called the “most important personal relationship in the world,” is a great example of how the junk food of sensationalism can quickly suffocate the health food of what really matters.
If you recall, Musk’s initial beef was with Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” which the president was pushing through Congress, and which would add trillions to a U.S. debt that is already out of control. Since Musk launched his DOGE department a few months ago, he has been a chain-saw-carrying evangelist for the need to reduce the country’s debt.
But let’s face it: Compared to the train wreck of two titans insulting each other on social media, the tedious issue of overspending never stood a chance. It was like bringing cold broccoli to a yummy barbeque.
As a result, we’re now watching the food fight of the century as the media regales us with blow-by-blow accounts as if they were covering a championship boxing match. Who wouldn’t want to watch a knock-down, drag-out fight between the two most powerful dudes in the world?
Especially when there are so many juicy subplots.
Like, for example, who do you cheer for if you hate both men? That’s what many Democrats must now be asking themselves, since they were using the public’s growing distaste for Musk to bash their nemesis Trump. How weird it must feel to share any sentiment with a man they so revile.
But of all the juicy subplots, the one that matters most is the one that has received the least attention precisely because it is the least juicy.
Simply put, what matters most is the reality of a gross national debt that is growing like wild weeds and is now more than $36 trillion. The debt is so out of control that according to the House Budget Committee, it is increasing by $268 million every hour. Said another way, we need to borrow $268 million an hour just to stay solvent.
All told, we now owe nearly $1 trillion a year just on interest payments, which is more than we spend on Medicaid or Defense.
With his superhero complex, Musk probably thought he could take on what he sees as the existential crisis of our time. He concluded correctly that both parties were to blame, having neither the guts nor the incentive to tell voters the hard truth that their country was going broke. Indeed, decade after decade, both parties have kept the runaway money train chugging along, spending and borrowing and printing money as if there was no tomorrow.
Maybe Musk figured he’d be the tough guy to finally tell the country it needed serious belt-tightening if it hoped to secure its future.
The problem is that Musk was the wrong man for the right job. He didn’t have the right temperament. He overpromised. He didn’t understand how government and politics work. He thought he could bring his tech bros “let’s break things” ethos to federal institutions, including the executive branch, that have their own hardened cultures.
For a while, he gained traction by focusing on reducing waste and fraud, which made him enemies but kept Trump on his side. But beyond the recklessness of his style, even reducing waste and fraud would be a drop in the bucket compared to the enormity of the debt. By the time the Big Beautiful Bill revealed trillions in projected new debt, Musk turned on Trump and the schoolyard fight was on. Any way you look at it, it was a humbling loss for a man so used to winning.
The job of leading America out of its runaway debt is not a job for a bull who breaks all the china in the shop. It’s a job for a leader we haven’t met yet. Man or woman, that leader will need the sensitivity of Lincoln, the savvy of FDR, the charisma of Obama, the passion of MLK and the integrity of Truman.
Only the greatest of leaders will stand a chance to make us turn away from junk food and chomp on the celery sticks that will save our future.
