Nobody can challenge Trump without paying a heavy price

The very public and acrimonious split between US President Donald Trump and his once-favorite aide Elon Musk would be amusing if it were not so terrifying. Their puerile public feud demonstrated just how insecure – even unhinged – the world’s most powerful person, and its wealthiest, really are.

The collapse came fast. On May 30, Trump was calling Musk “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced,” and handing him a symbolic golden key to the White House. Though Musk was leaving his post as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he would, according to Trump, continue advising the administration on shrinking the federal budget.

Four days later, Musk was lambasting Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill as a “disgusting abomination,” posting a series of screenshots of Trump’s old social-media posts calling for budget discipline, and crediting himself for Trump’s second presidency. Trump responded by accusing Musk of turning on the bill because, by eliminating electric-vehicle subsidies, it threatened his personal financial interests.

Things only got more personal: Trump posted that the US government could save billions of dollars by terminating the contracts and subsidies awarded to Musk’s companies, and Musk fired back with a post suggesting that the Department of Justice has been withholding evidence about Trump’s ties to the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

These exchanges might be shocking, but they should not be surprising. While the scale of the spectacle stands out – a function of Musk’s tremendous influence and apparent lack of restraint (perhaps partly a result of his documented drug use) – being an authoritarian leader is almost always a lonely job.

No one knows that better than Trump, who has a long track record of vicious breakups with longtime associates, such as his former lawyer, Michael Cohen and his former communications director, Anthony Scaramucci.

Likewise, Russian President Vladimir Putin has embraced and cast aside a long train of influential oligarchs during his decades in power. Putin owes his political ascent to Boris Berezovsky, the most prominent Russian oligarch in the first decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse and an adviser to Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin. Berezovsky expected the sullen if energetic apparatchik to be his puppet – a useful protector of Yeltsin’s legacy and allies.

Berezovsky failed to appreciate that, once Putin became master of the Kremlin, he would hold all the cards. So, the former mid-level KGB officer became president and seized all the levers of Russia’s formidable state apparatus, while the oligarch went from kingmaker to pariah, before dying in exile at his home just outside London in 2013, in what was officially ruled a suicide.

Berezovsky was hardly alone. The oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky lost his company and spent a decade in prison for having the gall to challenge Putin. The media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky was also banished from the Kremlin after a stint as a close Putin ally, though he still walks the streets of Moscow.

And it is not just oligarchs. Yevgeny Prigozhin was a convicted criminal before emerging as one of Putin’s most trusted allies. His contributions included running a troll farm to spread Russian propaganda abroad and founding the infamous private military company Wagner, responsible for fighting some of Russia’s most important – and bloodiest – battles, including in Ukraine.

But Prigozhin grew arrogant, publicly criticizing Russia’s strategy in the Ukraine War. When his advice was ignored, he led his Wagner Group mercenaries on a mutinous march toward the Kremlin, though he called off the insurrection long before they reached Moscow. Two months later, he died in an “accidental” plane crash.

All this comes straight from the playbook of the quintessential lonely authoritarian, Josef Stalin, who systematically eliminated his close associates, accusing many of counter-revolutionary activities. His successor, my great-grandfather Nikita Khrushchev, replaced Stalin’s cult of personality – which could brook no dissent – with “collective government,” in which some opposition was heard, though he still had the last word. But when Leonid Brezhnev wrested power from Khrushchev in 1964, he quickly undermined the colleagues who had helped him get there.

Turkey offers further evidence of the perils of cozying up to authoritarians. During Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s years as prime minister, Fethullah Gülen – one of the country’s most prominent religious leaders, who presided over a sprawling network of media organizations, banking institutions, and Islamist schools – was among his closest partners in the quest to impose “political Islam” on secular Turkey.

By the time Erdoğan became president in 2014, however, he was actively working to rein in Gülen’s influence, which he viewed as a threat to his authority. When a group of disaffected military officers staged a failed coup in 2016, Erdoğan was quick to point the finger at Gülen, who by then was living in self-imposed exile in the US. When Gülen died last year, Erdoğan called him a “demon in human form.”

Musk probably will not end up in prison or die under suspicious circumstances. But his companies will almost certainly lose favor with the US government. And if some of Trump’s more rabid supporters, such as Steve Bannon, have their way, he may face the threat of deportation to his home country of South Africa. Above all, Trump needs to send a message: nobody – not even the world’s richest person – can challenge him without paying a heavy price.

But others will try, or he will fear that they will. Sooner or later, Trump will need to issue another reminder of who’s in charge. The only question is who will be next.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025. www.project-syndicate.org

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