Tech journalist Kara Swisher said the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump that dramatically ramped up Thursday could result in “mutually assured destruction.”
Swisher, who warned earlier this week that Musk’s bashing of the Republican tax bill that Trump supports could get “worse and worse,” told CNN that the two heavyweights have the means to do considerable harm to each other.
“If you think Trump can be petty, Elon Musk can be petty, and I think in a way that‘s really probably dangerous in many ways and could do all manner of things to hurt Trump,” she explained.
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At the same time, Trump can go after Musk in “all manner of ways: through the Justice Department, through investigations, impugning him,” Swisher said, predicting that Trump would attack Musk over his drug use.
“So we‘ll see if they‘ll continue, if they‘ll realize this is not just mutually assured destruction. It will hurt both of them really badly.”
If Trump were to revoke Musk’s Starlink contracts, for instance, the federal government would also lose out, Swisher said.
“There‘s a lot of stuff that Musk does, especially in space, that is critically important at this moment and sort of speaks to the issue as we don‘t have enough competition, right? That the government needs a lot of ability to not just rely on one person,” she said.
“But there‘s a lot of damage Donald Trump can do to Elon Musk. At the same time, vice versa,” she went on. “And this guy, he goes hard. Let‘s just say he goes hard.”
After Trump threatened to cancel his government contracts, Musk responded by saying that SpaceX would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft, which the government uses for travel to and from the International Space Station.
Besides Musk’s government contracts, Swisher noted that he too has a big social media platform which he owns—and “a lot of money,” despite losing a chunk of his net worth Thursday after Tesla’s stock price fell.
