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I keep on hearing about Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s failed “bromance”. Or is it their on-and-off again one? At the time of writing, Trump — having previously called Musk “crazy” — had gone back to calling him a “friend”, after the world’s richest man expressed “regret” over some of the rather uncomplimentary things he had posted, and then deleted, about the US president on social media.
But to imagine that the two men have some kind of bro-to-bro connection is to misunderstand their dynamic. And before you say it, it’s not simply a “relationship of convenience”, either, although certainly each of them has benefited from the alliance — Musk by becoming even richer, and Trump by getting back into the White House (not solely thanks to Musk, but surely helped by him).
No, this is a true love connection. When Musk posted on X in February that “I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man”, that was genuine. But this is not the sort of love that exists in friendships defined by camaraderie or shared pursuits. Indeed, it is not really a friendship at all but a more complex and primal bond: Trump as the daddy, and Musk the eternal boy-child.
I have observed the way Trump indulges Musk for some time now, showing no sense of being bothered as the younger man balances forks at dinners or turns up to cabinet meetings wearing two caps. But the idea became crystallised during a conversation I had recently with the artist Ian Bruce during his “We need to talk about Elon” project, a week-long live-stream in which he painted three portraits of the SpaceX founder while speaking to various people, including Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis, about him. The first portrait showed Musk’s father Errol standing over him with his hands on his shoulders; in the second, Musk Senior had been replaced by Trump.
“According to his biographer Walter Isaacson, his father is responsible for a lot of his early trauma — he sided with a bully who had beaten him up and told him he was worthless,” Bruce tells me (Errol has denied this). “I got the sense that Musk was seeking a new father figure . . . so he turned to Trump as a sort of replacement daddy.”
For his part, Errol has brushed off the row, saying the powerful pair will make up soon. When a journalist pointed out that Trump had said the relationship was “over”, Musk Senior responded: “That’s what people say. Have you ever heard a man and a wife arguing?” It might be a strange analogy to make about Musk and Trump. But then one wouldn’t expect Musk Senior to have much of a grip of what a paternal relationship looks like: after his harsh treatment of the young Elon, he went on to father two children with his own stepdaughter, more than 40 years his junior, who he had parented since she was four.
So Musk has good reason to look elsewhere for a father figure. And indeed, being raised by an emotionally distant, controlling father is something that he and Trump have in common. This appears to have created a subconscious bond between them, driving them to live their lives as if they always have something to prove.
But while the 79-year-old Trump might have once found his own surrogate father in the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, it is clear which role he is taking in his relationship with Musk. “Trump just goes into this high achieving father at the school open day mode,” Judi James, a body language expert, tells me of the time Trump joined Musk at his rocket launch last year. “He’s got his chin raised, eyes narrowed — you know, like ‘impress me, son’, and Musk is skipping around him excitedly, showing him everything.”
One can see this dynamic playing out often when the pair are together, such as when the Tesla chief executive proudly showed the president the new Model S at the White House earlier this year. “Everything’s computer! That’s beautiful, wow!” Trump gushed.
And while Trump is usually all too happy to act the fool, he often becomes more serious around Musk. “It’s as if somebody’s got to be the child in the room,” says James, who points out that Trump is often buffoonish around his towering 19-year-old son Barron. “When Musk is in the room, Trump has to move into a position of maturity.”
It was Trump the disappointed father, and not the spurned lover or rejected friend, who said sadly a week ago, “I’m not even thinking about Elon”. And it was Musk the grovelling son who said he had gone “too far” in his criticism of the president. This was no bromance, nor even a “showmance”. “Woemance” gets closer to it.