Billion dollar babies: Trump-Musk spat

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When you're a forward thinker, you don't just bring your A-game, you bring your AI game. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people, money and agents so you can transform tomorrow. Workday. Moving business forever forward. Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Bloor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Our editor-in-chief interviews Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister.

to find out how hardliners like him are influencing the conflict. And there was once a lot of rhyme in poetry, but the modernists thought that verse lacked artistry. So the rhyme declined and the poet opined, using long words that were clever but lacked gaiety.

First up though. Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore. I was surprised because... I think we were all wondering when this was going to happen. Since Donald Trump's second term began, Elon Musk has been by his side. Now that bromance is well and truly over. But aside from some hissy fits, what happens when the world's richest man falls out with its most powerful? Right from the beginning of this improbable relationship...

I think we'd been waiting for the day when it turned sour. And my God, did it happen this week. Ed Carr is The Economist deputy editor. I mean, it started with Musk casting doubts over the big, beautiful bill that's going through Congress. And then he upped that on Tuesday, calling it a disgusting abomination, which is rather a great term. And then Trump in the Oval Office, when...

he was meeting with the German Chancellor, Friedrich Metz, took the opportunity, as he does, to start to hit back. And where this goes now is clearly just in terms of the... kind of prurience of it. Fascinating. But it's also quite important, I think. So, Ed, as you say, we've all been riveted by this relationship. How is it unfolding, this feud?

Well, it unfolded in typical fashion, as is the way with Trump, live at a meeting in the Oval Office. He's worn the hat. Trump was right about everything. And I am right about... The great, big, beautiful bill. Again, biggest tax cuts in history, biggest economic development moves anywhere. When he started to level some critiques against Musk. But I'm very disappointed because...

Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. Better than you people. He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden, he had a problem. He then went to talk about what he thought was Musk's motive for this. And he only developed the problem when he found out that we're going to have to cut the EV mandate because that's billions and billions of dollars. Something that Musk, by the way...

denies. And he also added a typical Trump flourish by sort of talking about their relationship, reflecting on it, trying to appear to rise above it when we all know that inside he was seething. I'll tell you, he's not the first. People leave my administration and they love us. And then at some point they miss it so badly. And some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile.

I don't know what it is. It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it. So while Trump was talking live in the Oval Office, Musk was, of course, live on X, which is kind of appropriate. And he said, without me... Trump would have lost the election. Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. And he talked about Trump's criticism as such ingratitude. And he accused...

Trump of lying about this story that he'd known all about the tax bill. And it just... kind of went on from there. To the point where the mother of one of Musk's children, who's estranged from him, Ashley St. Clair, she chimed in on X and said to Donald Trump, let me know if you want any breakup advice.

So as you say, we've been waiting for this, Ed. Why has it happened now? I think there've been growing tensions within the Trump White House. And we know, for instance, that there'd been... Virtually a stand-up fight between Elon Musk and the Treasury Secretary Scott Besant. Steve Bannon, who's not in the administration but still an important figure in the MAGA movement, has made no secret of the fact that he detests... Elon Musk and thinks he's leading the whole thing astray.

As part of his work with Doge, there was a limited time that he was supposed to be involved in government. And that was conveniently, I think, for Musk's enemies within the administration coming to an end. So kind of all of those things. came together. And it's very clear, isn't it, that the administration tried to engineer a dignified exit with a ceremony in the Oval Office and the presentation of a golden key. And Trump was...

a brief to prepare for questions about Musk's drug taking that had surfaced in the New York Times. So all of that was supposed to let this thing down gently. But as we know, it didn't happen that way.

So aside from the big public spat, what does this actually mean for Musk in practical terms? Well, the first thing is that his business has been affected and we saw that Tesla's share prices are down by, I think, 14%. It's lost almost $35 billion just yesterday alone. The federal government is an important contractor for Musk companies. They have something, I think, well over $20 billion of contracts from the federal government just for SpaceX and Tesla. So there is potentially...

a big business consequence. But there's more than that because Musk's enemies, Steve Bannon in particular, have started calling on further actions to be taken. He suggested mischievously. but only half mischievously, that they should begin to look at Musk's immigration status, at these allegations of...

drug taking, and Bannon's also suggested that Musk loses his security clearance, all of which would be very bad news indeed. So there's quite a lot that the administration could do if it was really bent on revenge. And probably more importantly, what does it mean for Trump and his administration? Well, that's really interesting, isn't it? Musk has already called for Trump's impeachment.

He has questioned whether Trump won on his own merits or rather on the coattails of Elon Musk. He suggested a creation of a new party. He's accused Trump of lying and he's dropped out the suggestion that Trump's name is contained in the... documents on Jeffrey Epstein who was a sex offender who killed himself in prison and of course because Musk has an awful lot of money and has a social media network he can both

Either withhold money from Republican politicians, give them bad publicity or good publicity on X, or even start funding other parties. So he does have quite significant levers, I think. And Ed, do you think this is a distraction from what's happening in the administration? Or is it just another illustration of how fickle Trump can be, both on policy and personality? It's interesting, the reports are that actually Trump...

remained reasonably positive about Musk long after the people around him. And I think he wanted to avoid this. But I think it goes to something really interesting about this administration, which is the ability to knit together the MAGA coalition and the tech coalition. And that was a very powerful combination. So for me, one of the things I'm interested in watching is how MAGA and tech...

deal with this falling out, not just how Trump responds. It's obviously a question about whether Trump's sort of injured pride will mean he can restrain himself or whether he's going to go full out vengeance, which should be...

quite a thing. But they say beneath that, there are these two factions and constituencies that have never been terribly comfortable and have been unified through the figure of the president. And, you know, Rosie, one thing that really struck me is our cover this week is on the... preference for girls. It's about how parents in rich countries...

as a small signal at the moment, are beginning to show that they'd rather have daughters than sons. And it really struck me this week when I was thinking about this spat. These two little boys fighting together over their toys that they're really quite childish. Thank you so much, Ed. Great to have you with us. Thank you, Rezi. And if you want to hear more about what happens in the seat of power, and let's face it, who doesn't?

Tomorrow's episode of The Weekend Intelligence visits Washington, D.C. in a different guise. A colleague who grew up there returns to his childhood haunts and finds that a city that has always flexed when a new administration arrives... may now finally be straining under the pace and weight of Trump's transformation.

For the past 20 months, Israel has waged a war in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led October 7th attack. While the conflict has raged, killing tens of thousands of people in the territory, Another fight is going on within Israel for power. Israel's hard right is using the war to further its political influence and wants to keep pushing on into Gaza. Against such a backdrop, how will the next stage of this conflict play out?

I think in the very short term, it is possible that a ceasefire deal, a truce could be negotiated in the next few days or weeks. There's clearly a lot of pressure to do some kind of a hostage deal.

Zannie Minton-Bedos is our editor-in-chief and has spent the last week in Israel with Anshul Pfeffer, our Jerusalem correspondent. Most depressingly, I think there is still very little sense of what... a final quote-unquote defeat of Hamas looks like and never mind what happens thereafter and so the question of when the war

can and will end i don't know i mean i left as troubled as i was when i arrived but certainly the view inside israel of what is going on as so often is fundamentally different to that in the rest of the world

So who did you speak to on your travels in Israel? So we spoke to a number of people in the government and around the government. But the main reason for me coming here is that I wanted to talk to as many people as I could on the religious right. the religious Zionist part of Israeli society, because I've felt for a long time that I really need to try and understand. this section of the society. And the key figure that we talked to there was Bezalov Smotrich, who...

If you remember, Rosie, this is a man who has long been on the fringes of Israeli politics, an absolute extremist ideologue who Prime Minister Netanyahu brought into his coalition as finance minister. Smocic has this extraordinary... power in this coalition because he is needed essentially to sustain the government.

Benjamin Netanyahu brought him into the government because he needed him as part of the coalition. So he went from being outside on the fringes of politics into the centre of power as finance minister. In that, he's got... practically some very important roles. He's got this sort of secondary role where he essentially oversees what's going on in the West Bank. And of course, one of his key parts of his messianic agenda is settlements in the West Bank. And so he's got a direct mean.

to affect that. But the other is that his threat of leaving the coalition is a constant threat to Mr Netanyahu of toppling the government effectively. And so he's been able throughout this war. to make incendiary statements, to say a lot of the more extreme things. And he's still been at the heart of government. First of all, thank you so much for making the time to see us.

Thank you for coming. I think one of the main things that we need to remember about Smotred is not just that he is a representative of this very far-right or messianist.

but that we're also in a unique period in Israeli politics where there is a prime minister who is prepared because of the way in which the military is trying to... basically survive as Israel's leader under so much pressure, even before the war, the legal pressure, the court case that he's fighting, that he's been willing to parcel off so many large chunks. of power and control of key policies to small parties who are keeping him in power, which makes Patel's not just who he is a man.

as Ali said, with very far-right, very radical views, and doesn't represent more than three or four percent of Israeli society, we're seeing that in the polls, makes him much more powerful, the kind of power that usually a very center of mainstream politicians... would have not. Someone who is so much on the fringe of Israeli society. And how is that affecting how this war is being fought? When you speak to someone like Smartrich, he doesn't deny the fact that...

Over 50,000 people have been killed in Gaza. He says, Hamas attacked Israel. Hamas operates from within the urban civilian areas. And he says, hides behind civilians. And therefore... Israel's only acting gently with tweezers. And when civilians get killed, he says that's regrettable, but it has to be laid at Hamas' feet. It's their responsibility. And what was striking upon meeting him? was one what a kind of mild-mannered person he is. We had a long, more than two-hour conversation. And he...

He gave very little sign that he was about to leave the government. In fact, when I asked him about the threats he'd made to leave, if there was a ceasefire, he sort of said, no, no, he had always said he would leave the government if the war was ended without the defeat of Hamas. and that he could live with a truce or a ceasefire, provided that the war was not ended until Hamas was defeated. One of the most important questions about this war, and he's touched upon, is...

How does it end? When will Israelis feel that they've beaten Hamas? And that is not so much a military question. That's a question that has got a lot to do with political perception and... What are the aspirations? If your aspirations are, as Mateo's smart wishes are, that Israel should never leave Gaza ever again. And his formative experience as a young man was Israel's withdrawal.

from Gaza this summer 20 years ago, back in 2005. And he was arrested at the time under various suspicions. He was never charged, but he was very active in the hard call of the far right trying to prevent Israel's pullback from Gaza. in 2005. For him, the only possible victory for Israel is a perpetual return of Israel to Gaza, the occupation.

eventual annexation, rebuilding Israeli settlements there. And that's much, much bigger than just a military victory over Hamas. Israel's already achieved a military victory over Hamas. But from Smotri's perspective, it hasn't been beaten yet. because Israel hasn't re-established itself as the perpetual occupier of Gaza.

So he's kind of interestingly, on the one hand, mild-mannered, and it seems tactically quite astute in his decisions about whether to stay in the government or not, and yet uncompromising and ideological in his overall view of where Israel should go. Last week, we heard on the show about the extraordinary situation in Gaza now where Israel is seizing control of aid delivery. Where do you see that new effort fitting into Israel's goals?

positive about their new and very controversial aid distribution system. Smotrich called it a game changer. And remember, this, Rosie, is the distribution system that is hugely criticised. It is seen by many outside Gaza as being a form of ethnic cleansing because all of these distribution centres are in one place and people are being sort of pushed to go to these distributions.

But the Israeli government sees it as a way of breaking what they see as Hamas's control over the aid distribution system. And Smotrich, he said, we've defeated them militarily. We've now got to take on this way that they are getting power within the system. Well, for someone like Smotrich and other like-minded Israelis, this is part of a military program. This is not how are we going to feed Gaza. This is how do we...

better control Gaza. And one of the ways of controlling Gaza is controlling the flow of aid. And most of the Israeli intelligence officials I speak to say they do think it's important for Israel to be fighting also. the economic aspects of Hamas's control over Gaza. But they don't think that this is the game changer or this will be what will... finally achieve total victory. It's another aspect of the various ways in which Israel fights.

So obviously, this is all set against the backdrop of Netanyahu trying to stay in power. Do you think he can last in this environment? Well, Netanyahu is facing a number of challenges now to his government. There's obviously, if he does accept the ceasefire, and he is under major pressure from the Trump administration to accept one, then he has to convince.

Smotrich and his other far-right allies, that this is just the temporary ceasefire, and after 60 days, that's the time frame being mentioned now, Israel will return to fighting with all the ferocity that's at the IDF's disposal. there's another issue that the ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition have been demanding for two and a half years now, a law that will regulate the exemption of students from religious seminaries from military service. And for them, this is the cardinal issue.

And shoot, Netanyahu has been able to fob them off since the government was formed. And certainly when the war began, it was easier for him to do that. They've decided that enough is enough, that students are being arrested because they're refusing to join up to the army. And because of the war, Netanyahu can't really afford to anger the rest of the Israeli public by allowing...

these young Gold Orthodox men not to be in the army. And we're at this point, by the end of this week, that the senior rabbis of the Orthodox parties are saying, we're going to vote to dissolve the Knesset if a law isn't brought. And it does seem to be the biggest crisis that Netanyahu has faced in this government. So it's certainly a political crisis, a coalition crisis since this government was formed at the end of 22.

The last time I was in Israel was a year ago. And at some level, it just seems incredibly depressing that just a year later, this ghastly war is continuing. Far more people have been killed and nothing seems to have changed. And yet I left Israel this week thinking... that quite a lot of change may be coming reasonably soon. First of all...

for the reasons that Anshul has laid out, the government may actually fall. There is going to have to be election at some point in the next year and a bit, and it may be sooner rather than later. Secondly, I think there is a very strong possibility that another... hostage deal and 60 days ceasefire is agreed. And thirdly, for good or ill, this aid distribution approach has changed.

the dynamic of what's going on. So all of those things are, I think, a change. But in the long term, unfortunately, I just don't see any strategic agreement within Israel about what the future direction is. Danny, Anshul, thank you so much. Thank you, Rosie. Thank you for having us, Rosie.

When you're a forward thinker, you don't just bring your A game, you bring your AI game. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people, money and agents so you can transform tomorrow. Workday. Moving business forever forward. A crucial pitch. A room full of decision makers. You deliver with confidence. You've won them over.

At Bayes Business School in London, we prepare you for these moments. Our programs combine cutting-edge insights with hands-on industry experience. With career management skills embedded within all our programs, you'll gain the knowledge and network to succeed. Search Bayes Business School. That's B-A-Y-E-S.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date. Poetry was simply writing that fails to reach the end of the line. For W.H. Auden, poetry was that which makes nothing happen. Catherine Nixie is a culture correspondent. Arnold Bennett disagreed.

He thought poetry was very powerful. He said the mere word poetry could disperse a crowd quicker than a fire hose. It's notable that rhyme is in none of these definitions of what poetry is. P.G. Woodhouse once divided poetry into old-fashioned kind with rhymes in it and the modern stuff about gasworks and decaying corpses.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? My colleagues in the data team at The Economist have analysed 10,000 poems in English. and they've found English poetry is now firmly in the Gasworks and Corpses era. Since 1900, the percentage of poems that rhyme has fallen from over 60% to under 5%, with the steepest fall in the post-war period.

In the 20th century, rhyme became, as Wendy Cope, a poet who does use it, says, pretty unfashionable. And a look at poetry's most prestigious prizes suggests that it still is. The contenders for this year's Griffin Poetry Prize have produced poems with titles like Unregulated Waste Management Facility. Meanwhile, T.S. Eliot Prize winners offer poems with titles like The Body a Cemetery.

All of these poems are rich in words like penumbra and in unexpected italics. They are not rich in capital letters at the start of sentences, or jokes, or, of course, rhymes. Hear the words I sing. War's a horrid thing. But I still sing, sing, sing. Ding-a-ling-a-ling.

who influentially decided to lose the Rhymes for Paradise Lost, inflicted an early blow. But the real culprit was the modernists. It was them who killed Rhyme off. By the start of the 19th century, around half the British population was literate. By the start of the 20th, 97% was. This was wonderful for egalitarianism. It was not good for intellectual egos, since poetry doesn't merely confer pleasure, but status.

In an era of low literacy, the mere ability to read a poem set someone apart. But as the era of mass literacy dawned, another marker of intellect was needed. Modernism became that marker. In this time, all forms of art became more abstruse, more complex, more difficult to understand, and arguably quite a lot less fun. Because any fool can enjoy an enjoyable thing, but only a really committed intellectual.

can enjoy an unenjoyable one. Consider the epigraph of T.S. Eliot's modernist masterpiece, The Wasteland. It begins, forbiddenly enough, in Latin, then ends in ancient Greek with the words... I want to die. Elliot can make everyone feel a bit like that.

On the chest of a barmaid in Sale are tattooed all the prices of ale. And on her behind, for the sake of the blind, is the same list of prices in Braille. Another possible cause of the decline in rhyme is market forces. or their absence. Once upon a time, poets made money by selling actual poems. Lord Byron's The Corsair shifted 10,000 copies in a single day. Customers wanted rhymes, so poets provided them.

But in the 20th century, it became possible, as Philip Larkin pointed out, to make a living less by actual poems than simply by being a poet, peddling poetry in universities and literary festivals. Today, the poetry that does sell is produced by a new generation of social media poets such as Donna Ashworth. If every single person who has liked you in your lifetime were to light up on a map... it would create the most glitteringly beautiful picture you could imagine.

Instapoetsverse is not the gasworks and cemetery kind. On the contrary, it's designed to be shared online, so it is anodyne and often accompanied by lovely line drawings of birds. Miss Ashworth refers to write about nice things. She celebrates your inner voice, your inner child, and your inner light, which may make some readers feel in touch with their inner breakfast.

She also warns readers not to listen to their inner critic, although given some of her reviews, Miss Ashworth may prefer not to listen to outer critics either. But she also reveres hope. Put hope, she says, beside your car keys. lest you lose it. Naturally, such poems do not rhyme. Rhyme has, alas, been almost entirely lost from English. Perhaps no one remembered to put it beside the car keys.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. The show's editors are Chris Impey and Jack Gill. Our deputy editor is John Joe Devlin, and our sound designer is Will Rowe. Our senior producers are Rory Galloway, Sarah Larniuk and Alizé Jean-Baptiste. Our senior creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Henrietta McFarlane, Benji Guy and Jonathan Day.

with extra production help this week from Emily Elias, Eleanor Sly and Lizzie Peet. We'll all see you back here for the Weekend Intelligence tomorrow. When you're a forward thinker, you don't just bring your A game, you bring your AI game. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people, money and agents so you can transform tomorrow. Workday.

Moving business forever forward. A crucial pitch. A room full of decision makers. You deliver with confidence. You've won them over. At Bayes Business School in London, we prepare you for these moments. Our programs combine cutting-edge insights with hands-on industry experience. With career management skills embedded within all our programs, you'll gain the knowledge and network to succeed. Search Bayes Business School. That's B-A-Y-E-S.