California, Trump and Musk: Does the deepening rift shift alliances? | Opinion
California’s love-hate relationship with Elon Musk has hit a fork in the road, right along with his fast-collapsing bromance with President Donald Trump: Will the Republicans who have loved him and the Democrats who have loathed him make room for a change of heart?
Maybe.
This is either quite complicated, or not at all. And this split, yet again, is likely going to follow party lines. (But don’t look for a surge in California’s Tesla sales any time soon.)
California Democrats and Musk
Musk’s dramatic fallout with Trump appears to be inspired in large part by the president’s desire to decrease taxes (mostly for the wealthy) and fail to pay for it with commensurate spending cuts, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that has passed the House of Representatives.
Musk has called it a “disgusting abomination.” Trump, in retaliation, is threatening to sell his personal Tesla.
Suddenly, California liberals appear to have an ally in fiscal policy and clean energy policy. Is there room in their left-leaning sensibilities for situational alliances with Elon?
Don’t hold your breath.
“I don’t think there’s going to be any Democratic turnaround in sentiment about Musk,” said David Metz, a longtime California pollster who is president of Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates. The hatred just runs too deep.
“He was never beloved on the left, but in the last year his polling numbers have completely bottomed out with Dems — in some polls, he’s less popular than Trump with them — and it’s not just based on policy,” Metz said in a recent email. “He has done and said things that suggest some racism, sexism, casual disregard for human life, disrespect for people who are struggling financially and just plain old off-the-charts weirdness.”
Look for California’s left to observe the devolution of the Trump-Musk alliance with nothing but detached disregard.
California Republicans and Musk
Now here’s a pick between two favorites that some Californians are not going to like.
In November, Musk was nearly as popular as Trump among the president’s supporters. The duo was a historic juggernaut, the world’s richest man and the most-powerful elected official. What possibly could go wrong?
It was, apparently, too big and beautiful to last.
Musk “is going to be hard for Republicans to abandon,” Metz said. “There’s little upside to Trump and Musk (criticizing) one another and I think that’s why you’re seeing such frantic efforts from their teams to cool things off. I think most MAGA voters don’t want to be forced to choose, and will welcome any chance to overlook this spat and focus on the cultural issues that still unite Trump and Musk.”
If forced to choose, Republicans appear to be likely to stick with their president rather than their rocket man. But when a presidential administration’s most famous cost-cutter (Musk) takes aim at the White House, the fallout on the Republican side of the aisle is bound to be more complicated.
This isn’t funny
Given how Musk at the moment has the only rockets that can get Americans into space, the globe’s largest satellite constellation and one of the world’s largest social media platforms, his tantrum-like exchanges with an equally petulant president are not funny.
This situation is downright dangerous. It is also a uniquely American embarrassment that the rest of the world, no doubt, is watching with disgust. We in California will take our predictable sides. Though, by this point, we must all surely recognize that deeply entrenched, immutable views are part of the problem.
This story was originally published June 6, 2025 at 1:13 PM with the headline "California, Trump and Musk: Does the deepening rift shift alliances? | Opinion."