Trump and Musk’s bromance dramatically fell apart in a public online feud this week. Illustration by Getty Images/Mira Fox
By Mira Fox
June 6, 2025
Only a few months ago, Elon Musk posted that he loved Donald Trump “as much as a straight man can love another man.” Trump, for his part, performed a PR stunt outside the White House in one of Musk’s Teslas, exclaiming “everything is computer!” But this week, after Trump announced cuts to the electric vehicle tax credit, the bromance came crashing down, with each powerful man slamming the other. The death blow, at least according to Musk, who called it a “really big bomb,” was a post claiming that Trump is in Jeffrey Epstein’s files. “That’s the real reason they have not been made public,” he said in a post.
Supporters immediately took sides. And — as in nearly every other time in history — people lobbed antisemitic conspiracies back and forth. Trump supporters accused Elon of being in Israel’s pocket. Musk’s fans alleged that Trump was controlled by Mossad. Even users who hate both men took the viral moment as an opportunity to connect both men to a shadowy Jewish or Zionist cabal.
“Need Elon to expose how much dirt these Zionist rats have on the politicians,” tweeted one user, excited by Musk’s big reveal.
“Hey Elon, did the Zionist Jews give you the order to attack Trump?” said someone else, who seemed to view Musk’s battle with the president as evidence of foreign loyalties.
“I’m not pro-MAGA, I’m a massive skeptic of Trump. I just see that the Dems and Reps are two sides of the same coin, as they’re all bought by the same coin,” wrote another user, invoking Zionists. “I want a new American party, one that stands against the current paymasters of the country.”
There is, of course, legitimate criticism of U.S. policies on Israel. But little clear political ideology guides these accusations besides hatred for the opponent. Jews, in this instance, were not being blamed for a specific social ill so much as for a specific person’s very existence.
The resulting fractured discourse, in which people previously united by their support for the MAGA movement turned against each other, highlights a new political reality in the U.S. In a sort of “pick your fighter” video game approach to the world, the political landscape is nearly impossible to map onto the traditional understanding of a right-to-left spectrum. Instead, it’s defined by a belief in a deep corruption throughout the government, and a rabid opposition to anyone perceived to have fallen to that corruption.
Conspiracies about powerful Jewish or Zionist cabals, in this schema, act more as a weapon against political enemies than as an expression of Jew-hatred. (Though, of course, without antisemitic beliefs, accusations that someone is controlled by Jews would have no weight.)
This phenomenon of breaking away from the U.S.’s traditional two-party system is perhaps best exemplified by Jackson Hinkle, an extremist influencer and political commentator. Hinkle has described himself as a “American Conservative Marxist–Leninist” and a “MAGA communist,” though his support for Trump has both waxed and waned over time and he also campaigned for Bernie Sanders. He has reliably criticized Israel — including spreading constant misinformation about events in the war — and blamed global problems on George Soros, invoking the antisemitic dog whistle of “globalist” control. He also voiced strong support for Russia in the war in Ukraine. His ideology is tough to discern beyond his steadfast antisemitism.
In the wake of the Trump-Musk breakdown, Hinkle tweeted: “Epstein introduced Trump to Melania…” followed by emojis of the Israeli flag. In the replies, excited commenters allege the first lady is an Israeli plant, that Epstein was a Mossad agent and that Jews attempted to corrupt Trump through his wife.
This accusation, of course, makes little sense. But making sense has never been an important part of antisemitic conspiracies. Instead, their power lies in their ability to convey a sense of powerful corruption, symbolized by, of course, the all-powerful Jewish cabal.
To be clear, it’s not just Republicans; liberals are also deeply disillusioned with Democratic leaders. And they, too, lob accusations of Zionist control at politicians like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi or even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Indeed, when Schumer tried to join in on the online fun, dunking on Trump and Musk, users were quick to tell him he was just as corrupt.
Being under the thumb of a shadowy Jewish cabal is now, as it has been throughout history, a catchall accusation, easy to deploy against anyone — even the guy who did a Nazi salute on stage. The fact that it’s now being deployed against everyone, simultaneously, just shows the nation’s political breakdown. Everyone is the enemy; there’s no real unity behind anyone, any ideology and certainly not any political party.
But if everyone is supposedly controlled by Jews, maybe everyone will finaly realize that, actually, no one is.
