The Guardian view on the Trump-Musk feud: we can’t rely on outsized egos to end oligopoly

The row makes headlines in the New York Post. ‘While the bond between the peak of power and the peak of wealth has been severed, politics remains in thrall to money.’ Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

It would have taken a heart of stone to watch the death of the Trump-Musk bromance without laughing. Democrats passed the popcorn on Thursday night as the alliance between the world’s most powerful man and the world’s richest imploded via posts on their respective social media platforms.

Less than a week ago they attempted a conscious uncoupling in the Oval Office. Then Elon Musk’s attacks on Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax and spending plan escalated to full-scale denunciation of a “disgusting abomination” – objecting to its effect on the deficit, not the fact it snatches essential support from the poor and hands $1.1tn in tax cuts to the rich.