The Trump v. Musk Feud Is Really About Big, Beautiful Balls

Anything interesting happen this week?

As even the very-not-online know by now, President Donald Trump and Wealthy Nuisance Elon Musk got into it on Thursday. In a volley of social media posts over the course of an afternoon, the two demonstrated that they have, like Taylor Swift and Blake Lively, halted their friendship. Of course, unlike Swift and Lively, neither of these boys seem to have run any of their public messages by any of their legal representatives before blasting them out into the world. So, we got Elon admitting to having bought the Republican Party its wins in the last election, and then accusing Donald of being in the Epstein Files. We got Donald threatening to cancel all of SpaceX’s federal contracts, and then divulging the really dishy details of a conversation he had about Elon with Heather Locklear, who he could tell was pretty into him.

That last part is not technically true but it is tonally accurate. It actually could still happen at any minute, so you should park yourself on the home page of either The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, both of which still have live coverage of this social media breakup spat, updating in real time.

It was like a particularly testy exchange on a Vanderpump Rules reunion episode, except the whole problem with both of these guys is that they’ve never worked a service industry job. It was, as many pointed out, Kendrick vs. Drake for Republicans, except, as I pointed out, they are both Bubba Sparxxx. (Apologies to Bubba Sparxxx.) It was an embarrassing but occasionally pleasurable distraction, as long as you didn’t think too hard about the fact that one of them could nuke Portland just to get it out of the headlines, and the other could do something much worse, which is publish your search history.

There are those who believe this was all a psyop, a shiny sparkly thing designed to distract from the legitimately terrifying stuff within the Big Beautiful Bill, or this Palantir business, or any of the hundred other active governmental grease fires that are currently blazing. I disagree. I think Steve Bannon may have the brainpower to think through the strategic implications of “flooding the zone with shit,” but he’s not a close adviser anymore. I think flooding the zone just turned out to be a natural fit for one of Trump and Musk's shared interests: literally constantly pissing and shitting. I don’t think they are lashing out as a willful distraction, I think Trump is lashing out because he can’t help himself and Musk is lashing out because he needs our attention and because he doesn’t have the good sense to put that ketamine energy onto a dance floor where it belongs.

Sometimes a cigar is a dick and sometimes it’s just a cigar. This, I think, is just exactly what it looks like: two grown men being dicks.

Speaking of which: the spat also brought out the absolute dumbest in some of the absolute dumbest people in the manosphere, which is the absolute dumbest place in the universe, so let’s do our duty as Americans and laugh at them.

Joey Mannarino is a political commentator, or so says his bio on X, which also says he used to work in R&B radio. It appears that early and prolonged exposure to Jodeci and Dru Hill has taught this man nothing. In the Mannarinosphere, having a big emotional breakup shouting match is what masculinity look like. It is not a lack of impulse control; it is not a pampered lifetime spent perpetually having the upper hand because of your father’s wealth; it is not cognitive impairment. It is testicles. It is because of the size and quality of these men’s testicles that we have to hear them fight. This post raises and immediately answers the questions “what was Joey Mannarino’s home life like” and “why is he like this?”

And it wasn’t even the weirdest take.

Jack Probiotics is one of these guys who keeps turning up on those third-tier conservative news channels and Turning Point USA conventions, one of these dudes who you’re never quite sure what he does or how he earns a living at it, yet he reliably pops up with the worst opinion you’ve ever heard. Jack Prilosec does not disappoint here. We are not watching two children have separate tantrums, he says. We are watching men be men, because men be like this, and women be like that. This is a nuanced and carefully considered take on the situation from Jack Posdnuos, who got his master’s degree in gender studies from the University of Catching A Couple Episodes Of Whatever That Last Tim Allen Sitcom Was.

The easy thing would be to speculate on how badly both of these guys need to, you know, watch 2 males going at it. It’s too easy, in fact, but you can’t help but notice how much time guys like this spend thinking about guys, and guys’ genitals. I don’t actually think either of these guys is gay and conflicted about it, largely because if they were, they’d be interesting. But I will say this: as a practical matter, for both of these guys, active homosexuality would be a real time-saver.

Obviously, Jack Protoplasm’s tweet got shared far and wide, because it was truly demented. His next move was pretty predictable.

There is a lot of this going around. “I voted against my own financial interests; deal with it.” “I'm dismantling my own safety net- jealous?” Let me say this from the bottom of my testicles: NOBODY IS MAD. We are laughing at you. We are laughing at you because you are being ridiculous, and also because we cannot laugh with you, because you cannot laugh, because you are afraid laughing is for women (gynocentric).

The real problem is that both of these guys have a hustle to attend to. Mannarino has a podcast or something; Posobiec’s Instagram bio links to an online supplement store that features a $600 tub of Ivermectin (use the code NOSHAME for 10% off your first order). They need attention, and there is no longer any meaningful distinction between good and bad attention. There is only engagement. There is only eyeball. Eyeball makes number big, and big number gets people to your podcast or your speaking engagement or your 30-day supply of branded horse dewormer.

These guys are no longer incentivized not to say the worst and dumbest thing they can think of. So they say this: These grown men, in positions of great global power, behaving like children for all the world to see? It is because of their balls. Their wonderful, perfect balls. And their dicks! Their balls and their dicks and the way they filter and funnel all of their thought and communication through them. Think about those balls and dicks, these guys tell the world, right out loud. We sure are.

Masculinity really is in crisis, and one of the main drivers of that crisis is the fact that these are the guys who talk about it.