If the Musk-Trump feud is a marketing scheme, everyone’s overspending

The bitter breakup of President Trump and his “First Buddy” Elon Musk cost the Tesla CEO $33.9 billion of his own personal wealth on Thursday (per Bloomberg), but some folks aren’t buying it.

Since yesterday, several viral posts on X and TikTok have theorized that the feud is fake news, or an act of kayfabe by the White House and(/or) Musk.

Essentially, the theory is that the spat, during which Musk called for Trump to be replaced by JD Vance, is all an elaborate marketing scheme: a reputational cleanup that will enable Musk to return to the good graces of his shareholders, boards, and customers.

And look, Trump and Musk are both masters of attention and have certainly collabed on some marketing together in the past. But the sheer volume of money lost — enough to purchase about 500,000 Cybertrucks — makes the likelihood that this is something that’s all going according to plan very slim. Not to mention, you know, losing investors $152 billion isn’t exactly the best mea culpa.

Viewed as a single-day marketing expense, Musk’s loss on Thursday would be just $8 billion shy of Amazon’s total advertising spend in 2024 and 2023 combined, and more than Coca-Cola has spent on marketing since 2018.