In order to catapult himself back to the White House, Donald Trump has grown his Make America Great Again party into a very big tent. That tent includes many uncomfortable alliances, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the oil companies he used to fight when he was an environmental lawyer. But perhaps the most tenuous of bedfellows are right-wing techno-oligarchs like Elon Musk and populist nationalists like Steve Bannon, who want to do away with Big Tech’s undue influence over government. And after Inauguration Day, the strength of this unlikely alliance is going to be put to the test.

The math of the situation is pretty simple: Trump’s campaign and other Republican candidates got about $277 million from Musk, the world’s richest man, who, like so many wealthy donors, now wants his seat at the table. And like it or not (personally I do not), the system is set up to reward donors like him. While many have already been appointed to plum gigs like ambassadorships and Cabinet posts, Musk, who is slated to co-run the Department of Government Efficiency, has other ideas for his role in Trump 2.0. The billionaire CEO wants to drastically cut the federal budget, and he wants to do it with some help from his friends (other millionaire and billionaire tech bros). Musk’s plan to gut the federal bureaucracy does not run contrary to MAGA; in fact, it’s exactly what the folks behind Project 2025 want to do. But his quest to take over the administrative state does set him in direct opposition with Bannon—one of Trumpworld’s loudest voices, who has repeatedly railed against globalism and corporate America’s “ruling elites” while pushing for “populist revolt.”

“The two are pro-Trump, but that might be all they have in common,” Oliver Darcy, who writes the Status media newsletter, texted me over the weekend. “Bannon is a populist and has taken a tough stance on billionaires trying to use their wealth to purchase political influence. My suspicion is that Bannon believes Elon is primarily interested in exploiting the MAGA coalition to benefit his companies and bottom line versus being a real believer in the movement itself. Consequently, Bannon has spent years focusing harsh criticism on Elon.”

Musk and Bannon’s feuding has already spilled out into public view. Last month, after the Tesla CEO praised H-1B foreign worker visas for helping make America “strong,” Bannon told Musk to “sit in the back and study” because he was a recent MAGA convert. Trump’s former White House chief strategist went even further last week, telling an Italian newspaper that Musk “is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down. Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it. I’m not prepared to tolerate it anymore.” Bannon has also criticized the billionaire’s upbringing in apartheid South Africa. “Peter Thiel, David Sachs, Elon Musk, are all white South Africans,” he said, arguing that Musk “should go back to South Africa,” and asking, “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans…making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”

Three points on this: First, Bannon probably should have thought about Musk’s “evil” nature before Trump’s inner circle allowed him to basically bankroll Trump’s campaign. Second, the notion that the MAGA movement loathes racism—when the very phrase “America first” originated with antisemite Charles Lindbergh—seems to be a bit of a misdirection. And third, questioning Musk’s MAGA bona fides simply because he’s shifted his beliefs seems kind of strange since Trumpworld is chockablock with converts of all stripes: JD Vance was Never Trump before 2018, Musk donated to both John Kerry and George W. Bush in 2004, and Trump himself was a Democrat as late as 2001. Indeed, perhaps the only trait all these people share is a thirst for self-advancement.

The most likely factor determining Musk’s fate in the MAGA-verse is whether he and his ilk want to make the federal government more dysfunctional—as Musk did with X, a husk of the site formerly known as Twitter—or more efficient. And if it’s the latter, what would a more efficient government actually look like? The New York Times reports that after inauguration, a “group of Silicon Valley–inflected, wide-eyed recruits will be deployed to Washington’s alphabet soup of agencies. The goal is for most major agencies to eventually have two DOGE representatives as they seek to cut costs like Mr. Musk did at X, his social media platform.”

From the Archive: Empire State of Mind

It’s possible that this plan will work, and Musk is far from the first person to muse about cutting the federal government. But it seems probable that the billionaire’s plan will devolve into a fiasco of epic proportions: Musk himself has, worryingly, acknowledged that ordinary Americans will need to endure “temporary hardship” in order to put America on firmer fiscal footing, i.e., pay for Trump’s tax cuts for the very wealthy. Whatever the case may be, Musk’s plan could create a scenario in which he has more control over the levers of power than even Trump.

What does seem certain is that Musk will wield his MAGA clout to help his companies and to grow his personal wealth. “We’ve seen peak Elon, his intrusive nature, his lack of understanding of the true issues, and, quite frankly, his support of just himself, the sole objective is to become a trillionaire,” Bannon told the Italian newspaper. “That’s his objective.” Bannon is likely correct in claiming that Musk wants to achieve “techno-feudalism on a global scale.”

Still, peel back their ideological differences, and it’s hard to see how this is anything more than a power struggle to control Trump 2.0. Are we really meant to believe that Musk is really any more self-interested than, say, Trump? Everyone in and around Trump’s second administration—from the tech founders funding his inauguration to the billionaires in his Cabinet—strikes me as self-interested. We’re about to witness what happens when public service is being conducted by a mass of people who don’t believe in serving anything but themselves.