Scenes from the first week of the second Trump administration: The president holds an event at the White House to announce a joint venture of up to $500 billion between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to build a massive new data center for artificial intelligence’s future, Elon Musk Elon Musk told X that the funding for the joint venture doesn’t really exist.
Asked whether the rants from his billionaire allies bothered him, the president shrugged and said: “No, it doesn’t. He hates one of the people in this deal.” That was a reference to Musk’s relationship with the head of OpenAI Clash with Sam Altman, whose views are quietly polarizing And, President Trump added, “I also have a certain hatred for people. “
It’s an enlightening moment, not just a funny line. Every new administration has factions that end up hating each other even though they are part of the same official team. But from the outset of Trump’s second White House, there has been considerable public conflict between different individuals, voters and worldviews.
However, this is not a sign of weakness on the part of Trump. During his first term, many around him simply tried to wear a veneer of Washington normalcy amid the president’s incompetence. The second time around is different: Trump has cast himself as a king whose court’s main litmus test is personal loyalty, so anyone who wants anything in America will be incentivized (except, yes, more of nothing) (certified immigration or more DEI) procedures) appeared before him as a courtier, risking his dignity in the hope of winning the favor of the throne.
In the short term, at least until Democrats gain a foothold, that means the most important conflict in American politics is taking place in Trump’s court. I’ve already written about one obvious potential point of conflict—the broader tension between MAGA populism and Silicon Valley liberalism. But there are some civil wars here that deserve attention.
Protectionists and Wall Street: It’s worth noting that Trump’s initial series of executive actions did not include the steep tariffs he promised to impose on competitors and neighbors. His own protectionist desires were clear, but his court was filled with financial elites who whispered warnings not to go too far, not to upset the stock market, and to find a softer way to toy with William McKinley.
Recent comments from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon are a useful example of this whispering. Dimon appears to be turning Trumpist, justifying tariffs on national security grounds and urging critics to “get over it.” But as National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru points out, Dimon actually justified a much smaller tariff effort than the full-scale protectionism Trump threatened. It’s a classic move by a courtier: praising the monarch’s wisdom while gently guiding him forward.
Middle East hawks oppose realists and doves. Trump pursued a foreign policy in his first term that mostly pleased Iran hawks, but there was little light between the United States and Israel. However, his recent actions have unnerved hawkish parts of the palace: his ceasefire pressure on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and a group of realist-leaning appointees, and his petty and unconscionable elimination of the Secret Service Protection of Mike Pompeo, John Pompeo.
That final move prompted some direct criticism of Trump himself. But as with the tariff war, expect more indirect conflict, with various advisers accused of betraying the president’s true agenda or “cheating themselves” into positions of influence (as Mark Levin complained about non-hawk Michael Demi (Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Affairs) and made recommendations that Trump himself would not approve.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Future. Kennedy was a one-man conflict machine — pro-choice in an anti-abortion party and critical of agribusiness in a party that relied on votes in the Plains states. But the deepest tension is between his holistic, anti-corporate vision and the tech accelerationism of Trump’s Silicon Valley allies.
For example, after the same OpenAI announcement inspired Musk’s vitriol, Kennedy’s former running mate Nicole Shanahan warned Megyn Kelly about using artificial intelligence to design new personalized mRNA vaccines (Oracle’s Larry Ellison in the announcement This scenario has been touted) as “possibly” leading to an extinction event.
This was a stark statement of the potential risks of conflict between courtiers. Oddly enough, there are people on the other side, people currently working on artificial intelligence, who agree with Shanahan’s somewhat eccentric-sounding views. They don’t think mRNA technology will kill everyone. But they do suspect, worry or hope that artificial intelligence is rapidly ushering in a posthuman paradigm.
This means that, in a sense, the best economic news for the Trump administration—leapfrog advances in artificial intelligence—could also make his courtrooms the site of existential debates, a culture war to end all culture war, leaving all other issues behind.
