Elon Musk’s moon mission divides MAGA loyalties

President Donald Trump’s rapid descent into lawlessness has made it clear: Members of his first administration effectively held back his most authoritarian instincts. Powered by a quest for vengeance and the knowledge of experience, Trump returned to the White House in January with a clear mission. But from the beginning, the team he assembled has been besieged by a series of internal disputes. Now another MAGA power struggle has spilled into public view, laying bare the movement’s dissonance about power and progress. 

The first nine months of the second Trump presidency have forced the MAGA movement to reconcile populist anti-government positions with the realities of running the federal government. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has been at the center of much of that tension. Musk, who once proclaimed himself “first buddy,” was the top political donor in the country in 2024, dropping more than $250 million into Trump’s reelection campaign and his own super PAC. His tenure as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to decimate the federal government was short-lived. He infamously clashed with many of Trump’s administration picks, including trade adviser Peter Navarro, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom he reportedly shoulder-checked during a White House confrontation. 

Musk, who had a rather messy departure from his official government role in May, is once again making waves with a social media broadside against another Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. With Trump’s man is under attack by the MAGA movement’s favorite billionaire, loyalties are being tested.

Duffy, who was picked to helm the Transportation Department over the objections of Howard Lutnick, the billionaire who ran Trump’s transition and now serves as Commerce Secretary, was selected by Trump to become the acting administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in July. (Duffy reportedly wanted the job of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.) Trump has proposed cutting more than $6 billion from NASA’s budget, and Musk’s DOGE cuts have already impacted the agency. Around 4,000 NASA employees accepted deferred resignation program offers, which reduced the agency’s staff by nearly 20%. At the first Cabinet meeting in late February, Duffy accused Musk of pushing to lay off air traffic controllers, an accusation the SpaceX founder denied.

“Elon — or no one else — is the secretary,” Duffy told the New York Post’s Miranda Devine of the skirmish. “I run this department, and again, I didn’t want someone on the outside trying to tell me to fire people… [M]y position was, we are not going to fire air traffic controllers.”

According to Steve Bannon, “This is why Trump picked Sean Duffy as interim head of NASA. When everyone was worshipping Elmo Musk, Duffy called him a liar to his face about laying off air traffic controllers. Now that Duffy’s in the room, SpaceX contracts are about to get real scrutiny.”

Last week, following a report from the Wall Street Journal that revealed the secretary has been pushing for the agency to be placed under his department’s purview, Musk went on the offensive.

“The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ,” he wrote in a Tuesday post on X, which he owns, advocating for “somebody with a 3 digit IQ” to get the job.

Over the course of several days, Musk made clear his disdain for Duffy, referring to the secretary as “Sean Dummy” and complaining that Duffy is “trying to kill NASA!” Musk later posted a poll asking users, “Should someone whose biggest claim to fame is climbing trees be running America’s space program?”

Duffy, a former Republican congressman and Fox Business anchor, is also a former world champion lumberjack speed climber and cast member of “The Real World: Boston.” 

Musk lobbied for a fellow billionaire pal of his to take over the space agency and Trump listened, nominating Jared Isaacman, an entrepreneur and astronaut who led two private space flights with SpaceX in 2021 and 2024, for the job. But the president pulled Isaacman’s nomination in May – the same week Musk departed his role in Washington — calling the Musk ally a “blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.” (Records on OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics, show Isaacman donated to Democrats as recently as the 2024 election cycle, although he had donated to Republicans in previous years.) “I also thought it inappropriate that a very close friend of Elon, who was in the Space Business, run NASA, when NASA is such a big part of Elon’s corporate life,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in June.

Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., and MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, who called Isaacman’s nomination a “no brainer,” have lobbied the president for his renomination.

“Duffy can run DOT great and he can probably run NASA great,” Sheehy, who is friends with Isaacman, told POLITICO. “He can’t run both.”

Duffy recently interviewed Isaacman, according to the Wall Street Journal, which described their talks as “contentious at times.” In a statement, a NASA spokeswoman explained, “Sean said that NASA might benefit from being part of the Cabinet, maybe even within the Department of Transportation, but he’s never said he wants to keep the job himself.”

Oversight of NASA, though, isn’t the only point of contention between Musk and Duffy. 

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On Monday, Duffy took aim at Musk’s SpaceX in an appearance on CNBC, saying the company is “behind” schedule on building its lunar landing system for the space agency’s Artemis III mission. Duffy announced he would consider other contracts with competitors such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin: “I’m going to open up the contract, I’m going to let other companies compete with SpaceX.” 

In 2021, SpaceX won the $2.9 billion contract to build the Human Landing System (HLS) technology, which astronauts would ride to the moon’s surface. NASA launched its first Artemis mission in November 2022. But last December, the agency announced it was delaying future missions, as well as its Artemis III launch, which had been scheduled for 2024 but was moved to 2027. 

The agency’s current plan requires SpaceX’s Starship to be refueled in space, a feat that has never been accomplished. The company has tested Starship 11 times. “SpaceX had the contract for Artemis III,” Duffy said. “The problem is they’re behind. They push their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the Moon in this president’s term.”

But as former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during Senate testimony in September, “That architecture is extraordinarily complex… It, quite frankly, doesn’t make a lot of sense if you’re trying to go first to the moon, this time to beat China.”

SpaceX and Blue Origin have until Wednesday to offer ways to speed up the project, a NASA official told CNBC, which apparently helped to set Musk off. After taking a swipe at Bezos’ Blue Origin last week, Musk again wrote to Duffy. “Also, one question,” he wrote on X, accompanied by a GIF that read “why are you gae?”

Trump loyalists in the White House are picking Musk’s side in this duel, blaming Duffy for biting the multi-billion-dollar hand that bankrolls MAGA. 

“Duffy picking a fight with Elon doesn’t sit well with a lot of people because Elon is going to be a pretty big factor in the midterms,” a senior White House official told the Washington Free Beacon. The conservative outlet reported that some in the White House are worried that the transportation secretary could be an “impediment” to the GOP’s effort to maintain control of Congress. 

According to reporting from NOTUS, “those closest to the president appear to be livid.”

“There are people in the White House who believe Duffy has made unnecessary chaos rather than just accept that his time is in the sunset,” one anonymous official told the outlet. “Sean has overplayed his hand,” said another. “Not so much in dealing directly with the president, but more so with the West Wing and the rest of the administration. He has spent the last couple of weeks being a cowboy, and it’s caught up to him.” Another White House official said of Duffy: “Everyone, and I mean everyone in the West Wing, is furious at him.”

For the transportation secretary, surviving Musk’s onslaught — and the administration’s ire — means threading a narrow needle. He cannot win by matching the billionaire’s tone; as a Cabinet member, he must appear measured. That asymmetry gives Musk the advantage. While he can troll freely, Duffy must attempt to govern.

Behind the theatrics lies a genuine question about governance in the age of billionaire “disruptors.” Musk’s SpaceX has received billions in U.S. government contracts, leaving NASA dependent on the company’s equipment and ability to propel people into orbit. Trump, meanwhile, not only put someone in charge of NASA who lacks knowledge about space and the agency, but he also applied pressure on Duffy to accomplish an otherworldly task while the president is in office. As careful as NASA was during its quest for the moon and beyond, with all the checks and balances, the agency must not forget the lessons of the Challenger accident in 1986, which cost human lives and inflicted a grave wound on American ambitions for space exploration.

With Artemis III in danger of being completely consumed by chaos and confusion, NASA — and America — are suffering in the hands of selfish humans who will do anything to keep their wealth and power.