The Oligarchs Are Fighting
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
4.2 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
The Washington Roundtable discusses the fallout from the messy rupture between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, how battles between maximalist rulers and the mega-wealthy have unfolded in history, and how this week’s fighting could portend a new, more combative phase of American oligarchy. They talk about America’s new Gilded Age, drawing on “The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich,” a new book by Evan Osnos, just out this week.
This week’s reading:
- “The Musk-Trump Divorce Is as Messy as You Thought It Would Be,” by Susan B. Glasser
- “Donald Trump’s Politics of Plunder,” by Evan Osnos
- “The Sublime Spectacle of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Social-Media Slap Fight,” by Jessica Winter
- “The Private Citizens Who Want to Help Trump Deport Migrants,” by Jessica Pishko
- “Can Public Media Survive Trump?,” by Jon Allsop
Tune in wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the political scene from The New Yorker, a weekly discussion about the big questions in American politics. |
| 0:15.1 | I'm Susan Glasser, and of course, I'm joined by my colleagues, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos. |
| 0:21.0 | Hi, Jane. Hi, Evan. Hey, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos. Hi, Jane. |
| 0:22.1 | Hi, Evan. |
| 0:23.1 | Hey, Susan. |
| 0:23.8 | Hey, Evan. |
| 0:24.7 | Good morning, guys. |
| 0:26.1 | Well, we knew the end was coming. |
| 0:28.4 | We just didn't know how very public and how very petty it would be. |
| 0:34.1 | But now we know. |
| 0:35.5 | The bromance between the president of the United States, Donald Trump, |
| 0:39.5 | and the world's richest man, Elon Musk, is officially over. Let's just say the ending was a long |
| 0:46.2 | time and coming, but when it did, it came with a bang, starting with Elon Musk railing against |
| 0:52.4 | Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill. and Trump's saying he was, quote, |
| 0:56.8 | very disappointed in Musk, and then threatening to cut all of Musk's government contracts. |
| 1:04.1 | The two have traded Barbes on their respective social media platforms, with Trump calling Musk crazy, |
| 1:13.3 | and Musk claiming that Trump's name has come up in the Jeffrey Epstein files. Within minutes, their feud had crossed on Wednesday from the |
| 1:20.9 | policy realm and into the deeply personal. But in today's show, we'll get into the larger |
| 1:26.5 | implications of the breakup of two of the |
| 1:28.7 | most powerful people in the world, even though we're trapped watching them beat each other up |
| 1:34.3 | like middle schoolers. It's fair to say, Washington has never seen a show like this. And we are |
| 1:42.7 | lucky this week because we have one of our own as the |
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