Sooner or later, the politicians who most admire Donald Trump begin to emulate him. They adopt his populist rhetoric, specific diction, or aggressive tone. If they happen to be men, they might stuff their closets with navy suits and red ties. Some of them even start to stand like him. It’s not just politicians, though. A lot of the tech billionaires who have recently become more open to Trump (who have been dubbed the “broligarchy”), have to varying degrees also come to resemble him in one way or another.
Earlier this week, for instance, the long-running feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman—both once members of OpenAI’s board before Musk departed in 2018—veered into the realm of Trumpian spectacle. After Trump trumpeted a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank on Tuesday, Musk threw cold water on the idea. He responded to OpenAI’s X post officially unveiling the Stargate project, bluntly concluding: “They don’t have the money.”
Altman wasted no time firing back. He invited Musk to visit the first Stargate site purportedly in development, and took a jab at Musk’s patriotism. (“[I] realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies,” he wrote, “but in your new role [I] hope you’ll mostly put [America] first.”) Later, the OpenAI CEO attempted to de-escalate the spat, adding: “[I] genuinely respect your accomplishments and think you are the most inspiring entrepreneur of our time.” But it’s hard to put billionaire-war toothpaste back in the tube.
These two have sparred before, in company blog posts and goofy Musk tweets, but this X activity is something new. It’s the most publicly pugnacious Altman has gotten yet, even if he did try to soften it afterward with a compliment.
It’s also the closest he’s come to the Trump tactic of airing out adversaries on social media.
Perhaps donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration has pulled him into Trump’s gravitational orbit, floating alongside the rest of the broligarchy.
Musk was the first of the heavy-hitter tech CEOs to start imitating Trump. Even before his May 2022 announcement that he’d be voting Republican going forward, Musk had already reinvented himself. It seemed his primary takeaway from Trump’s first term was that he, too, should become the main character online (and in reality) as often as possible. Trump had led like a P. T. Barnum-esque ringmaster, turning the office of the presidency into a reality TV show. Perhaps Musk recognized that even though Trump lost his bid for reelection, there was power in providing the general public with spectacle—even if it meant being hated as much as admired.
While Musk had long been a public figure, and sparked his fair share of controversies, at the dawn of the 2020s, he started generating headlines practically every day. Whether it was through complaining about gender pronouns, hyping up crypto, hosting SNL, or berating rival billionaire Jeff Bezos over the aesthetics of his Blue Origin rocket. He also began to antagonize journalists he disagreed with, and to use one of Trump’s favorite terms: “fake news.”
It should not be surprising that the pair are now close allies, locked in a symbiotic relationship.
Bezos eventually followed his foe Musk into Trump Country, squashing a Kamala Harris endorsement from running in his troubled news outlet, The Washington Post, last October. Also like Musk, Bezos had seemingly already internalized the Trump trait of showmanship.
After his divorce from Mackenzie Scott in 2019, Bezos quickly became more of a fixture in headlines—whether he was showing off his Blue Origin rocket, dressing in skin-tight art deco, or popping up at Coachella with girlfriend Lauren Sanchez. He also purchased a $500 million superyacht and shot down rumors of an even more expensive wedding. The divorced-guy version of Bezos seemed comfortable in the spotlight, ever-ready to give America something to talk about. When he was seen smiling in the VIP row at Trump’s inauguration earlier this week—the nexus of the world’s attention that day—he could hardly have looked more at home.
Like Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also had a glow-up recently, ditching his signature hoodies for loose T-shirts and a neck chain, and perming his hair into the Gen Z broccoli cut. The new look also accompanies a fresh pivot into Trumpism, complete with financial support and hostility toward MAGA bugaboos like fact-checking and DEI. According to a New York Times report, this pivot is more than a cover-your-ass initiative to keep Meta protected, but public proof “that the billionaire’s personal politics have shifted sharply to the right since 2020.”
The CEO may have also dropped some hints of his evolution along the way.
Zuckerberg’s Trumpiest moment may not have come across that way in real time. In many respects, it was probably the best press he’d gotten since his wunderkind era. Either way, during the summer of 2023, as Meta was about to launch its “Twitter-killer” Threads, Musk joked about the possibility of a cage match with Zuckerberg. He probably didn’t expect what happened next. Zuckerberg contacted Ultimate Fight Championship CEO and close Trump ally Dana White—now a member of Meta’s board—and asked him to broker the fight.
“If the matchup between Mr. Musk, 52, and Mr. Zuckerberg, 39, goes ahead, it would be a rare spectacle, even in the braggadocio-filled universe of the tech industry,” the Times reported.
Just the fact that a cage match was potentially in the offing was a spectacle all on its own. It drew attention to Zuckerberg’s recent transformation into a Jiu-Jitsu badass—which he demonstrated "> on the Lex Fridman podcast—not to mention the launch of Threads. Musk may have started the cage match conversation, but it was Zuckerberg’s newfound showman instincts that recognized it as an incredible opportunity for self-promotion.
Before calling the fight off six weeks later, Zuckerberg got to look cool by calling Musk’s bluff. He seemed to codify the sides of the social media playing field. Musk represented the one tilting far-right and fringe beliefs, while Zuckerberg’s side was distancing itself from politics and instead going hydrofoiling. The hypothetical fight between the two seemed like a proxy war for the future of social media. Looking back now, though, it just seems like blatant self-promotion, with the soap opera drama of WWE and the reality-show flair of Trump’s entire political career.
In 2023, it was easy, maybe even fun to revel in the hype of a dumb CEO fight and choose sides. Now, the whole broligarchy is clearly all on the same side—duking it out amongst each other to see who can be most like Trump at any given time.
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