World watches as Trump, Musk clash in U-turn

Sometimes you're better off letting the children fight.

- Maureen Dowd

That was President Donald Trump's callous wisdom on looking the other way as the Russians and Ulvainians continue to kill each other. But it might better be applied to Mr Trump's social media spat with Elon Musk. It’s hard to think of two puer aeterni who are more deserving of a verbal walloping.

Their venomous digital smackdown fulgurated on their duelling social media companies, flashing across the Washington sky.

In March, Mr Trump showed off Teslas in the White House driveway and bought a red Model S. Now, he says he’s going to sell it.

Thursday was the most titillating day here since the sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, when a spaceship landed an alien to warn human leaders to stop squabbling like children, or the aliens would destroy Earth.

On Friday, Mr Trump tried to convey serenity. “I’m not thinking about Elon Musk,” he said aboard Air Force One. “I wish him well.” But Mr Trump then jumped on the phone to knock Mr Musk, telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl that Mr Musk has “lost his mind” and CNN’s Dana Bash that “the poor guy’s got a problem”: He had to know that would be seen as a reference to the intense drug use by Mr Musk chronicled by The New York Times.

As Raheem Kassam, one of the owners of Butterworth’s, the new Trumpworld boite on Capitol Hill, assured Politico, “Maga will not sell out to ketamine”