Harsh.

When two master manipulators orbit the same collapsing star, eventually they crash into each other, and the explosion is both catastrophic and deliciously ironic.

Enter Elon Musk and Peter Navarro, two of the most transparently manipulative narrative engineers in modern public life, finally at each other’s throats after years of mutually beneficial flimflam. Musk, the high priest of techno-utopian gibberish, lost a staggering $12 billion in a single day thanks to Trump’s latest tariff tantrum. Navarro, Trump’s favorite faux economist and buzzword ventriloquist, is out making the rounds to defend the very policy that detonated Musk’s fortune. And now, they’re slapping each other with handbags full of empty talking points.

Let’s start with Navarro, the man who built a reputation on two things: paranoia and a fake expert named Ron Vara. Yes, seriously. Navarro created an imaginary economist (an anagram of his own name, because subtlety is for suckers) to endorse his own tariff hysteria. Ron Vara, according to Navarro’s own books, was a wise, world-weary trade expert who just happened to agree with Peter Navarro on everything. Shocker.

Navarro is now on CNN, spinning trade deficits into national security emergencies, summoning demons like "non-tariff barriers" and "currency manipulations" as if he’s the Gandalf of protectionism. All of it delivered with the smugness of a man who knows he’ll never be fact-checked by the president who appointed him.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, SpaceX overlord, Twitter troll, and part-time Martian messiah, watched as Tesla stock plummeted over 10% on Friday. His wealth evaporated faster than his promises about full self-driving. Naturally, he took to his favorite playground to lash out. Not at Trump, of course, not directly. Musk is still clinging to the illusion of influence in Trump’s shadow government. No, the target of Musk’s fury was Navarro.

“A PhD from Harvard is a bad thing,” Musk sneered, mocking Navarro’s academic credentials before delivering a perfectly Muskian dagger: “He ain’t built shit.” A cutting critique from a man who’s built flamethrowers for fun and cars that sometimes catch fire. Still, credit where credit is due: he’s not wrong.

It’s almost poetic watching them turn on each other. Musk, a man who has made billions selling futures that never quite arrive, is now furious that his business empire is being destabilized by another huckster whose only product is panic. Navarro, who has never managed a lemonade stand, is out here tanking the markets with his trade war LARPing.

Both of them have spent years manipulating public perception, selling dreams, or nightmares, with slick soundbites and algorithm-friendly narratives. Now they’re locked in a passive-aggressive slap fight because their respective grifts have finally collided. Musk’s brand needs optimism and market stability. Navarro’s brand needs fear and economic warfare. You can’t have both. Not even on X.

Of course, Trump, the chaos emperor at the center of all this, has no idea or interest in how any of it works. He just likes when people scream his name on television and markets do weird things. The tariffs aren’t strategy, they’re impulse. Musk is learning, painfully, what it means to invest in a regime of whims. Navarro is just thrilled someone’s paying attention.

So here we are: two frauds, flailing at each other in a marketplace they helped destabilize, fighting over which illusion is more real. Spoiler: neither of them wins. But we all lose. And the only thing more absurd than the damage they’ve caused is the possibility that they still believe their own press.

Grab popcorn, just expect it to cost 25% more now, thanks to tariffs.