Future historians are going to have their work cut out for them! How are they going to explain this still from an Indian news website about what appears to be a feud between the most powerful man in the world and what was until recently the richest man in the world in front of someone called “Merz". Why the feud? Why the shame? And who is Merz anyway? It turns out that the visit to the White House by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday June 5 2025 may after all go down in history. Not as the carefully staged-managed non-event in US-European relations that Berlin craved, but because of remarks made by Trump during the excruciatingly one-sided press conference. As the cameras ignored Merz and focused on POTUS, this was the moment that Trump laid into Musk for his criticism of Trump’s Big Beautiful (Budget) Bill. The German side were delighted that Trump took all the oxygen out of the room. It minimized the chance that Merz would make a misstep and it kept J.D. Vance on the sidelines. Berlin was terrified that Vance might ventilate the themes of his Munich Security Conference speech. In particular they feared that either Trump or, more likely, Vance would publicly take the side of the far-right AfD and force Merz into an embarrassing statement of principle on democratic “firewalls”. In the event, Trump rambled on. The meeting wrapped. Merz, Trump and their teams retired for a business lunch, which by all accounts was uneventful. Meanwhile, the world exploded, as Musk retaliated against Trump. Musk claimed that without his support Trump and the Republicans would not be in power. He brought up the Epstein files and endorsed calls for Trump’s impeachment. The Trump v. Musk dynamic will draw endless comment. The bigger question is how is this possible: a. How can the dominant faction of power in the US be tied this loosely together? How can the lines of power be so unclear? and b. Viewed from the side of policy: Why is the political majority in support of Trump’s