Some political pundits have portrayed last week’s blowup as merely yet another exit by a disgruntled Trump ally. But the president’s anger toward Musk seems worse than his temper tantrums following the departures of other hand-picked loyalists, such as Vice President Mike Pence, Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, Secretaries of State Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, or Secretaries of Defense James Mattis and Mark Esper.
Trump, who relies on a hub-and-spokes model of leadership—where all power is centralized in himself while he divides and conquers his warring subordinates—has always been deeply resentful of consiglieres who try to outmaneuver or constrain him. Trump will never tolerate business leaders who believe they are bigger than the big boss.
Consider advisors with grandiosity who threatened to undermine sovereign bosses, including the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin, who engineered creeping control over Czar Nicholas II; Mark Hanna, portrayed in his time as the grand puppeteer controlling President William McKinley; and President Woodrow Wilson’s close advisor Colonel Edward House, who undermined Wilson’s Versailles negotiations after World War I. All these audacious advisors found their presumption punctured by icing out or even execution.
Meanwhile, with Trump insinuating Musk’s government interest is motivated by commercial self-gain and Musk accusing Trump of entanglement with Epstein—and having the resources to fund an anti-Trump counterrevolution—the news media might be a better investment than AI or cryptocurrency.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Lester Crown Professor in Management Practice and president and founder of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Steven Tian is the director of research at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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