Five Ways the Donald Trump-Elon Musk Fight Could Impact Hollywood

OK, so the Donald Trump–Elon Musk feud pretty much IS Hollywood.

If you had to pitch a script about the world’s most powerful man squaring off against the world’s richest man in an all-out war over the direction of the planet, you’d get a greenlight on the spot (or get laughed out of the room for implausibility). The popcorn-bucket quotient is unparalleled.

But such a feud also has a consequence for Hollywood. More than one, in fact. How does the knockdown-dragout brawl impact companies, executives and creators in the town, you ask? Here are five potential ways.

1. Align MAGA Against YouTube and Other Entertainment-related Tech Companies

Since he was elected seven months ago, Trump has been largely friendly to the Silicon Valley companies in charge of (among other things) our content and entertainment, pulling many Republicans with him (or at least cowing them into silence). But that’s been starting to change with the increasing volubility of Missouri senator Josh Hawley and several others, who have begun to ask accountability-type questions about YouTube and its AI training and social platforms and their content policies. Now, the trend could get Trump behind it too as the friendliest Big Tech voice in his ear is gone. In fact, he could have a new vendetta-ish incentive to go after Big Tech, seeking to bring to heel companies like Amazon and Netflix along with universities, law firms, legacy media and others he’s pursued.

2. Cut Down FCC Chair Brendan Carr

One of the biggest thorns in the side of network news and other content giants is Carr, who has sought to call to the principal’s office Comcast, Disney and other media companies — and hold up the Paramount-Skydance merger while he’s at it. Carr is actually a major Musk ally — he has visited his Texas SpaceX headquarters, taken selfies with the mogul and gone to bat for him, as he did when slamming FCC colleagues several years ago for not granting Musk’s Starlink huge sums in rural broadband subsidy fees. Carr will no doubt try to thread the Muskian needle now that his boss (well, technically his boss is Congress) has fallen out with his big ally. But that may be not an easy eye to get that yarn through, and Carr may find himself a little closer to the margins without his buddy and rabbi. Bob Iger and Shari Redstone might exhale — for a few seconds.

3. Give Hollywood Liberals a New Ally (Maybe)

Alright this one seems like a stretch, even if plenty of political outlets are happy to indulge it. “Democrats eye a villain-to-ally arc for Elon Musk”: Politico; “Democratic congressman steps up his work to pull Musk toward his party for the midterms”: Semafor.)

Plenty of Dems still hate Musk; the enemy-of-your-enemy logic only goes so far. Plenty of Dems feel the way Tim “How great is it that that dipshit Elon Musk is out?” Walz does, even if only some will say it.

But Congressman Ro Khanna, the Northern California progressive in whose district a Tesla assembly plant sits, wants Musk to get California-ized. “We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with,” Khanna told Semafor. “A commitment to science funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to seeing international students like him.”

Nothing that Musk has done in the past year suggests this is remotely likely — and let’s not forget he needs lots of contracts Trump’s agencies provide. Plus if anything, come midterms he’s going to be trying to knock down Trump candidates from the right. 

But the man who in the fall alleged that the entertainment business was conspiring to enable Diddy now mingling with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and others in Hollywood’s fundraising machine would be a juicily ironic specter indeed.

4. Let Entertainment People Keep Their Teslas

Hollywood loves cars and revenge tales, so it makes sense the Tesla Takedown movement has been rooted here. Alex Winter of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure kind of kicked the whole thing off, and entertainers like Sheryl Crow, Jason Bateman and others have ditched their slick EVs in his wake. While Musk will hardly seem like a good guy to Hollywood liberals, his withdrawal from the government, the defanging of DOGE and newfound rivalry with Trump may make holding on to that Model X Plaid a little easier. Ari could drive his Cybertruck with head held high.

5. Push Trump to Slow Down Content-Gobbling AI Companies

This one is tricky. Trump has a big AI verdict of sorts coming in July when he is expected to announce his regulation plans. So far he’s shown little appetite for such guardrails. In fact, the current Big Beautiful spending bill (also at the center of the Musk fight) has a major provision stopping states from regulating AI for ten years — a huge sop to Sam Altman, Google and the rest of the Silicon Valley AI lobby. But there are already signs it could be slowed down, with Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, leading the charge in the name of states’ rights. The Senate has just watered down the provision, changing it from an outright ban on states to regulate to an elimination of broadband subsidies if they do.

Could Trump flex his muscle to roll it back further and allow regulation now that he’s in a blood feud with Musk, overseer of AI model Grok? It’s possible. But also worth noting is that Musk is in a separate blood feud with Altman, who wants pretty much no regulation at all. So by that enemy-of-your-enemy logic the Musk fight could draw Trump closer to Altman and even more opposed to AI regulation, letting the models run wild in music and film. Like all things Musk-Trump, the moves are both giving us entertainment and landing on Hollywood.