In case anybody has lingering doubts that Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s big beautiful bromance is, well, and truly over, 47 has gone and replaced his former BFF with a whole new shiny “first buddy.” Adding insult to injury, and hitting Musk where it really hurts — his ego and his wallet — Trump’s latest ride or die is Musk’s collaborator turned adversary, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which the two founded together before falling out in February 2018.
Altman became the latest tech bro to sell his soul to Washington after performing a drastic 180, morphing from Hillary Clinton stan to Trump fan and weaseling his way into the president’s good graces by using the tried and true formula of flattery and finance. Just weeks after Trump and Musk’s explosive breakup, Altman, with a MAGA-watt smile firmly in place, was the guest of honor at a Trump New Jersey golf club donors’ dinner.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump was all praise for his Musk replacement, albeit with a slight caveat. After describing Altman as “a very brilliant man,” he countered, “I hope he’s right about AI.” Trump certainly wasn’t too sure about the latter when he held post-election victory meetings at Mar-a-Lago about the future of AI where, at the behest of Musk, Altman was persona non-grata.
Trump’s new bestie is Musk’s old nemesis
Poor Elon Musk! He’s been having a tough time lately. First, Donald Trump snubbed Musk on his birthday, seemingly hammering the final nail in their bromance coffin. Then, 47 rubbed his nose in it by debuting his new bestie, Sam Altman, who just happens to be Musk’s fiercest foe. It’s safe to say Mr. X is far from happy about it.
On July 18, he shared an AI-generated pic that poked fun at Altman and fellow Musk enemigo, former Apple designer and OpenAI collaborator, Johnny Ive. “Viva la Vida,” Musk added to his retweet of the original image that shows Ive cuddling Altman, with the caption, “Coldplay concerts are getting pretty crazy.”
Viva la Vida 😂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2025
Sadly, it all backfired on Musk, as his beloved AI chatbot Grok failed to correctly identify Ive and bizarrely mislabeled Altman while attempting to explain the composite. “That’s an AI-generated image of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (depicted bald from recent hair loss) and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, parodying a viral Coldplay concert cheating scandal. It puns on ‘Coldplay’ as cryonics, a life-extension tech they both back. Crazy indeed!” it replied to an X user asking, “who are these dudes?” Snarky netizens immediately waded in. “PhD level artificial intelligence here,” one wrote. But Grok didn’t take the insults lightly. “Haha, thanks! Unraveling AI-generated memes does take some scholarly flair. If that’s PhD level, what’s your thesis on cryonics?” it snapped back, eerily echoing Musk’s syntax and style.
