The fiery back-and-forth falling out between President Donald Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk that escalated on Thursday reveals a core fear that the president has in this moment, former Trump White House communications strategist Alyssa Farah Griffin told a CNN panel.

This followed one of Griffin's co-panelists, longtime Trump loyalist and right-wing commentator Scott Jennings, expressing the hope that Musk, who blew up the feud in part over his rage at the fiscal insolvency of the GOP's "big, beautiful bill" to extend tax cuts, could instill deficit discipline in the party.

"Elon Musk retweeted a post from someone, and this post said 'President vs Elon. Who wins? My money's on Elon. Trump should be impeached and JD Vance should replace him,'" said anchor Jake Tapper. "Elon Musk reposted it and wrote, 'yes.' So now it is the official position of Elon Musk, presumably, that Trump should be impeached and J.D. Vance should replace him. Your thoughts?"

"I mean, listen. I've had bad breakups, but this is wild," said Griffin, who abandoned the MAGA movement as the president began to promote conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

"Listen, Elon has had a lot of attacks he's launched today," she continued. "Of course, you brought up the claiming that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files, saying that he's going to cause a recession in the next quarter. And then, of course, this. But I will say the attack that I think is actually going to stick the most with President Trump is him essentially calling him a lame-duck president. He's saying 'he's going to be here for three and a half years, I'm here for 40 years.' That is what Donald Trump is afraid of. If this bill doesn't get over the threshold and end up passing, it's his entire legislative agenda. The midterms are just a, you know, a couple miles ahead. And he's realizing, like, this is the most damaging thing at this moment that could be happening."

"For members of Congress on Capitol Hill, the conversations that they're having, the ones Scott's avoiding right now, are, listen, if you're up in these midterms, you really don't want to get crosswise with Elon Musk, who's willing to spend basically endlessly in your district if you support this bill," Griffin added. "Now, if you're somebody who's not up this cycle, you might wait it out. You might say, you know, I'm not going to get on the bad side of Donald Trump right now and be with him. But there's, like, actual conversations countless members of Congress are having right now about where to be on Donald Trump's signature legislative item because of this rift."

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