Pity the poor office junior shuffling around the White House, shaking a brown envelope and pleading for signatures for the “Sorry You’re Leaving” card. For there will be few signatories – and even fewer donors – for Elon Musk’s send-off after he told Tesla investors this week he will be scaling back time in Washington to focus on his ailing car company.

Musk has repeatedly gone head to head with other key figures within Donald Trump’s administration. And now, the US news website Axios has reported he actually went chest to chest with the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a furious, expletive-laden dispute over the appointment of a new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) boss.

“It was two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing,” one onlooker said. Technically, Bessent may only be half a billionaire with a fortune estimated at around $520m (£391m), but you get the vibe.

As for the wrestling undertones? Well, what else can be expected in a machismo-drenched administration, where it’s all about showmanship, nothing is as it seems, the world is simplistically divided between good guys and bad guys, and there is way too much fake tan.

Musk, a man who craves power, has been an........

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